A Baby Story – Grace Anna

We are excited to announce that Grace Anna was born on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 8:16pm.  She weighed 6 pounds and 10 ounces, and was 19.5 inches long.

That day started out like many others, I had a doctors appointment at the hospital that afternoon (which is about 45 minutes from our house) so Collin and I decided to run all of our errands on that side of town beforehand.  We went to Target, Dillard’s, JoAnns, and several other stores in between – our usual stops :)

My stomach was hurting a little, but not enough to really be uncomfortable or stop us from having a good time.  I have stomach issues anyways, so I barely even gave it a thought.

At my 3:15 pm appointment the doctor told me I was 3.5 or 4 cm.  We went ahead and scheduled an induction for the following week on Wednesday, but she did say she didn’t think I would last that long :)

On the way home I stopped by the grocery store to finish up a meal we were taking to another family at church that night.  My stomach pain had become more noticeable by that point (about 5:00 pm), so I decided that we would just drop off the meal and not stay for church service.

In the car on the way there Son & I started to write down the times between what I realize now were contractions…5 min, 8 min, 7 min, 5 min.  At this point I believed it was Braxton Hicks and decided I needed to go home and lay down for a while so they would stop.  On the way home I called my friend Whitney who we were planning on leaving Collin with if my parents didn’t make it in time – just in case anything happened in the middle of the night so she would at least know what was going on.  Thankfully Whitney convinced me to call the doctor “just in case”!

The doctor suggested I come in so she could check me out, but I asked if I could just lay down for a while to see if it went away…her response, “That is up to you, the baby isn’t going to just fall out, at some point your water will break.”

After about 15 minutes of “resting” I could tell it was getting worse, not better.  At that point (about 6:45 pm) I would definitely say that I was in pain during contractions & I had a few other signs that the baby was on her way, however I really thought it wouldn’t be until much later that night or the next day.

I packed Collin’s stuff, we loaded up the car, and headed to the hospital.  We pulled up to Baptist South at approximately 8:00pm.  I was in serious pain, and couldn’t wait until Son loaded Collin up in Whitney’s car (who was nice enough to meet us there)…so I walked in by myself & told the people at the desk I was in labor.

After what seemed like forever signing papers they put me in a wheelchair and rolled me up to a triage room for L&D.  The nurse said, “I need you to take off your clothes, put on this gown, walk across the hall, pee in a cup, etc, etc, etc”.  I said (as nicely as I could between tears), “I am really sorry but I just don’t think I can do all of that.” 

She didn’t look very convinced, but she checked me anyways and said “Wow!  You are complete.”

I had to ask her to explain what she meant by “complete” and then all I could think about was my sweet friend Elizabeth who didn’t make it to the hospital in time to get an epidural – surely that wasn’t going to happen to me!

She started running and pushing my bed down the hall, yelling as she went disturbing things like “Call Dr. Wrenick” and “as soon as her water breaks this baby is coming” and “I need everything in this room now!”  Then I heard the nurses discussing if they had time to get an IV in, and who would catch the baby since there was no way the Dr. was going to make it…that’s when I panicked.

Son barely made it up to the room, my water broke, the doctor ran in the room just in time, and then she was here!

 

So that is our baby story!!  We are all doing great & have spent the past 2 weeks just falling in love with our little princess :)

Family of Four!!

My parents have been here from Texas totally spoiling us & we are NOT looking forward to them leaving tomorrow.

So much more to update...but baby is calling :)  More to come soon!