Ready or not, here I come!!

So, here's how it all went down. If you don't care to hear about the whole delivery, feel free to skip this post! Shanta - this may include you.

We checked into the hospital at 5:00 AM on Friday, January 11th. Actually, the story begins at 4:45AM when David Pittman brought breakfast to our house. How awesome is that?! It really was a great start to the day. Who knew that the banana I ate would later interfere with my tubal surgery....

I have no idea what time everything happened. But this is the order:

* Check in, change into the fabulously stylish hospital gown. Get all comfy in bed and answer about 1000 questions.

* Make small talk with the nurse while she sticks me 3 times looking for a good spot for the IV. Finally is successful in my right hand.

* Pitocin is started to get the contractions going. Thank you.

* Dr. comes in to break my water. This was WAY painful. He literally had to move the baby out of the way to even get to the bag of water. After he was through, he kindly said "Your tonsils look great too." W.O.W.

* Nursing shift change at 7:00 AM and Caroline walks into the room. I was so excited. She was the best nurse ever - we had her with Cora and were so excited to see her again.

* Anesthesia comes to give me an epidural. I wasn't even feeling anything at this point, so I was getting very excited and hopeful that I would not feel one thing throughout this entire delivery. I was really nervous about the epidural this time b/c I got a spinal headache last time, and I didn't want that to happen again. It went in fine - not too painful. It worked great for about 45 minutes.

* During those 45 minutes, my parents brought the girls up to see me. We enjoyed visiting and hanging out for awhile before things got crazy.

* Played the electronic 20 Questions game with my fabulous nurse Caroline and James for awhile.

* 45 minutes is up.. start feeling the contractions. We let Caroline know ASAP and she begins to call for Anesthesia to come up my epidural.

* Long story short - he got there too late. I went from a 3 to a 10 in like an hour and a half. The epidural never could catch up to that - and I felt every single thing that happened.

* Fortunately, I only had to push about 5 times. That was the worst pain I think I have ever felt.
* I forgot all about that pain a few seconds later when I heard Claire's little cry.

* I was reminded of the pain again when the Dr. tells me I have to push the placenta out.

* Pain goes away quickly again. We get to hold our third baby girl and are overwhelmed one final time with the inexpressible joy that comes with seeing your baby for the first time.

* Family comes in to see Claire. Cora is not sure of anything... Kaitlyn can't wait to hold her. I'm still trying to just hold it together.

* About an hour later, they tell me it's time to head to the O.R. for my tubal. By this time my epidural has kicked in.

* As they are wheeling me down to the O.R. they find out that I had eaten a banana at 4:45 that morning. This means they are unable to put me under for the surgery, and will rely on the epidural that has just decided to kick in.

* With a little more medicine, I am completely numb from the shoulders down and they proceed to cut my belly button open and formally complete our family of five. During the surgery they discover that I had a hernia under my belly button and and a small cyst (later turned out to be a benign tumor on one of my tubes) that he had to remove.

* I hang out with Caroline for a couple of hours in the recovery room before I'm finally wheeled to a regular room and am able to spend some time with Claire.

So, there you have it. It was a very long day, but a most wonderful one.

I just think this is a really cool picture with our doctor, and the light coming into the room and everything.

Caroline and Claire