Melia's Story

It was a cold, wintery, December, Friday night. Our friends gave us a diaper party, basically an excuse for the guys to get together to play poker and foose ball. The bonus is they each bring a pack of diapers when they come, which works out very well, because Melia was almost 6 months old before we had to buy diapers. Anyway, my girlfriend Rebekah and I were hanging out upstairs and the guys were down stairs. She was being an incredible friend, and giving me a foot spa (soaking, scrubbing, and rubbing my feet (something I had not been able to do for quite some time). It was about 2:30 before everyone left for the night (way past my bedtime). We decided we could sleep in the next morning so we spent about an hour cleaning up all the food and dishes from the night, which put me into to bed at 3:30am. It was Saturday morning (New Years Eve) about 5:30am, when I got out of bed to use the bathroom. This was not an uncommon, being that I was 38 weeks pregnant. I felt tired and a little stiff and sore, but just chalked it up to being exhausted, and I went back to bed. A few minutes later I was up again. This time to my surprise my water broke. I called Chris, who did not want to get out of bed, into the bathroom. Both being a little cranky from lack of sleep, we talked about what we should do and questioned if this was really happening. I remember him saying just go back to bed. The thought crossed my mind...it was such a small amount of fluid, and I was not having any contractions, I thought it could be nothing. Something in me told me different and I called the doctor. She suggested we head to the hospital and they can check me out, worst case they send me back home. Needing a shower to wake up from the two hours of sleep, we took our time getting the final preperations together and getting out the door. We left for the hospital about 6:40am, and it was a little about 7:15am when we got there. We stopped to get gas and a drink on the way. We called a few family and friends told them, once we got in a room (if they kept us) we would call them back. Contractions had started and were about 10 min. apart. We decided to go get checked in and then Chris would come and get the bags from the car. We checked in and off to the L/D floor we went. They put us in a triage area to monitor me and see where things were at. When I first arrived, I was 5 cm dilated. I had been at three for a few weeks already. The contractions were five min apart now and increasing in intensity. We were in the triage area for about an hour and twenty min, when they had a Labor and delivery nurse walk us to our room. By this time the contractions were every two min. On the way to the room, I had three contractions, which stopped the trek to the room each time. The nurse, Nancy, was the person who we had just spent six weeks with in birthing classes. It was nice to have a familiar face in very unfamiliar time. She was going to get a therapy ball for me to it on in the shower when we got the room. At this point, the contractions were getting pretty painful and there did not seem to be much of a break in between. I remember looking at Chris after going through the contraction just before I got into the bed and saying I might want something for the pain. Nancy decided she was going to check me one more time before I got in the shower, it was a few min before 9:00am now. She was very surprised to find that I had dilated from 5 to 10 in the last hour and 20 min. She said, "You are ready to push" I very clearly remember saying to Chris, "I am not ready yet." Nancy went into panic mode for a few min, furiously calling other staff to get the room ready for delivery. It was like a whirlwind. We had not brought the bags (where the cameras were) in or called our family/friends back. As Chris is holding one of my legs, he is dialing my mom to tell her to let people know the baby is going to be born soon. A few pushes later the doctor walks in, and three pushes after that Melia makes her appearance into the world at 9:20am weighing 6 lbs 11 oz. She was 18 1/4 inches long. Arriving at the hospital only two hours before, I felt like I did not have time to think about anything. Walking into the L/D room and twenty min later, giving birth was unimaginable to me. In my head first labors were supposed to take a long time, or so we had been told by Nancy in our class. My doctor had joked on the phone that morning that there was a prize for the first baby born in the new year (which was 20 hours from the time I called her). Besides being a little jaundice, Melia and I went home after a few days and everyone was healthy and happy.