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Delivery Day
When Steve and I went to bed Sunday night, we had expected Monday to be a lot more of the same boring thing. A big, long wait.
Turns out, we were wrong.
At 4 a.m., I got up to use the bathroom and when I went back to bed, I felt this weird gush. Think I had just peed myself, I ran to the bathroom. To avoid going into too much detail, it turns out that my water had just brook and I spent the rest of the night leaking fluid. At this point, I was not sure what was happening. Maybe I was in denial.
Anyway, I told Steve about it later that morning (I, thankfully, had gotten a few more hours of sleep) and we called the doctor. I had an appointment at 2 p.m., which they moved up to 11:10 a.m. Steve and I grabbed the bad I had packed weeks ago, just in case, and made plans to go out to lunch after the appointment. Maybe see a movie.
But Steve was thinking. He made me stop and get a cheeseburger on the way. "Just in case," he said. I drove.
Getting out of the car at the doctor's office was the turning point. I started gushing water all over the place. Totally, totally embarrassing. I still wasn't having contractions, but the doctor sent us to the hospital pronto and within an hour, the staff had me hooked up to all sorts of tubes and monitors. I was being induced even though I was only 1 cm and she was way up high (-4 station). This was to prevent infection.
This was at noon. I started feeling contractions about 1 p.m. and they got bad about 3 p.m. An hour after that, I got his narcotic which made me sleep in between contractions. I couldn't move much because I had to be hooked up to a monitor all the time.
At 6:30 p.m., I hot an epidural. By 9 p.m., I had dilated to 8 cm. An hour after that, to 9 cm.
That's where I would stay for the next three hours.
Poor baby Carolyn would never drop down. She was just too big to fit and she was at an awkward angle. The doctor, who was awesome, said she would never have made it out on her own.
By 11 p.m., my epidural had worn off. I was in quite a bit of pain until midnight, when they reupped my dose.
By 1 p.m., the doctor said she wanted to do the C-section and I was ready.
Carolyn Cruz Gardner was born at 2:09 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004, in Kalamazoo's Bronson Hospital. She weighed 9 lb, 2 oz and was 22 inches. She has a full head of black hair, something everybody comments on. She's a great baby. There's no way I could think she was more awesome or love her more.
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