Well, my portion of the story begins a bit later than Julie's. First thing I remember about that day is her waking me up to ask me if her contractions are closer enough together to need to go to the hospital. I don't know if I even heard how close they were.... I simply checked the clock and realized that it was too early to be awake so I told her to wait a bit first. Thankfully she did let me sleep another hour while she went and had breakfast. She woke me up again and asked me if 3 minutes apart for contractions was better and I figured that that was getting close enough together that we should get going.
I called my mom and had her come over to take care of Gabby and she arrived around 8:10-8:15 I think. We left right away and got to the hospital around 8:30. We checked into triage and got checked out and Julie was only 3 centimeters dilated. They told us to go for a walk around the hospital.
We decided to head to grab some food at the cafeteria so we headed down there. It took about 25-30 minutes to get there. Another 15 minutes to simply get our food. 30 or so minutes to eat and 25-30 to get back. All because Julie would have a contraction every 2-3 minutes. We had a few concerned people on the way down and in the cafeteria. We told them every time that we were just fine. I figured we are in the hospital cafeteria and if we need help we're surrounded by doctor's and nurses that can help us.
We got back to triage around 10:45 and the nurse checked Julie again and said she was about 4-5 centimeters and that they would admit us as long as the other woman who was waiting wasn't as far along as Julie. We got admitted a few minutes later and we met our nurse Pat. She was really nice and did a great job taking care of Julie. We asked for an epidural immediately because of how fast Julie was progressing. And this is my part of the story to tell because Julie really doesn't remember it.
Within 30 minutes the anaesthetist showed up with all his fun needles and such and started to get to work. Well, it turns out that Julie without other pain meds, and while contracting can feel every attempt of the needle going into her back. The guy had to try 7 times to get the needle into her back (I have a really fuzzy picture that I won't post). After the third or fourth try I heard him say to the nurse that he isn't sure he can get this done. On the last try Julie started singing songs to keep herself calm. It helped control her muscles enough that he got the tube into her back and the freezing started to kick in.
Noon rolled around and the nurse checked Julie again and I think they said she was about 7 centimeters. I don't really remember what happened between noon and 1:30. I think we had a few visits from the doctor, met the student/resident that would be observing/helping with the delivery, had some toast with jam and water, and basically just waiting through contractions. Time seemed to fly by for me. Oh, I did make several phone calls in and around all these happenings to keep Gwamma up to date on what was going on.
1:45 rolled around and the nurse said that Julie could start pushing. She pushed for about 20 minutes before the doctors arrived (they were early!). She continued to push for another 20-25 minutes and at 2:27 PM Lydia Melodie was born!
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