Of course those last couple weeks before my due date, I was procrastinating on the things that really needed to get done (ex. packing a hospital bag) and prioritizing things like home improvement projects. That’s just how my mind worked this time. I was determined to keep this girl in as long as possible, but she had other plans. On Monday, March 16th, I was getting the house cleaned up, getting some work done and experiencing some contractions throughout the day. I also had my 39 week check up with Dr. Marshall that day. After my appointment, Charles and I met up at Ted’s Montana Grill in the Avenue for a lunch date.
Later that night, after Owen was tucked in and I was doing some typical nesting around the house, Charles was working on a work project in the kitchen. I walked in and said “I think we need to go to the hospital.” The contractions were getting stronger and closer together. I hopped in the shower, we finished up the laundry and threw our last few items in the hospital bag and Kristin came up with her overnight bag. We pulled out of the driveway and midnight and called our parents to let them know we were headed to the hospital.
While we were at the hospital check in desk, my contractions were getting stronger. We finally got into a room and they hooked up all the monitors. They checked an I was about 3-4 cm dilated-the same as I had been that morning at my check with Dr. Marshall. They had to run some labs before I could get my epidural to help with the contraction pains, which took about an hour to get results on. Within that hour, my contractions got very intense. My water broke and I was quickly dilated to 8 cms. I was still waiting on the lab results before I could get the epidural, but the nurse called the on-call doctor from a practice that our office partners with-Dr. Stephen Rosenberg. At that point, the nurse also made it sound like he might not be able to get here by the time Charlotte arrived! I was in so much pain that I can’t really remember the sequence of events after this, but the anesthesiologist finally rolled in to give me the epidural and Dr. Rosenberg came in shortly after. Once he got there, it was time to push. It didn’t take long for Charlotte to arrive.
Charlotte was born at 4:07 AM weighing in at 7 lbs 3 oz and 20 inches long. She was born with a great set of lungs! Once she was born, we spent some time together in our delivery room before we called the family and got moved to our hospital room for our stay. Our little St. Paddy’s day girl had lots of family visiting the next couple days before we got to head home.
~Here are some of the pictures from the hospital photographer~
