Hannah is one month old today! Here is her birth story..

Yes, it's one month late - but I thought, what better day to post it than on her one month birthday?? First, let me say that Hannah is doing great! She is eating great (like a little piggy) and sleep is another story for another day (not going all that wonderfully well, but compared to how Adam did early on, she's doing pretty good!) She goes for her next checkup on Monday.

**Hannah's birth story**
On Friday, March 23rd, I went in to work as usual. Around 9:30 that morning, I started to feel tightening in my tummy. No pains, just the tightening feeling. They were coming every 10 minutes apart, and did so for 2 hours. So right before lunch I called in to my dr's office. After telling the nurse what was happening, noone called me back until after 1:30. Dr. Horvath said that unless the pains got worse, my water broke, or I started bleeding to just go home and rest. I decided that when I left work I'd go by the groc. store to pick up a few things we needed "just incase" something happened. At the last minute before I got near to the store I thought I'd head home to use the bathroom. When I used the restroom I saw a lot of discharge which I thought was my mucous plug. I was still having the contractions, w/ no pain yet. I went on to the groc. store and came back home to check if any more discharge had happened. A little more was coming out. I left there and headed to the daycare to pick up Adam. Saturday was the annual BBQ at our church, so Nathan and Doug were out at the church getting prepared for Saturday. I took Adam out there to see them, and while I was out there, I started having a small amount of pain with my contractions. I told some of the ladies out there that I didn't feel like I'd make it through the weekend. So we stayed out there for a few hours and headed home. Nathan got home later that evening, and everything was still the same. During the night, I would have some contractions that would wake me up, but nothing severe. Nathan left out early Sat. morning to go chop BBQ for the church. When I went to the bathroom that morning, I had more discharge that truly made me feel like things were going to happen soon. I called Nathan and told him to just plan on being back home around lunchtime. The more I walked around the stronger the contractions were, and the quicker they were starting to come. Creslyn, one of my girlfriends just happened to call to check on me and I told her what was going on. So she changed her plans and came to stay w/ me and Adam until Nathan got home. I ended up calling him back later on that morning and told him to be home @ 11am. So, after he got home, we got ready and headed to the hospital. We got up to Women's Hosp. around 12pm. They put me in a room and hooked me up to everything. The contractions were 3 to 5 minutes apart, and I was dilated to a 3 and was approx. 75% thinned. They left me hooked up for quite a while to make sure the contractions weren't going to let up. After a while the nurse came in and said that Dr. Horvath wanted me to walk for an hour. The contractions were so strong at that time, that the walking truly was a chore. When the hour was up, they hooked me back up and I was at a 4 and had thinned up to 85%. The dr. decided to keep me. I was in a room @ 3pm, and was at a 5 or 6 when I got my epidural at 3:30pm. The epidural I has w/ Hannah wasn't nearly as good as the one I had w/ Adam. I could still feel lots of pressure this time, as w/ Adam I felt NOTHING! That was wonderful!! The nurse came in and checked me periodically and I was definitely making progress. Sometime after 6pm, I was almost at a 9, but my water still had not broke. So around 6:15 or 6:20, she was checking me when my water finally broke!! She got on the phone to call Dr. Kaplan to tell him that I would be ready very soon. They had to call another dr. in just in case he couldn't get there in time b/c I was ready to start pushing. Once I started feeling the urge to push, they told me to go ahead. This was also different than w/ Adam because I could feel the pressure and the pain when I pushed, and when Dr. Kaplan finally got there he told me that I was "straining" more than I was "pushing". I felt more and more after every push, and eventually the pain got to be too much, and I told him that I would not push anymore until the pain went away! He realized that I truly was feeling everything below and he either gave me a shot on each side or put numbing cream on me. After that he cut through some scar tissue from when I had Adam, and a push or two later, Hannah was born at 6:45pm!!!Nathan said that I only pushed for about 10 minutes, but it surely felt longer than that to me!!! I had a 2nd degree episitomy, and was VERY sore for several days after, but it was all worth it. I even made the comment to Nathan that I was going to miss having this experience again. I said that while I was still in the hospital!!! Pregnancy agreed w/ me so much, and I truly had two relatively easy & quick labors.

I have had so many people ask about my birth story that I thought today was a good day to share it. I hope I haven't made too many errors in typing, as I'm not going back to proofread it! haha! It's a little after 10 pm, and Miss Hannah will be giving me my first wake up call of the night in just a couple of hours. Thanks to all who have read this far and for those who have prayed for us and wished us well. We love you all!!!