The miracle of birth

Lets go back to Sunday, December 25th. After  my family's wonderful Christmas gathering the hubby and I headed home, and I texted a friend of mine seeing if she was around, she was. Did I mention she was about 39 weeks pregnant? I grabbed a bag of baby clothes from another awesome friend of mine that had wanted to give them to her. I dropped off the bag of clothes and we just hung out and we ended up talking about labor and everything else that goes along with the end of pregnancy, and the next day at about 11 am she calls me to say that her water broke, slowly, but she is almost positive thatswhat it is. I told her (you know... I am a professional... I have had 0 kids! LOL) for sure she did!! I told her to keep me posted and the husband and I went to lunch. I got home, she was still waiting to get checked at the hospital, so I swept, mopped and edited some pictures. She called saying they were admitting her and starting her on pitocin, and her water did in fact break. No one was their with her, so off I went! I was so excited!! I couldn't wait! We hung out,  played games, and the contractions started coming, at first she was able to laugh through them,  we were playing skip bo, dice, and telling funny stories..and then they got more intense, and laughing wasn't going to cut it. She focused on breathing. I was right by her side, I offered her my hand, but she just needed to focus and breath through them. She got on the ball for a little bit, which she really liked. Then she got contraction after contraction with NO break. It went on for 15 minutes! She got shaky after that so she returned to the bed where the contractions weren't any better, it was a pattern of non stop contractions, followed by like a 10-15 minute break. but those 10-15 minutes of contractions, was a killer! She really did so well! It was amazing to watch her breathe through those contractions and take them like a champ. Once she got back into the bed (off the ball) she got some nubain(drug through the IV, just takes the edge off) and that worked really well for her. Then about an hour into it, it wore off, these were REALLY intense, and so she asked for another nubain shot, that didn't work at all. So they called for the epidural. At this point she was dilated to a 4! They also discovered around this point that not all of her water broke and the doctor would have to come in and rupture the rest. Which happened after the epidural. We turned the lights out and tried to rest, but we ended up chit chatting quite a bit, with a few silent moments to rest. THEN THE DOCTOR CAME IN AND CHECKED HER AND SHE WAS A 10!!! Oh that moment was so exciting!! I may have whipped out some cheerleading moves at that point..After all those long hours that seemed like progress was never going to be made, it was fast, and  I thought wow that was quick! haha. The pushing was amazing! So neat! All I could say was oh wow!  a short time later (well felt short to me) a beautiful baby girl was born! It was so magical and so surreal!

The whole mood the whole time while she was in labor was so calm and peaceful. Pushing and everything was so relaxed. It really was beautiful! No stress, no worries. Simply amazing.