natalie's birth story.

The time has come for me to share the story of my third child, and her grand entrance into the world.

Today is her second birthday, and it is all about her today.

She's quite a dainty little thing, and very lady-like. I love just watching her sometimes, playing, dancing, sitting down with her little feet crossed watching tv or playing with my iphone.

And she is so loving and affectionate.

Her birth story is fairly uneventful, but delightful nonetheless.

By the time the second week of January rolled around, I was huge (I always feel like a beached whale with my babies, even though I look back at the ONE or TWO pictures I take when I'm that far along and I don't look that horrible size-wise) and it was getting difficult to move around. She was by far my lowest baby. She had dropped so low that sometimes I felt like I was picking up an anvil to get out of my seat. I would literally roll out of bed. I would also literally roll into bed.

I had Braxton Hicks contractions with Natalie for at least a couple of weeks, but I didn't know it because I didn't recognize them as contractions. It was always just intense pressure. When January 25th came and around 11:13 a.m. I started feeling that pressure again, I didn't think anything of it, until ten minutes later, it happened again. (It always happens ten minutes later at first with me!)

Then ten minutes later, it happened again. It took it happening that next ten minutes later for me to realize that it was labor. I still wasn't sure, but I mentioned it to my husband this time and let him know that we needed to watch the clock and see if it kept happening every ten minutes or so.

It did.

I faced the situation with a bit of disbelief, because, really? This is it? Just pressure? No menstrual-crampy feelings? This was too much of a breeze to be labor. But I was glad, and prayed that it would stay JUST LIKE THAT. My husband called the midwives and they asked us to come in so that they could check me. I got dressed, we dropped the boys off with our friends/neighbors, hopped in the Explorer and headed over there. It was a gorgeous day, much like today.

I got over there and when the midwife checked me, she informed me that I was fully dilated and eighty percent effaced (I think? Pretty sure I remember that correctly) and advised us that we should "get over to the hospital, immediately." So we did.

We got over to the hospital, immediately. Got me into a wheelchair, wheeled me up to the proper floor, wheeled into the office and filled out the needed paperwork, wheeled leisurely to my delivery room where I proceeded to leisurely get changed into the hospital gown and leisurely get hooked up to the monitor thingy, while my husband leisurely pulled out the laptop and turned on the worship music in iTunes. Then I got handed some juice of some kind and chilled, breathing and lightly moaning through each pleasant (relatively speaking) pressure-contraction. It was awesome.

So awesome, in fact, that the midwife on call decided a couple of hours later that I needed to have a smidge of Pitocin. "Just a hair," she said, so that the contractions could start progressing a little faster. I really didn't want Pitocin, but I also wasn't against the idea of moving this whole thing along.

So, about fifteen to twenty minutes before her delivery time (5:13 p.m.), the pleasant pressure-contractions became not so pleasant pressure-contractions. Extreme pressure-contractions. I had a fleeting moment of "I've-changed-my-mind-I-don't-want-to-do-this-let's-go-home-and-do-this-another-time-okay-thanks-bye" and I communicated that to the midwife, and she informed me that everything was going super-smoothly and it would be okay. Then I had a fleeting moment of "alright-well-if-I-HAVE-to-do-this-I-think-I'm-gonna-NEED-drugs" and I again communicated that (because communication is KEY.) and one of the nurses said, "You don't need it. You're a pro at this. You don't need it. You'll do just fine," at which point I snapped out of it and threw all the fear out of my head and just decided that if I would start pushing right then, the pain would be lesser and it would be over quickly. So push I did. Probably for about fifteen to twenty minutes.

And she was out.

And she was gorgeous.

Quite a little button.

And we were all quite taken with her.

About an hour or two went by and we all got wheeled into our hotel suite. I mean hospital room. Our hospital room was like a hotel suite. It was the largest room in the place. We stayed there for a couple of days and then took her home. And it's been supremely sublime family time ever since.

We're all still quite taken with her.