Today was supposed to be Emerson's birthday.
It's hard to believe she is already 9 days old. We were scheduled for a c-section this morning but she obviously had other plans.
Last weekend Josh and I were nearing exhaustion as we wrapped up hauling the contents of our apartment to another unit downstairs. We have Josh's mom, Blane, Melissa, my mom, Josh's dad, Luke, and Kylie to thank for helping us to get our stuff over there. It takes a village folks.
Saturday we had a wedding so we left our new place that was in utter shambles and headed to the venue in Orange. The ceremony was outside and the day turned out to be beautiful...if you were in the shade. We were in the sun and it was a piping 90 degrees. I wasn't feeling well so Josh graciously agreed to leave after the ceremony. On the car ride home every bump was excruciating. I chalked it up to exhaustion from the move, heat from the wedding, and being 9 mos pregnant. But by the time we got home around 7:30pm I was feeling even worse. Josh grew increasingly concerned as the minutes ticked on but I was adamant that we would not overreact and call the doctor just to hear that it was a false alarm. Josh began packing a bag, mostly because if I didn't give him something to do he would have gone crazy from worry. We also began timing the contractions and once they were five minutes apart I conceded we should call the doctor.
Our OB confirmed that we were in labor and told us to slowly make our way to the hospital and he would meet us there. Well, we waited a whole three minutes and then got in the car and headed over.
Labor and Delivery checked and confirmed this was the real deal and I was admitted. I was only two cm dilated but my contractions were three minutes apart, with increasing pressure. I remember thinking I had really gotten the short end of the stick - having to go through labor and have a c-section. Our doctor arrived around 10pm and by then I was having contractions every minute. Ain't gonna lie, those babies hurt like hell. Things moved quickly after that. Josh changed into scrubs, I was prepped for surgery and wheeled into the OR. Somewhere in there I got a catheter and was stripped to the bare bones. At this point I was deathly afraid of the spinal tap since there was no way I could get through one without having a contraction and I was scared I would move during the procedure. The anethesologist tried to soothe my concerns but the true angel was the nurse who could see the fear in my eyes and promptly came over to me, put my head in her bosom, and told me it was all going to be okay. She talked me through the contractions and before I knew it my feet were tingling and I was being put on the table. Josh came in and I immediately felt better. He was given the option of watching the procedure or not and he chose to sit by me and hold my hand instead.
A bunch of tugging, counting, clamping, conversations about the disappearing plane, and stories about my anesthesiologists daughter, and then we heard it - a tiny little cry. I asked Josh to take a picture. Neither of us cried. A nurse told Josh he could go see his new daughter and he walked a few feet to see her get weighed and sucked and cleaned up a tad. Thirty minutes later I was sewed up and cleaned up. They wheeled me out of the OR to a recovery room. It was quiet and I had a nurse taking care of my every need. Josh held his daughter and Emerson and I did skin to skin. We tried to breastfeed and were overjoyed that she latched.
After that I was transferred to the post pardum wing and on our way over there, we ran into my parents, Josh's parents, Aimee and Noe, and Kylie ~ our first responders. :) It was around 1:30am and I was thankful they would want to come at such an ungodly hour.
The first responders
I'll share part II with you tomorrow.
xoxo, J
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