Violet's Blog: Welcome to the World, Violet!

The story of Violet's entry into the world started on Tuesday afternoon, January 23. I started having contractions at about 4:30pm, but they weren't too bad and I didn't think much of it. I continued to work, then made dinner. After this had been going on for a few hours, I started thinking something might be happening, so I did a load of laundry, vacumed, and even worked a little more sending out some last minute ads.

We tried to go to bed at 10:30 thinking we still had plenty of time (actually, we were both in denial that this was anything worth worrying about). However when I laid down, they got much worse. My midnight they had hit the point where we could call our midwife (Mary Ann). She told me to take a bath and see what happened, then call her in an hour. The bath felt great - between the ever worsening contractions!

When I called her back at 1am, she told us to head in. She lives a little further from the hospital, so Jon and I took our time making sure everything was packed up and ready to go, then calmly drove the 5 minutes to the hospital.

By the time I got there, the contractions were again getting closer together and more painful. When they checked to see how far along I was, we were SHOCKED to find out I was already 7cm!! Holy cow!! That was when the reality hit that we were having a baby... THAT NIGHT!!! Mary Ann also informed me that there may not be time for an epidural. I think I laughed - of COURSE there would be time for my epidural. Hello!! Little did I know...

To make a long story short, there indeed was NOT time for an epidural. Violet wanted OUT! After an hour of pushing (and only being at the hospital for 2 hours), she was born at 3:35am. Jon and I were both so relieved to have her OUT that we completely forgot to look and see exactly what we had! But when Jon said "It's a GIRL!" we were both sooo happy!!