3 Years Ago Today . . .

Since tomorrow is Gracie's 3rd birthday, I thought I'd take a minute to write down the events that led up to her coming into this world.

First off, Gracie was a wedding day baby.  I had jokingly said over and over that I better get pregnant on my wedding night.  Fast forward a few weeks and BAM that joke became reality. 

My pregnancy with Grace was so different than with Kanin.  True, I was 4 years older but I had a lot more hormones with Gracie than with Kanin.  I would be sweating to death one minute and ripping off my clothes and in the next I would be teeth chattering cold and headed for a warm bath.  I took so many baths during that pregnancy that I'm surprised I didn't stay permanently shriveled up like a raisin.  I mean I took 5 or 6 baths a day!  It was insanity.

I was still working at the time but those last couple of months I constantly had contractions until my doctor finally just put me on modified bedrest and I quit my job and stayed home to prepare for her arrival.  At the time, though, we lived in a 2 bedroom condo and I couldn't really "prepare" at all.  There was no room for a babies room or nursery or anything like that I was able to nest just by cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

I was so worried that when she finally came that Kanin would feel pushed to the side or unwanted.  Scott and I made a big deal of telling him how special he was and the whole big brother routine.  We started a tradition of Family Fun Day that we carried on with Kanin and Gracie when I was pregnant with Caleb.  We took one whole day and spent it together doing "fun stuff".  With Kanin, we went to the Missouri Transportation Museum.

It was so cool to walk around and see all of the big trains, climbing up and down them, taking pictures and just being together.  Afterwards, we went to the West County Mall and had Chick-fil-a for dinner.  While we were sitting there I just kept yawning and told Scott how incredibly tired I was.  I was definitely going to go home and take a nap.  Of course, I was having contractions all day but by this point that was nothing new and nothing was going to stop me from hanging out with Kanin all day.

We got home and Kanin and I went to lay down.  He had skipped his nap that day and it was definitely evident.  Scott decided to stay up and play X-Box or watch TV or something.  I think Kanin and I laid down around 7 and I was content to be out for the night.  Around 11:00pm, Scott finally came to bed and was quickly asleep.

Well, as pregnant women do I got up around 11:15 to pee for the hundredth time that day and when I stood up I heard a kind of "pop" sound.  Your body does such weird things and makes weird noises when you are pregnant that I really didn't think too much about it.  I went in and went to the bathroom but when I was finished it felt like I just kept peeing on myself (you'd think I would know what was going on-LOL).  After about 5 minutes or so I went in to Scott and told him that I thought my water had broken but that I wasn't sure.  Well, of course, he certainly wasn't sure and so we just kind of sat there for another 10 or 15 minutes wandering if it had or not.  Looking back on it you would think that I should know if my water broke or not but I honestly had no clue and the last thing I wanted to do was to wake up Jeff and Dayna to come get Kanin at 11:30 at night, drive to the hospital and go through all of their testing (I had already done that the week before), only to have them tell me that I had just pee'd and that everything was ok.

Finally, though, I think Scott said that we weren't going to get any sleep unless we knew for sure so off to the hospital we went.

I was scared to death.  I had had a horrible, horrible delivery with Kanin (more about that at another time) and I was so afraid that things were going to be the same this time around.  I got lucky, though, and I was the only OB patient at Missouri Baptist that night.  I had all nurses and anestheologists (the most important one) at my disposal.  I think when I went in I was only dilated to 2cm and to my wonderful surprise, they let me have my epidural right then so there was no chance of missing it.

That was the easiest labor I have ever had!  The bad part, though, was that I kept pressing that button so often for more meds that when it came time to push I could hardly feel anything at all but I would much rather have it that way.

My mom, dad and sister were all at the hospital with me.  Scott was nervous but was trying to play it cool.  He tossed and turned and walked the halls and I kept telling him that he needed to get some rest.  It was so funny because we had been at the hospital since about 12:30am but Scott had only had about 30 minutes sleep because I woke him up almost immediately when he finally came to bed.  Finally, he settled himself down and said, "Well, I guess I could try to take a little nap" and I looked at him like he was crazy.  The nurses were dropping the bottom of the bed, the baby warming bed had been rolled in the room and the doctor just walked in the door.  I told him, "It's way too late for that now.  This show is about to get started".  It's cute to me that he had no clue what was getting ready to happen.

The rest is history at 5:45am on July 1, my beautiful baby girl entered the world . . . more on that tomorrow.