One month ago...Claire's arrival

Hard to believe that one month ago I was sitting in a hospital bed, holding my new baby girl. I feel like I've been in an odd time warp these last few weeks. On one hand they have flown by, but at other times the clock seems to be standing still (most often these "other times" occur in the middle of the night and/or involve ear-piercing crys). Perhaps there are some out there in cyberspace who would like to hear about the day Claire was born, but, if not, this will just be for me on those days that I'm flipping back through my blog, reminiscing. I woke up a bit past midnight on March 13th, not feeling the greatest. "Stupid patty melt and fries from the Dell," I thought. Delicious as they were, I thought perhaps their fatty, greasy goodness was not agreeing with my 39+ week prego body. Fell back to sleep only to wake again at 2:30 am. After using the bathroom (which involves going upstairs, so not something I just decide to do for fun in the middle of the night), I was laying down in bed again when it occured to me that the Braxton-Hicks contractions I thought I was having felt different than they had the last few weeks. "Could this be it?" Laid there for a bit longer, telling myself it was probably nothing. About 15 minutes later I decided to Google (what would we do without the internet) "real versus fake contractions." After reading, I had to stop and take a big breath...I was pretty sure I was actually in the early stages of labor! First order of business was the finish packing the hospital bag. Scott had hounded me to start/finish that task for several weeks, but I was dragging my feet. Now I rushed to find the list from the hospital and put in the last few items because no way was I waking Scott before that was done :) At about 10 minutes to 5, I woke Scott up. Luckily, this was Guard weekend for him, so we had went to bed at a decent time because he had to get up at 5 am to get to Lincoln. When I told him that I was pretty sure I was in labor, he sleepily questioned, "Are you sure?" When he realized I was serious, he was up pretty quickly. (As I predicted, one of the first questions out of his mouth was, "Did you finish packing your bag?" I was so glad I could now say "yes!") Now I had some help in timimg contractions. I had been doing this...sort of...on my own, but now that they were getting a bit closer together, I wanted to be more accurate. I wish I could remember exactly how we arrived at our system, but let's just say it invovled, at one point, me wearing two watches (which didn't work so well) and at another point, me yelling into the next room to Scott every time a contraction started. Really, it's a miracle we had any idea of the timing. One thing I love about Scott is his ability to instantly kick into "get it done!" mode. After quickly showering and packing his own bag, he proceeded to fill and run the dishwasher, handwash some bigger dishes, put out extra food and water for the cat, and even run the vaccuum in a few spots. Funny, since it's not like we were leaving for a week or something. We'd be back in a couple of days, but still that made him feel prepared. Once everything was set, it turned into a waiting game. To pass the time, Scott decided we should watch the movie Zombieland. Not exactly my first choice, but since I was "distracted" once every 4 or 5 minutes, I guess it didn't really matter. Now I see it as a funny detail that I'll tell Claire someday: "Yup, your dad and I watched a zombie spoof movie while we waited for you to arrive." We held off going to the hospital until about 8:15 am. Once there, my contractions seemed to be slowing. "Shoot!" I thought, "What if this is a false alarm and they send me home?" That was the last thing I wanted, of course, because I had been telling the baby for the last few weeks how I wanted him/her to be born this particular weekend because I didn't want to teach the next book on my freshmen class schedule (great reason to want to go into labor, I realize, but just being honest :) When they checked me, though, I was already dialated to 3 am. "We're keeping you here" was music to my ears. After changing into the oh-so-stylish hospital gown and wrapping up in my big yellow robe, we walked the halls for a bit. Hospitals are rather quiet places at 9am on a Sunday morning. After a few laps, we decided to watch an episode of "House." That lasted all of about 20 minutes because pausing it every 3 or 4 minutes was just killing the plot :). Scott then reminded me that I had a jacuzzi tub in my room just waiting to be used. (I think he was secretly hoping to be able to use it as well, but Claire came too quickly for him to get the chance...poor guy...) The tub was nice, but when I reached the point that I couldn't "relax" during contractions like CeCe (our fabulous midwife) was asking me to (really, who can relax during contractions? I'd like to meet that woman), I decided it was time to get out. Good thing I did because when CeCe checked, I had dialted to 8 cm. The next span of time is sort of a blur, but I remember being aware, at one point, that the part of the bed I thought I was squeezing was actually Scott's hand (he never complained). I also remember CeCe asking Scott if he wanted to announce if it was a boy or girl because she thought the next push was going to be "the one." Scott has been telling me between pushes how amazing this was to watch...which surprised us both because birth class made him question whether he'd want to closely watch the actual birth. At 12:19 pm (just 4 hours after arriving at the hospital) CeCe said, "It's a ....." and then Scott exclaimed, "A girl! It's a girl!" Such sweet words! He cut the cord (another surprise decision for both of us...he even got to keep the scissors), and there she was, Claire Elise McIntyre, lying on my stomach. So there you have it, Claire's grand entrance onto the scene. What a day it was!