Our sweet and beautiful third baby was born at 11:04 on February 8th, 2012. It was an amazing experience and we are all so in love! Thank you Jesus for our beautiful girl!!
Here is the story of her birth:
Leah's birth was fast and furious, she certainly made a grand entrance into the world. Wednesday morning I had an apt. with the midwife and she swept my membranes to attempt to get things going, since I was a week past my due date at that point. I started feeling crampy pretty soon after that and was keeping my fingers crossed that it was the start of something. I started having timeable contractions at about 3 in the afternoon, and they were about 8-9 minutes apart. By 5 ish they were 3-4 min apart and I told Nick we might want to think about going to the hospital. We called my mom and sister who were going to keep an eye on the kids, and then started up to the hospital. On the way there, contractions slowed down to 6-7 minutes apart, so I told DH lets go home because I didn't want to go to the hospital and then be told to go home. We hung out at home until about 7 and contractions picked back up so we headed back to the hospital. We got there around 7:45 and they took us up to L&D. They were pretty busy, so it was almost 9 until someone came in and checked me. I was still at 2.5-3cm and even though contractions were 3 min apart and pretty intense, they told me to go home and wait until I had contractions every 2 min for an hour and then to come back. We live 45 min from the hospital and I told Nick I was really afraid to go home and that if we did we might not make it back in time. Instead we went to a friends house who lives about 15 min from the hospital to see how things progressed. We were there for about an hour and at 10:30 I told DH that we needed to go back to the hospital. We got there at 10:45 and at that point contractions were really intense and I was starting to vocalize through them. Made it up to L&D at 10:50 and my water broke in triage. I was 8cm at that point. The nurses kept yelling at me not to push but my body took over and I couldn't help but push. They were literally running down the hallway with me on the gurney to try and make it into the room before she was born. We got into the room and they told me I had to get in the bed and I told that that I couldn't move, because I was in the middle of a contraction. Once it let up a bit I got in the bed and about 30 seconds after that she was born. Nick said I yelled, "It's coming!!!" and she just popped out onto the bed. No Dr was there and the nurse didn't even see her be born. It was so crazy fast, but now that I can look back on it, I am so glad that I was able to have a quick labor. I really wanted to experience natural labor, and I think that having it go so fast helped me not to have a chance to change my mind. She was up on my chest right away and nursed like a champ. We are home now and everyone is doing great. We are so in love with her and Hannah is especially proud and excited to be a big sister. Gabe is also really warming up to his new role as a big brother, he is doing great!! I am so incredibly blessed!
