Where to begin? I woke up on Sunday morning at 4:45 to some lovely contractions. I started timing them and they went from 8 minutes apart to 3-4 minutes apart. So, I did what any normal woman in labor would do...I started cleaning the bathroom. At some point, I woke up Dave and we started getting our bags together. Now, you should know that both of my previous labors began with a clear cut sign...my water broke. When that happens you know without a shadow of a doubt that you need to get to the hospital. Well, timing contractions is no fun at all and it's stressful. When do we call the hospital? When do we have my parents come over to stay with the girls? When do we pull Heather, our midwife, out of church? We looked online and saw that the contractions should be pretty intense and about 5 minutes apart for a good hour before heading to the hospital. I was still able to talk through mine and they seemed to be getting less intense and further apart. False labor? I guess so.
We missed church, I napped and we laid low for the rest of the day. I had several more contractions throughout the course of the day but nothing worth timing. Oh, well. No baby today.
I went to bed that night around 11pm and realized an hour later when Dave came to bed that I hadn't fallen asleep, yet, and I had been having contractions for the past hour. I decided to get out of bed, walk around and see if we needed to start timing them. It quickly became clear that this set of contractions was very different from earlier in the day. They were very intense and getting closer and closer together. We called my parents at 12:30am on Monday (1/17/11) morning and they grabbed their bags and headed for our house. Dave and I packed up...no cleaning bathrooms this time...and loaded our bags in the car. My parent's arrived a little after 1am and Dave and I left our house for the hospital at 2am. By this point I had been officially in labor for 3 hours and my contractions were consistently 4 minutes apart.
We arrived at the hospital at 2:35am and got admitted right away...it could have been the fact that I was hunched over the nurses' check-in counter moaning loudly that allowed us to get a room so quickly. :) After my first "check" at 2:45am, I was dilated to 6cm. Because of my history of quick deliveries, they called Heather right away. Unfortunately I was confined to my bed until they could get an IV started...bummer...and after blowing out 2 veins they finally got it started in the crook of my arm which meant I had to keep my arm straight the entire time. By this point Heather had arrived and when she "checked" me at 4am I was dilated to 9cm and not physically able to get out of bed. This is where it gets a bit fuzzy. Our baby girl was born at 4:21am so in the 21 minutes from when Heather declared me a 9, I progressed to 10cm and pushed her out. Dave said it was only about 5 pushes and less than 10 minutes. Whew! Praise the Lord for another natural delivery.
Maggie Faye Cribbs was born at 4:21am on Monday, January 17th, 2011
9lbs, 1oz; 20 3/4" long
A little about her name...Maggie is a name we both liked and it fit my crazy criteria of two syllables ending in the "e" sound...it had to sound good with Zoey and Ruby. :) Faye is Dave's mom's name who passed away in 1998 before I had even met Dave. We wanted to honor her and Dave's dad.
Our first day with our little Maggie has been wonderful. She is a great nurser and pooper! Here are some pictures from Maggie's birth day. Zoey(4yrs) and Ruby(22mos) loved meeting their new sister. And as Zoey said to me on the phone after we told her about her new sister, "A sister? Awwww, I really wanted a boy but I'm so excited about a sister. It's ok, mom."
