Bridget's arrival

For some reason, blogger won't let me type at the top of this post, so I'll just start here. :)
Wednesday night I commented to a friend about how I'd actually gotten all my laundry done (washed, dried, ironed, and put away) in one day! Her comment back was "awesome! Now you can go into labor tonight!" To which I replied "no I really need to clean my house tomorrow, so labor needs to wait until tomorrow night."
Well, labor didn't wait until Thursday night. Thursday morning about 3 I woke up to a semi-painful contraction, which I would randomly have 1 or 2 of at a time. I got up to go the bathroom, and went back to bed. Just about a minute later, I had another contraction, and then another one, and my underwear was feeling a little damp, so I went back to the bathroom to investigate. Sure enough, there was some blood and other stuff, and I thought well, I guess this is labor.
After finally locating my watch with a second hand, I started timing my contractions. Right from the get-go they were 2-3 minutes apart, lasting 30-60 seconds. This kinda confused me...my Dr had told me that when contractions were 5-7 minutes apart to go to the hospital. Mine were a lot close than that, but not all that painful. I also couldn't tell if my water had broke or not. I'd feel something run out every once in a while, but couldn't tell if it was watery, or just some of the "other stuff" that comes out when you're in labor.
So I bounced on my exercise ball, took a shower, finished packing our bag, did some dishes, and wandered around the house.
Luke's alarm was set to go off at 6, so a few minutes before I went in and woke him up with "good morning! Want to have a baby today?" After staring at me for a minute and responding with a "oh my word!" he got up and got in the shower.
I wanted to wait until 8:30 when my Dr's office opened, and go there to have them check me. I really didn't want to go to the hospital only to have them send me home. So Luke got us some breakfast, and my contractions got painful enough that I couldn't talk through them. By 7 we were pretty sure I was in "real" labor, so we called my mom, and headed to the hospital.
When we got there, they did an exam to see if my water had broke, but the resident told me she didn't think it had but she tested the fluid anyway. And I was only dilated to a 2cm (I had been 1-2 cm on Monday). It was kind of sad to have been in labor for 5 hours at this point and only have made it 1/2 cm!
About 20 min later the nurse came in to say that it was my water that had broke. So they started an IV and moved me to a labor room. And I continued my contractions every 2-3minutes, lasting 30-60 sec.

Bridget was "sunny side up", meaning her face was facing my belly button. Made for LOTS of back labor. I walked the halls for a while, and spent a lot of time on my hands and knees, and in every imaginable position trying to get her to turn over.
I felt like I progressed slowly, although it was really wasn't that slow. :)
I had such a great team. :) Luke was my back rub-er (and I'd snap at him if he stopped during a contraction:)), my mom let me squeeze her hand and held the puke basin for my when I got nauseous, and Wendi (my sister) fed me water and ice chips and fanned me with the food menu. :)
The pain was bad, but the worst part was once I was dilated to a 7, I started feeling like I had to push, but they wouldn't let me until I was a 10. And then I hung out between 9-10 cm for what felt like FOREVER. The nurse kept telling me not to push, and I just told her too bad, I couldn't help it. And then I finally got to push! And about 40 minutes later, out she came!

Getting everything set up

Our first glimpse..the first thing I did was make sure she really did come out a girl. :)

She had meconium stained fluid (meaning she had a bowel movement while still inside) so she got taken right over to the warmer and suctioned out. Then I got to hold her for about 30 seconds before they took her to the nursery to get oxygen.

Daddy gets to hold her for the first time! She got to come out to our room to nurse when she was about 2 hours old. Then she went back for some more monitoring, and then came out for good about an hour and a half later.

First family picture!