Enter Sunshine - A Birth Story

Sunshine was born a week early on April 9th, 2008.

We were living with Mutti at the time, Jeeves, myself and Pumpkin shared the master bedroom and Mutti was living in the 2nd room. Jeeves was working a midnight shift, Pumpkin was sleeping, Mutti was sleeping and at 3am I am woke up having contractions. I wasn't sure if the contractions were going to mean that my baby was on her way, so I made use of the fact that I was unable to sleep and hanging out in the basement to avoid waking up the rest of the house. I did some laundry.

The funny thing is that my bag was not packed for the hospital yet and I figured this was a good a time as any to work that out. If the baby was coming I'd need it and if not I'd have it done early. For about two hours I did laundry, timing and counting my contractions. I got through the rough ones by leaning on the washing machine and shifting my weight from side to side. At about 5:30, I knocked on Mutti's door and said, "I think the baby is coming, but we've got awhile before I'm going to the hospital, just go back to sleep"

She thought I'd lost my mind. She got up and showered and spent the next hour or so helping me breathe through and time my contractions. We called Gram who came and picked up Pumpkin to take her our to my Aunt and Uncle's house, where she would stay until the baby was born. Then Jeeves got home a little before 8 am and he started freaking out, I had called him and let him know that we were going to have the baby but, told him to finish up his shift because it was going to be awhile. He was not prepared for the writhing, puffing loony that he came home to find. At around 10:30 am we decided that it was time to go to the hospital. We got there about 5 minutes later, in truth I could have walked if I'd been less, you know, in labor.

When we go to the maternity ward things moved pretty quickly and by noon I was napping with my very excellent epidural in place and my family in the cafeteria eating some lunch. At this point Jeeves had been awake for well over 24 hours and was showing signs of wear. At about 12:45 the nurse came to check me and saw what she needed to see to begin the flurry of preparation for baby arrival. The doc came in at a little before 1. I pushed twice and Sunshine came into the world with a huge healthy snort. In fact we called her "The Snort" because she kept up the snorting for quite a while, still does it now actually.

Both before (during the preparations) and after she was born (while they were doing the clean up part) the doc and nurses were surprised that I could lift my body up off the table to allow them to slide the giant trash bag into and out of place. I was up and walking about an hour later and had eaten, peed and was transported into my recovery room by about 5pm. I wanted to get up, eat and pee because those were the criteria for having the IV removed. I hate those damned things. Part of the reason I labored so long at home was because I wanted to go as long as possible without needing one. I used that home labor time to drink tons of water and eat a huge bowl of shredded wheat cereal, because I knew that if I was hydrated doing the IV would be easier. I also knew that the shredded wheat fiber would be helpful when my digestive tract started working again a few days later.

We had lots of visitors the first night, including my oldest friend who sort of snuck in after "visiting hours" were technically over. Sunshine looked just like Pumpkin for the first 6 hours. After that if she hadn't been in the room with me I would have thought she was someone else's baby, she changed so drastically. I swear it was like I watched it happen. My SIL was there and got to see her born and then she and my brother picked us up some Pizza Hut pasta for dinner, super yummy!

I was discharged the following day as I was feeling just fine and there was no reason to keep me there. We were home by dinner time the following day, though we didn't go home, we went to gram's so my cousin could see the baby, and I could show off my new little munch.

You know, they say each labor is different so either I'm going to sneeze and Daniel will be born or it's going to be awful and terrible. I'm going to prepare for the latter so I can be surprised by the former. Any way, that's the story of the day that my Sunshine girl came into my life.