Ella's Birth Story

We welcomed Ella Kathryn Hancock into the world on October 22, 2011 at 12:21 AM. At about 10:45 the night before, I felt my first contraction.  18 minutes later I felt a second contraction.  The pain was pretty intense for both contractions, so I called my mom and asked to come over and watch Lucy for us so that we could go to the hospital.  In typical mom fashion, she asked if she had time to finish watching a show and I said, "Sure".  11 minutes later I felt a third contraction and with this contraction my water broke.  David called my mom back and told her my water broke and asked her to come immediately.  I told David we didn't have time to wait for my mom to come and asked him to call our next door neighbor, Brian and ask him to come over and watch Lucy until my mom could get there.  David called Brian and he came over and in a matter of minutes we were on our way to the hospital.  My contractions were probably about a minute and a half apart at this point.  I told David that when we arrived at the hospital I wanted an epidural immediately and he sweetly reminded me that I had just injected a dose of heparin a couple of hours ago and wouldn't be able to get an epidural.  Thus, I braced myself for a medication-free delivery. The hospital was just a few miles away and when we arrived David drove to the entrance for the maternity ward, but quickly realized it was closed for the night.  He whipped the car around to the emergency entrance, which prompted a, "Sheesh, slow down, I'm not going to have this baby in the car!", comment from me.   At the emergency room, David got me out of the car and into a wheelchair in the emergency room and went to park the car.  Then he wheeled me up to the maternity ward and we were admitted at approximately 11:36 pm.  The nurse checked me and said I was dilated to 8 centimeters.  A few minutes later I told her I felt the urge to push, so she checked me again and said I was complete.  In the meantime, the nurse had called the doctor to let him know he would be delivering a baby tonight.  He was at another hospital about 20 minutes away when they called, so the rest of the patients on the maternity ward got to listen to me scream until the doctor arrived.  When he arrived, it was time to push.  The first push really didn't result in much as I'd forgotten how to push in the past 4 and a half years.  The nurses instructed me a little better for the second push and Ella's head was delivered.  With the third push, Ella Kathryn Hancock was born at 12:21 AM.  She weighed 7 lbs 5 oz and was 19.5 in long.  This post is long overdue, so here are several pics from the past 3 months!