Bailey's story

  On June 20th, I woke up around 6am having aching pains in my back. They weren't too painful, just kind of like a pulled muscle. I walked around the house a bit and came back to bed where Chris' alarm was going off for him to get ready to go to work. I didn't think that the pain was true labor, so we decided that Chris would go to work and I would call him if anything changed. I went back to sleep and woke up at noon feeling fine and no more aches.
  I noticed that the toenail polish on my big toe was chipped, so I decided to get a pedicure because I knew it would bother me to no end if I had to stare a chipped toenail while my feet were in stirrups for hours! The rest of the day passed with nothing significant happening, I took a walk and rested until Chris got home from work. We ordered spicy pizza and went to bed.
  The next morning I woke up at 2:45 am with stronger pain. I didn't want to wake Chris up because he had to work, so I took a bath, and a shower, and another bath and walked a few laps around the house trying to ease the pain. Not much was helping and Chris woke up at 6 (as I was pacing around our bedroom) and we tried to figure out if he should stay home because I really was in labor or if he should go to work. He suggested I call my Mom (such a smart guy) and she thought it was real labor and decided to head down our way so she could join us for Bailey's arrival. {and Chris stayed home from work.}
  I took another shower and Chris made me a PB&J so I would have strength when I needed it. Mom arrived around 10:30 and we tried to time my contractions while Chris jumped into the shower. We were timing the contractions at two minutes apart so Chris got out of the shower and we headed to the hospital. {So exciting!}

  We checked in around noon and I changed into a hospital gown before the nurse came in to check me. When the nurse checked me, I was only dilated to 1 cm {so disappointing}. We were told to go walk around the neighborhood to see if that made labor progress. We walked for about 45 minutes and headed back to our room to see if I had progressed enough to be admitted.

My thoughtful{funny} husband put cones around me as I was having a contraction on our walk so I'd be safe.

  We came back to our room and I was checked again...3 cm! {more excitement!} My Dad, Chris' Mom and sister were all updated that it was really time and they started to make their plans to join us at the hospital. We made laps around the maternity ward every hour, making my contractions stronger and bringing Bailey down {or so we thought}.

  At about 5pm Chris' Mom, Sister, and Grandparents (who came out from NY for Bailey's birth) arrived and about a half hour later my Dad got to our room. My contractions were getting stronger and stronger so I decided to get an epidural around 8pm.



  Getting the epidural was a lot more painful than I expected. (Yes, I knew it would hurt, but this was WAY worse than I was prepared for). The anesthetist scrubbed my back, got the needle ready and had me hunch over. Then he stuck the needle with the numbing medicine in, it tingled as it went in but it wasn't terrible. Then he started with the actual epidural. It felt like he was hammering five needles at once into my back {I apologized to him after he was done because I said some curse words at him}. The nurse who was in the room with me was absolutely wonderful, she held me while tears streamed down my face and I felt like I was going to vomit from the pain. The anesthetist stopped what he was doing and put more numbing medicine into my back higher up. This time, the pain medicine worked and I didn't feel the excruciating pain as I had before, but now I was getting numb from my ribs down. 

   I was nervous before we got to the hospital because I thought that I would be overwhelmed with all the people who were coming to support us. After our family arrived, I realized how special it is to have so many people wanting to share in our joy and welcome our little one into our ever-growing family. After my epidural took affect, I fell asleep in a room full of anticipation, excitement and love.

Stay tuned for part 2!