The details

Monday morning my water broke at 1:15am out of a sound sleep. From that moment I knew that Eve was low and my only concern was getting to the hospital as soon as possible. There was not going to be any casual walking around the house looking for the missing items on my hospital list. I wanted to be teleported to the hospital. I wanted to be beamed to the hospital. Since we lack the technology to do so I told Seth, "You need to call Brett NOW." Brett was the first person on our list of people to come get Josh. And, he was in our driveway within 15 minutes. During those 15 minutes I knew deep down that I would most likely make it to the hospital; however, I kept perfectly still on the bathroom floor just in case. Seth helped me into the car and we left when Brett pulled into the driveway. Seth asked me what I wanted on the ipod and I said Enya. So, I listened to "time" by Enya and counted contractions that were 7 minutes apart. I only had 3 in the car so I guess we got there in 21 minutes. Yay Seth!

Anyone who knows about my first birth experience knows that it was long and at times traumatic. All I wanted this time around was to have a much less dramatic, much less painful experience. Even though emergencies can always come up I wanted to feel safe. So, I had completely given myself permission to have an epidural and was actually looking forward to not having to be a hero.

We pulled into the ER and Seth ran out to get a wheelchair for me which I could NOT sit on. I felt like if I sat down I would have the baby. So, I kneeled on the wheelchair leaning over the back of the chair. All I remember was seeing everyone's shoes. The black loafers of the ER tech who was waiting by the door. The white and yellow Nike's of the labor and delivery nurse. Seth's New Balance sneakers. I told those who visited me in the hospital that I actually had the thought right then and there that if I needed to identify the people who helped us I could do a shoe line-up with 100% accuracy, just not their faces.

Upon entering the labor and delivery floor my first question for the nurse was I imagine a common one among women in labor:

THE QUESTION: "Is the anesthesiologist available? Can I have an epidural?"


THE WRONG ANSWER: "Oh, honey, you may be way past an epidural."

Well, I got the wrong answer and I was not pleased. I wonder if they get HR training to give answers like that? I didn't think it was nice and I would have preferred something along the lines of, "sure, we will do the best we can." Soon after I got checked and it turned out I wasn't past and epidural and 45 minutes later I got one. 3 hours after that I was holding a baby in my arms. How easy is that??? So easy, in fact, and so different from my first experience that I am tempted to say, "Let's do that all again next week!"