Charlotte's birth story

On Sunday, the 25th of November, I awoke to the surprise of not having any contractions. Saturday night I had been experiencing some discomfort but decided to sleep through them as long as I could to get as much rest as possible. Madelyn and Ella were sleeping at my parent's house and were going to meet us at church that morning. Because of the apparent lack of the onset of labor, Troy and I prepared for church, got some breakfast at Einstein's Bagels, walked the parking lot for awhile and made it to Sunday School at around 9:30. After a great lesson in Ephesians we went to the church service. Troy's parents met us there. During the sermon, I had several contractions that I thought might be the beginnings of something so we decided to head home right after church. My parents took the girls and my in laws back to their house to eat lunch and spend the afternoon. On the way home, I had several harder contractions and when we arrived home, I couldn't even get to the front door without having to take breaks during them. We went inside and Troy started gathering things together. I went to go use the bathroom and suddenly knew that we needed to leave for the hospital immediately. Getting back to the car proved even more difficult than getting to the house. I couldn't barely take a few steps before another contraction would start. Troy raced to the hospital (I think he was secretly hoping for a police escort) but I only noticed him run one stop sign. When we arrived at the ER, they sent us straight upstairs to the birth center. The receptionist wanted us to sign in, etc. and I very politely told her that we needed a room right now! A nurse checked me and I was surprised to be only 4cm..."you have got to be kidding me!". I needed to use the restroom and had several contractions while there that had the nurses rethinking their previous thoughts of "early labor". I got onto the bed and told them in no uncertain terms that I needed to push. The nurse decided it was in her best interest to just check me again and she announced that I was dilated to a 9. They had already called Sharon, my midwife and she got there as I started (or rather continued) to push. Because of earlier assumptions by the nurses about how far along I was, the birthing stuff wasn't quite set up but Sharon just put her gloves on and started reassuring and instructing me. Charlotte was born after only a few minutes of pushing (who really is keeping track of that anyway?) at 1:37pm, only 40 minutes after we signed in to the birth center. It was so fun to finally know that we had another girl and such relief for me to hold her in my arms. As fast as her birth was, Sharon had to attend to me a bit longer than usual but after awhile we were left to ourselves to snuggle our new baby girl.

Charlotte Mae, minutes old

Sharon, our awesome CNM