Our Birth Story

​We've all been there.

You've reached peak REM and you believe that you're dreaming of being on the toilet peeing... only you're actually peeing on your white sheets and sleep number mattress. I thought this was the case when I woke up to gushing water at 1:45 a.m. Though in darkness, I knew there was NO possible way any human body could retain that much urine. Upon turning the lights on, I found the "urine" to be a clear, odorless, watery substance. Only then did I know what had happened... my water broke!

It was so surreal as we were gathering our things at the house knowing that we were finally going to have our baby girl! I kept trying to tune into my body expecting to feel 

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my first contraction or SOME sign of labor. Aside from the Nile river running through my body, I felt perfectly normal. Knowing it would be our last for a while, Eric and I both showered and took our time gathering our things. We made it to the hospital by about 4:00am. Still no contractions. We got settled and into our delivery room. I got attached to about a billion different chords that made going to the restroom an obstacle course.

​By 6:00 a.m. I still hadn't experienced any contractions. My nurses told me that they were going to start me on a pitocin drip to get my contractions going. Even then it took a couple of hours for me to start feeling them. Once they started... I wished that we could take it all back. Take back the drive to the hospital. Take back any time I ever said I was ready for her to come. Honestly -- I wanted to take back even being pregnant. I had eventually reached the most pain I could handle and begged for an epidural. My pain level was about a 7 out of 10 at that point. I just couldn't do it any longer. From the moment I asked for the epidural at 10:00 a.m. -- it took them about an hour to get me hooked up and pain free. Once I had the juice, I was a completely different person. Eric would look at the monitor and say, "Whoa, you're having a BIG one!" Meanwhile, I was blissfully unaware while watching the episode of The Office where Pam and Jim get married... so you could say I'm a huge fan of the juice and I will never perform labor without it.

Our nurse did continual checkups from that point on to see how dilated I was. She said I was fully dilated around 4:00pm and we finally started pushing a little after that. We pushed for 45 mins and on January 24th at 5:19p.m. -- Audrey Rose was born. The rush of endorphins I felt was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. As they placed her on my chest, I couldn't stop 'laugh crying'. I was in such disbelief of her. This whole time it was her in there. I couldn't believe that she was ours and that God was going to just let us love her for the rest of our days. 

It's incredible how fast time has flown in just the two months after her birth-- opposed to how time was crawling the two months prior to her coming. Life is so funny that way. I love that there are a billion different ways to bring little people into this world, in the same way the rain may trickle so many different directions down a mountainside. There is no wrong or right way to do all of this. I love that every person has their own story... but this one is so perfectly ours.

-xx
​Katie