Oue War Story...

I have to say that I now understand why women who have had children all share thier "stories." It's like what we in Teen Mania Land call "War Stories." You just fought in a great battle and you now consider your experience legendary. So, for all of my friends out there who are anxious to hear how our life changing Tuesday went, I will share. For those of you who just want the highlights, please see the below post and skip this one!

We went into the hospital, as scheduled on Tuesday morning and got all hooked up and ptosin (?) started by about 8:15 that morning. The nurses and doctor told us to expect a delivery late afternoon or maybe dinner time. So we settled in for a long day. About an hour into the process the contractions started getting pretty bad. I couldn't talk through them, and I was using the (up till that point scorned) breathing techniques...and let's face it, making up breathing patterns as I went. I asked the nurse when I could get an epidural and she said, "honey, it's gonna get a lot worse, it will be a little while." She told me my contractions were only registering 18 on the machine and they needed to get to around 80 to be considered "active labor." And in the meantime I was thinking if it's gonna get a lot worse, I am going to die before this baby is born!

They had checked me in the morning and I was around 3 cm dialated. So when I started begging for drugs and hour later they thought they better check me again. They did and I had dialated to 7 and my water had broken on it's own! They started to get the picture and called for the epi guy...who was in an operation. My contractions were about 2 min apart and were lasting about 60 seconds each.

I sweated through another 20 or so minutes of those...still on the increase and they put an internal moniter on me and then they could see the contractions were registering well into the 90's!. They checked me again (as we were still waiting on epi guy) and I was dialted to 9. They said don't push, the docter will be here soon. But another good friends showed up before that....Todd, the anisesiologist (epi guy, who please note I still remember his name.) He quickly gave me a needle in the back, during a contraction, and for which I will eternally be greatful...and life was good!

I think labor may have slowed down at that point. It was probably about around noon when I got the epidural and then I chatted with my parents and husband (who was faithfully by my side during the entire event, holding my hand, and who's hand I almost broke! And he was wonderful, he hardly said anything...which was perfect for me at that juncture!).

So our doctor showed up and gave me so me instructions on pushing. I was warned that this part of labor sometimes takes a couple of hours, so be prepared for a lot of hard work. I thought, I feel good now, surely NOTHING could feel like what I just went through for the last 1.5 hours. So I was up for it. So we pushed through 3 contracts....about 6 minutes and Isabelle Agnes Micheal was born. Beautiful, perfect, and fast....just the way her Mama likes it!

Isabelle weighed only 4.8 pounds at 39 weeks and 5 days. She is matured to a 40 week baby, just small. They expected her to be about 6 or so pounds so this was quite a shock, so she was thouroughly checked over and no problems were found. But I was 4.11 pounds and my husband was very small too when he was born.

We had a great hospital stay where probably 20 friends and family came to visit the new little Michael. We wanted to share our good news with you who are too far to visit and tell you that we love you. We are truly amazed at God's gifts in our lives. We are looking forward to being her parents.

Love, Conrad, Danielle, & Isabelle