On Sunday July 15th, Matt and I decided to go see a movie since we knew we wouldn't have much time to ourselves once the baby was born. My sister Alli babysat Christopher for us. We saw the movie "Knocked Up" which was hilarious. I had hoped that seeing the movie would make me go into labor. It didn't. It did cause some pretty strong braxton hicks contractions, though, because I laughed so hard.
At 2:30am on Monday July 16th, Matt and I both woke up to a loud pop. I didn't know what the noise was at first, but it didn't take me long to realize that my water had just broken when I started leaking fluid not long after we heard the pop. The whole thing was quite funny...picture me jumping out of bed and trying to run to the bathroom while HUGELY pregnant and leaving a trail of amniotic fluid all the way. I wasn't having contractions yet, so Matt went back to bed to try and get a little more sleep. I went downstairs to call my doctor and see if it was ok to wait to go to the hospital. She said I could wait until I was contracting more regularly. I started having contractions around 3:30am. I woke Matt up around 5am when they were 4 or 5 minutes apart. Then I called my sister Alli so she could come over to watch Christopher (she just lives 3 doors down from us, so it didn't take her long to get there). We headed to the hospital around 6:30am after I had a few contractions that were only 2 minutes apart. It made me nervous that they were that close together.
We got to the hospital around 6:45am and got checked in. I was contracting regularly and dialated to 4cm. I had hoped that I would be further along, but oh well. They put us in the labor/delivery suite and hooked me up to monitors for a bit to make sure that Jessica was tolerating the contractions well. She was doing ok, so they let me get out of bed. The nurse said I had to come back and get back in bed every hour so they could check me and monitor her for a bit, but other than that I could do whatever helped me manage pain best.
We walked around the halls for a while and tried the jacuzzi tub (which was awesome and really helped with the pain). By 9am I was 6cm, by 10:30am I was 8cm, and by 11am I was completely dialated at 10cm. Pushing was a lot harder than it was with Christopher. I tried pushing in several different positions and found one (on my side) that seemed to work best. It was so much more painful than it had been with Christopher and after pushing for an hour, I asked for drugs (I wanted IV pain meds) for the first time during this labor. It was too late at that point, though, so it was back to pushing without meds. After a total of 2 and a half hours of pushing and lots of crying on my part, Jessica Lynn was born at 1:28pm on Monday July 16, 2007. She weighed 9lbs, 4 oz. and was 22 1/4 inches long. She was bigger than her big brother Christopher (he was 9lbs, 1oz and 21 inches long at birth). (I found out later she was above the 97th percentile for birth length and the 95th percentile for birth weight.) I had managed to do the whole thing without an epidural or pain meds, which had been my goal. My dr was fantastic and really let me have the kind of birth I wanted. I felt like it was a great birth and a very powerful experience. Here are a couple pictures taken right after she was born:
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