Other than my anxiousness of wanting to have a baby it was a really nice day. Adam watched Amaia and Haddon in the morning while I leisurely wandered around Target and got a few things that we needed. When I got home I finished making a heart wreath for Valentine's day as my last nesting urge and took a nice nap in the afternoon. Looking back upon it, it was the perfect way to spend my last day before the craziness of welcoming a new baby into our family.
At about 4:30 in the afternoon I was starting to get myself and the kids ready for church and started feeling some contractions that felt different to me. This is the first pregnancy that I have been very aware of lots of braxton hicks contractions, which made me unsure if this was the start of true labor or not, so I continued getting ready for church and just tried to pay attention to what was going with my body. By the time that we were supposed to go to church I still was not sure what was happening, but decided to stay home from church just in case and continue to pay attention to my body. I started writing down the times of my contractions and they were 10 minutes apart, so I started packing a bag for the kids and called my parents to let them know what was going on. Adam was playing in the band at church and as I became more confident I told him that he should probably come home after he played the first set. My parents arrived to pick up the kids around 7:30 and we said our goodbyes. After that my contractions were still fairly mild and I was feeling really tired so I laid down on the couch for while and my contractions slowed down even more. We decided to go on a short walk outside to see if my contractions would pick up. It was a very short walk due to the cold, but my contractions almost immediately picked up to about 4 mins apart and were starting to become painful, so I called the midwives and we were off to the hospital!
We arrived at the hospital a about 11 on Saturday night and got checked in. The nurse checked us in and said I was about 4 cm dilated, which was disappointing to me. However, that still meant that we were staying and having a baby tonight! My expectation was that this labor would go quickly this time around so I was really surprised that I was not further along, but I ended up dilating from 4 to a 6 to an 8 pretty quickly by just walking around and trying out some different positions that our midwife had suggested. The difficult part about this labor was that I stayed dilated at a 9 or 9 1/2 for what seemed like a very long time to me, which isn't a great place to be stuck :) But then I rolled to my left side and had one contraction that was VERY different than all others that had come before it and I was ready to push. This happened at 2:14 am and then I pushed through one contraction and our little girl was born at 2:18 am! The first thing I remember about her was how pink she was when she was born. The nurses called her "red lobster". She had the cord wrapped around her body twice, so we are so thankful that didn't cause any problems. Apparently everything about this pregnancy was larger for some reason. I had a high amount of amniotic fluid, Vera was larger, my the cord was extra long and the placenta was large. Vera was a pound larger than Amaia and Haddon, but I actually found this labor to the be the easiest on my body. The only thing that made it more difficult I think was my expectation for things to go more quickly than they did. I successfully naturally birthed a 9 lb baby!
And then we finally got to do this...
Vera Josephine & Mommy's first picture together.
