It's a girl!

By Published On: May 2nd, 2011

Written by: Mindy May 01 2011 Here’s the post I’ve […]

Written by: Mindy

Here’s the post I’ve waited nine months to write—and in some ways, a lifetime.

I’m happy and blessed to announce … it’s a girl! It’s an angel, more like. And a definite lesson in knowing that, although best-laid plans can get blasted out of the water, the adventure—and the blessing—of a new baby make it all worth it.

I say that because Chloe, our new little cherub, entered this earth with a plan all her own.

Now, I know birth plans are silly in the sense that you can’t exactly plan a birth. That’s why hubby and I elected to have a birth “preferences” sheet—things we’d like to see happen, but knew could get tossed to the wayside depending on how things went during labor.

I’ve blogged already about how we planned to use hypnosis during labor and why we wanted a water birth. It worked with my son, so it seemed like a good idea to use it again.

With Chloe, it all kind of worked—but on overdrive!

Here was our birth morning:

6:00 am — My water broke and woke me up. I told my husband, who was lying beside me. He responded, “That wasn’t on my agenda for today … “

6:15 am — Hubby and I were up and in my office, giggling like excited kids. “We’re going to have a baby today!” we kept exclaiming. Since contractions hadn’t started and I still felt fine, he headed downstairs to make me breakfast while I sent off a few last-minute work emails.

7:00 am — Contractions started. At first I thought I just needed a poo, but it turned out to be all back labor, just like I had with my son. I was only halfway through my granola-french-toast with eggs on the side. That was the only annoying point of the whole morning, because I’d really wanted to finish my breakfast.

7:10 am — Hubby set me up with the heating pad on my back and my hypnosis CD blaring. We didn’t bother timing the contractions since they’d only just begun. I was able to drop into hypnosis and make it easily through each back pain. Once the contraction was over, I’d call out last-minute instructions to my husband—“Pack this, do that!” kind of stuff.

7:30 am — Caden woke up and came in to see me. I’d wanted him to have a “normal” morning and figured I could get through the first hour of labor without a problem. Caden put his hand softly on my belly and then on my head when a contraction hit. It was incredibly sweet.

7:45 am — My sister came over to pick up our dogs, who were getting excitable (they knew something was about to happen). Hubby got Caden ready for school. I powered through contractions, which seemed to be right on top of each other.

Let me stop for a second to point out that with Caden, I labored at home for five hours then went to the hospital and had him two hours later. We knew that second babies usually come faster, so we figured laboring at home for just a single hour would be okay. Then we’d head to the birthing center and wait it out . BUT …

8:00 am — Got in the car, which was a bit of an ordeal since I never had a break between contractions and walking seemed to shift everything …

8:05 am — Dropped Caden off at school.

8:20 am — Arrived at birthing center.

8:26 am — Chloe shot out like a rocket in the birth tub!

So, with six minutes to spare we narrowly escaped birthing our baby in the car. And here I never understood how that could really happen!

Doesn’t matter, though. She’s beautiful. Perfect-baby-love incarnate. I can’t wait for you to get to know her through this blog!