Lily's Birth Story - Part 2

Yesterday I started telling you about the day that lead up to a wonderful little girl coming into our lives. Today, I would like to write about day 1 of what would be the hardest two and a half days of my life...

Thursday, January 31, 2008:

After some mild back pain the night before, I slept peacefully until I woke up around 1:30 am with what felt like a contraction. Braxton-Hicks? It couldn't be the real deal!! It cannot, it MUST not! I still have about 2 weeks of school left until my 10-day break, and next Tuesday was the Mardi Gras party I had organized for our office as customer appreciation event, and I had promised my boss that I would be there! I went to the kitchen, drank a sip of water, went back to bed, and fell asleep. About 3:30 am I woke up from another contraction, but fell back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 7:30 I got up. The contractions felt like moderate menstrual cramps by now, coming on and off at irregular intervals. I took a shower, dressed, and went to work. The tough girl in me (who wasn't always the smartest at that point I admit) insisted that things wouldn't change by being a baby and stay home. So I taught the student intern a valuable lesson on what to expect if he ever got his girlfriend pregnant by pacing around the conference table on and off. My boss was out in Kansas City, but the other girls in the office were taking bets if this was the real deal or just some Braxton-Hicks. When I went home for lunch, Richard tried to convince me to stay home and relax. At this point I was pretty sure the contractions wouldn't stop any more. The stubborn girl made an appearance insisting that under no circumstances would I birth a January baby, so baby would have to change his/her mind and wait a few more days or weeks (I use neutral references since at this point we didn't know whether we would have a boy or girl.

Stubborn girl also had me go back to work and finish the day. At home, Richard, who was home on pregnant wife watch while the rest of the band was on tour down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and back, had made a good dinner, but I couldn't eat much because of the pain. I tried to relax the rest of the evening, crammed in some school work and tried to go to bed but couldn't. So while Richard got some sleep not knowing when he would have to rush me to the hospital, I camped out on the couch trying to read a book but couldn't concentrate. I then tried to watch TV, which offered some distraction until the prime time shows were over and night time TV started.

And so stubborn girl won and I made it into February still pregnant...