Eliza's birth story

It occurs to me that Eliza and Ezra's birth stories are starting to blend together in my mind... so I thought I should finallly put them in writing before I forget the details completely! Needless to say, this post will probably be TMI. Here's Eliza's!

Eliza was born 2 weeks prior to her due date, on a Saturday night at 11:45 p.m. The night before S and I had dinner with our good friend Susan at Eastside Cafe. I had fairly regular contractions during dinner, but I didn't mention them because I didn't want to freak anyone out. Besides, what first time mom gives birth 2 weeks early? All my books said I could expect to deliver 1 week after her due date. The contractions stopped and we went to bed. The next day we went to Highland Mall and bought Eliza a Christmas stocking. (No one knew her name was Eliza at that point; we didn't tell a single person! I used to sing that song "Hey There Delilah" to her, only changing her name to Eliza, when no one else was around to hear her super secret name.) I also watched Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion while S mowed the lawn. We had lunch at Amaya's Taco Village with the Butchers. I joked to Baby Ethan that he should tell his friend to come on out, as I was tired of being pregnant. Later in the day we were bored and contemplated going to the movies, but we didn't see anything playing that we were interested in. S and I started talking about how we were in a bit of a rut and it was a good thing we were about to have a baby to liven things up a little. What an understatement. This is very funny in hindsight. Yup, we had too much time on our hands. We ended up having dinner at Le Madeleine. By 8pm we were back at home watching TV on the couch. I spent the majority of the end of my pregnancy on the couch in as little clothing as possible. (You're welcome for that image.) For once, instead of being sprawled out, I was sitting up and S was next to me. I leaned forward to get comfortable and I felt a pop. I was mortified that I had just peed my pants. I stood up and quickly realized my water was probably breaking, but being a first timer, I still wasn't completely sure and I didn't want to be one of those pregnant ladies sent home because I peed on myself. I started having mild contractions again too. S called the doctor and she said to come on in. At this point I decided it was very important that we put the clean sheets on our bed before leaving the house. S humored me, but I could tell he thought I was crazy. Before we even had the last pillow case on, I said, "Uh oh, these hurt a lot all of a sudden. We better go now!" and got in the car. S started timing contractions. I kept saying "Here comes another one" and he said, "Babe, this are only 3 minutes apart! This is crazy!" We both got a little freaked out. He turned on some classic music to try to calm me down (breathing through contractions while stuck upright in a seatbelt is really hard). I snapped at him, "Just because I'm in labor doesn't mean I suddenly like classical music! You know I hate this stuff!" He meakly turned it off and got a look on his face that remained for the rest of labor. He clearly thought I had gone insane. We got to the hospital and the nurse said, "It seems like you're already in quite a bit of pain." Um, YES! She checked me and it appeared that I still had a long way to go. I said I wanted an epidural. S said he thought I could do it naturally. I told him if I was already in this much pain and still had 6 cm left to go, I wanted an epidural right freakin' now. Did I get an epidural that day? No, I did not. Because by the time the epidural doctor showed up 2 hours later, I was ready to push. It would have taken 15 minutes for the epidural to start working and I'd have to stay pefectly still while having back to back contractions as the needle was in my back. I sent the epidural doctor away, thinking this was just like a movie and I was really going to have to do this with no meds. Eliza's heart rate had been getting crazy and they had been giving me oxygen. The OB (Wendy Cutler, whom I had never met before) said I needed to get the baby out NOW. My panic and frantic pushing, combined with Dr. Cutler's vacuum, and Eliza was out within 15 minutes. I'm not posting any pictures because in every single one of them I look completely shocked (and also sweaty and fat). You can see the epidural cart in the background, which sort of pisses me off since I didn't get to have one. The whole labor lasted less than 3 hours. It's called a precipitious (sp?) labor and it happens in only 2% of first time moms. It went nothing like I thought it would, which was a pretty good precursor for how parenting really goes. She's been the light of my life ever since.