"So... let's adopt the rest..."

At 3:40 am, on October 11, 2010, I woke up to some warm liquid in my bed. Dang... did I pee the bed, or was this go time??? I jumped out of bed, and the liquid kept coming. I sat on the toilet to get rid of the rest of it, and nothing came. I stood up, and it kept coming. I sat down again... nothing. Stood up, starting pouring again. By this point, I was quite sure that it was, in fact, my water breaking!

Excitedly, I waddled into our room and woke up Hubby. Much to my surprise, it didn't take the normal 20 minutes to get him to be slightly more than coherent. Within moments, he was up and at it with me, rearing and ready to go for our big adventure!

By this time, contractions had started coming every few minutes. I was so excited that my contractions were so close together, indicating that I would have a nice, short labour (like my mom!). I couldn't wait! I said to Hubby, "Babe, by noon today, we'll probably have our girl!" HA!

At 6:00 am, with contractions 2 minutes apart, and getting stronger and stronger, we made our way to the hospital. I waddled my way up to the Labour and Delivery floor, to be checked out by whoever would tell me how far along I was. By this point, the pain was majorly intense, and the contractions were still about 2 minutes apart. I couldn't wait to hear how far dilated I was.

Well, after almost an hour and a half of monitoring my contractions, they finally came to check out how far dilated I was. I was expecting to be at least half way there. Not a chance. The doctor let me know that I was all of 2 centimetres dilated. OUCH. How could I only be 2 centimetres after over 3 hours?

I was told to go home and relax, and to come back when I was ready. They offered me some drugs to make me feel a little better until I was ready to come back, so I got a combo of Gravol and morphene and they sent me home. I swear, it did nothing.

At home, my parents home, that is, the turkey was cooking for our Thanksgiving dinner. My brother and his fiancee, little brother, and both parents were all around to see me in my misery. Fiancee and Mom took care of keeping track of my contractions. Still about 2 minutes apart, and getting more and more intense as time passed.

Come about 11:00 am, my pain was bad enough and constant enough (2 minutes apart, lasting over a minute for each contraction), I was ready to go back to the hospital. The whole way in, I prayed I would be muuuuch further dilated than my original 2 centimetres. Well... I was a whopping 4 centimetres this time.

"Way to go! That's amazing - you're making such great progress!"

Ummm... yeah... whatever. Here I thought I was about 8 centimetres dilated... so 4 was a major disappointment!

At this point, after being in labour for about 9 hours, with the end nowhere in sight, I was ready for an epidural. I had initially decided that I would try to go all natural, but would just take it as it came. I think if my labour was about half as long, I would have been able to do it without the epidural... however, 4 cms after 9 hours was not what I was anticipating.

More time passed and I was put on Pitocin as well as my epidural. The epidural didn't take well, so they kept having to raise the dose. The Pitocin wasn't working, so they had to keep upping that dose as well! Finally, at 10:00 pm, I was allowed to start pushing.

I pushed. And pushed. And pushed... and pushed. For 2 hours, I pushed. No baby. The doctor came in and told us that he needed to check and see how Poppy's oxygen levels were because I had been pushing so long. After making multiple needle pricks in her head, they finally got enough blood to test. Apparently her oxygen levels weren't great, so it came to crunch time: Plan A) forceps, followed by Plan B) a C-Section if necessary.

Oh, what fun. All the way through my pregnancy I had said: "I don't care if I have to have a c-section... as long as it doesn't come after having been in labour for a million hours!"

And here I was, after being in labour for a million years, with the prospect of a c-section. Okay, I was going to push with ALL of my remaining energy (which now I am sooo impressed with myself for even having any energy at all!) and get this baby out with the forceps.

Somewhere around this point, after twenty-something hours of labour, I leaned over to Hubby and said, "So... let's adopt the rest...".

"You have three contractions to get her out, before we take you for a c-section."

Contraction 1: I pushed. And pushed. And pushed. No baby.

Contraction 2: I pushed. And puushed. And pushed. Baby came part way.

Now the excruciating part - waiting for the 2 minutes for my next contraction, so I could get baby out the rest of the way! Owwwwwwwwww!

Contraction 3: I pushed. She pulled (with all of her might). I pushed. She pullllleeeeddddd. I pushed. BABY!!!

12:50 am on October 12, 2010, the second love of my life entered into this world. What a beauty!!!

She is perfect.