Lila Jane has arrived!

WOW! This is my first post as a mother! That is so weird to say, but I LOVE it!

Lila Jane was born on September 20, 2010 at 12:58 pm. She was 6 lbs 9.9 oz and 20 inches long. She is perfect. And that is an understatement. Momma and Daddy have survived the first few days with her. We are still alive and so is she...always a good thing. We love her more and more everyday!

So here's how it started; the labor, I mean.

I woke up with a period like cramp at 5:30 on Monday morning. I'd been having some similar cramping for the past few weeks so it didn't really alarm me too much. Because I was up, I thought I'd just go ahead and go pee. I knew if I didn't, it would just be another half hour before I had to get up and go anyway. When I stood up, I had a little leakage, but not enough to be sure. So I went to the bathroom and lost a little more fluid. I still wasn't "sure" so I went back and laid down. Of course I couldn't fall back asleep so about 5 minutes later I got up again. I was pretty convinced after that trip to the bathroom. I was still having some cramping, but nothing too bad, although it was pretty regular.

About 5:45, I went in and woke up Neil. It was priceless. I tried to explain to him that it was just slowly leaking, but coming from a dead sleep he kept thinking that I had a gush and he needed to clean up. :) How sweet! Neil got up immediately and we started getting the last minute things together and packed. I got in the shower because I had to shave my legs. I knew that my water would break on a day that my legs needed shaved! By the time I got out of the shower, my contractions had gotten a little more intense and were only about 2 minutes apart. I thought for sure that this was wrong. We were supposed to be at the hospital when the contractions were about 5 min apart. So we hurried up and got everything thrown in the car. We even remembered the car seat! We said goodbye to the dogs and briefly explained that we wouldn't be coming home the same and that we would be back in a couple of days.

Now the hospital is a good 45 minutes away...on a good traffic day. This day was not. There is a lot of road construction going on en route to the hospital. Throw in that we were on our way during morning traffic and I'd say it took us about and hour to get there. Contractions getting more and more intense the whole way, still not painful, just very uncomfortable.

We got to the hospital and of course hadn't done pre-registration, which knowing now, I could kick myself in the shin! We were asked 1 million questions as I laid there, contractions intensifying by the minute. I was checked by the nurse and was 3 cm dilated when I got there. By the time I finally got to my birthing room, I was dilated to 5 cm. This kinda surprised me since all I've heard and been prepared for was a labor that would last, at the shortest, about 12 hours.

I had been feeling nauseous and thought I was gonna throw up with each contraction. I went to the bathroom...a pretty good one too... and then got back in bed. It wasn't but a couple contractions later (about 5 min) that I was puking my guts up. My guts, by the way, consisted of nothing since I didn't eat breakfast and had some remains of a DQ Blizzard the night before for supper. It was at that point that I decided that I definitely needed the epidural. So I sent my Mom or Aunt Lisa out there to relay the message to the nurse.

To my surprise, something they don't tell you in the childbirth class, you have to take in a bag of fluid before they even let the anesthesiologist come up. This could take an hour, the nurse said. At this point, had I taken karate as a child, I'm pretty sure someone would've gotten chopped in the throat. Good for the nurses, I know nothing about fighting. :) Luckily for me too, that bag of fluids went through me in about 35 min. All this time, Neil's poor fingers were breaking due to my deathly grip on them. He had it bad because I had taken BOTH of his hands hostage until I got some other type of pain meds.

About the same time as the fluid intake they were able to shoot me up with some pain killers. Now as far as this goes, it didn't really help with the pain as much as it kinda helped me calm down in the 45 seconds to a minute I had between each contraction. They were literally right on top of each other. I had told myself all along that I was gonna try to avoid the epidural if I could. Now this is a VERY heavy statement, but looking back, had I known that things would progress as quickly as they did, I could've maybe told myself that I could do it, but hindsight is 20/20 and at the time, I thought I was in hell!

About 10 minutes (I think...time was so blurred this entire time) later, the anesthesiologist walked through the door. Usually once you call them, it could take another 45 minutes for them to get to you. And no matter what I thought, I wasn't the only person in that hospital that day. But thankfully, God happened to be watching me at the moment and he sent the doctor straight to me. Once he got it in, I only felt about 2 more contractions. This is when I can kinda start remembering again!

Neil was able to come back in to the room. The nurse told me to rest up for the pushing, if I could. The pain killers were still in my system a little b/c I started feeling pretty drowsy. Mom went to eat and Neil stayed with me for about 15 minutes before he went out to talk to his family that had just shown up. About 10 minutes later, the nurse checked me again and told me I was 9 cm. I really couldn't believe it. 10 seconds later, my mom and Aunt Lisa came back in and I told them what the nurse had just said. Like I could make a joke at this point, my mom thought I was lying. Not even a minute later, the nurse said I was at 10 cm and would start pushing soon.

Dr. Tsung was eating lunch, but hurried his little butt up to my room to help get this baby in the world. At 12:49 pm, I started pushing. It felt like an out of body experience. I was just doing what people were telling me to do when they told me to do it. 9 minutes later, baby girl, Lila Jane, was here. She was absolutely gorgeous and had a head full of blonde hair, which she got from her daddy.

Everything from then on moved so quickly. We had the paparazzi in the room and everyone just kept talking and talking while I laid there getting sutured up. It's funny how everyone was talking to me and telling me things until the moment she arrived and then everyone just kinda turned and started talking to each other, except Neil. He stayed with me the whole time, looking over to see if Lila was ok. I finally told him to go see her! I knew he wasn't sure where he was supposed to be. Plus, I pretty much had no idea what was going on.

After the press left and the paparazzi had gotten all the shots they needed Mommy and Daddy finally got to see a clean little baby. She was so hungry and latched on perfectly! We got moved finally and Lila went to get a bath.

From then on it was just people coming and going...still is!

We are so excited about this new step in our lives. We are so blessed with everything we have and Little Miss Lila is the icing on the cake.