Announcing the arrival of Sara Kyra (m)

She was born on March 24th, 2003, and was 20 ¼” and 7lbs 12 ¾ oz. I can’t believe she is already here! We thought we had so much more time, LOL! Anyhow, I started having contractions early, early in the morning on the 24th / late night 23rd. They started out in an half an hour interval, which was no big deal, except that I woke up and had to run to the bathroom. My body was getting rid off all the excess baggage, I guess. I didn’t believe it was the real thing, but at 2:30 am I lost the mucus plug with a little bleeding. Somehow, I still kept denying it and went back to bed. At 4 am the contractions suddenly went to an interval of 7 to 8 minutes, and it finally registered with me that the baby is coming. At 5 am I woke up DH, because the pain started to be hard to take. He rushed and made me pack the remainder of my bag and DD’s bag, while he finished the nursery as much as he could and put the car seats in the car (can you tell, we weren’t ready yet for our little one, LOL!). Anyhow, I tried to keep myself busy, because the pain was easier, if I didn’t concentrate on it. Shortly after 9 am, the contraction intervals started to vary between three to seven minutes. DH wanted to go to the hospital, but I wanted to wait, because I was still mostly at around six to seven minutes and the baby hadn’t dropped yet. So DH stopped on the way to get himself breakfast and we made it to the hospital by 10 am. We didn’t even take my stuff inside, because we thought they might send us home again. The nurse connected me to the monitor and checked my cervix. She couldn’t reach the baby and jokingly said that the station is –100 and I’m maybe a fingertip dilated. They decided to monitor me and check again in an hour. I now had contractions about every three minutes, and oh so painful… at 11:15 am they let me off the monitor to go to the bathroom. They decided to let me walk around a little. Shortly before 12 pm the nurse checked again. I was 4 cm and she could finally reach the baby. I immediately asked for the epidural. They consulted my dr. and got the anesthesiologist. He went through all the forms and procedural requirements with me and finally at 12:45 pm it was in, YES!!! Meanwhile DH got my stuff and tried to reach somebody to take care of DD during delivery. Our minister came, but because she had to leave at three, she had arranged for DD’s best friends’ grandpa to pick her up, so the two could play for two to three hours. At 2 pm the nurse checked me again, I was at 10 cm, but the baby needed to come down further, so they inclined the bed to a semi-sitting position. Half an hour later she came and said, we’ll have the baby now. She set everything up and then asked me to push. I didn’t feel a thing because of the epidural. With DD they had stopped it and I could feel the pushing, but this time I was completely numb. I gave it a try and whatever I did, it must have worked. After two pushes the baby was crowning and they rushed the dr in and got everybody gowned up. Another push and the head was out. Another, not even complete one and the little girl was out completely. They offered DH to cut the cord, but he didn’t want to, he was happily taking pictures, LOL. Anyhow, they put Sara on my stomach/chest area and she started breastfeeding right away, what a relieve! (Our older DD never took to the breast). I was released from the hospital on Wednesday, but was very tired because Sara wanted to constantly breastfeed. On Thursday I started to feel a pain behind my right knee and the area started to slowly swell. On Sunday it was as big as my hand and I went to the ER. Turns out I had developed a blood clod (sp?) in the superior venes and now I have to take medicine for that. *sigh*

Susanne with Amanda (2) & Sara (hopefully German/English just like her sister)