Courtney Marie

After 9 months of waiting, Courtney Marie made her appearance on the day she was due, May 3rd, 2009.

I woke up on May 2 feeling some light contractions. Of course, Maggie was wide awake, and since Mark had been working a lot of overtime and doing a lot on the Honey-Do list, I thought I should let him sleep a bit longer.

Maggie and I went and played in her room. We prepared a Royal Picnic for breakfast and then woke up Mark. I wish we had taken some pictures, because we had a great time on the living room floor (on our picnic blankets, of course) eating cantalope and cut-up Costco muffins. Maggie took a few etiquette lessons, you know, because she was supposed to be a princess and princesses don't talk with their mouths full or grab handfuls of cantalope at a time. :) While we are sitting on the floor, my contractions got a little stronger and closer together.

Throughout the morning, I had contractions from anywhere between 4 minutes to about 20 minutes apart. Since they weren't anything regular, we decided we would get Maggie packed, just in case, for Grandma's house and head into town. We went to Big 5 and then went to Target and did some wandering for an hour or so. By now, my contractions were regularly about 15 minutes apart, so we headed to Mark's parents house to drop off Maggie. We stopped and picked up lunch for all of us and by the time we got to his parent's house, my contractions had seemed to stop. At one point, I went 45 minutes without a single contraction. I took a little nap at Grandma and Grandpa's house and when I woke up, Mark suggested we take Maggie for a walk. Our friends, Jill and Marcus, live near Mike and Lonnita's, so we walked over there for a little visit. By the time we got back home, it was close to 5:00 and my contractions had picked back up. We decided we should probably go to the hospital, just to get checked, before we headed back home.

When we got to the hospital, they checked me and I was only dialated to 3 cm. The nurse had us walk the halls for an hour, to see if anything changed. I don't think any of us were expecting that I would have progressed to 4cm during that hour, but that's what happened. At 7:00 pm, they called the doctor and decided to keep us there. That's when the fun really started!

My contractions got stronger and stronger and closer together. Now, mind you, I had really wanted to try to have another epidural-free child birth, but at this point, the pain was getting pretty bad. The nurses gave me some Stadol (?) to take some pain away and let me sleep a bit. I know I didn't last long and quickly passed out. At midnight, I woke to a sharp pain and a "pop" and knew that my water had just broken. The nurses quickly came in to check me, and I was still at just 6 cm. A half hour later, I was begging for an epidural and the anesthesiologist was there and had me set-up by 12:48am. (How do I remember that...I have no idea!!)

Okay, so the guy just set-up the epidural, and 48 minutes earlier I was only at 6cm. However, I knew this baby was coming and I started telling the nurses I needed to push. I don't think they really believed me, and they gave me this, "Okay...okay...we'll check you..." kind of response. They checked and were surprised to find that we needed a doctor ASAP! Once the kind doctor got there (thank goodness he lives very close to the hospital!) I began to push. Three pushes later, at 1:15 am, Courtney Marie joined our world.