LOOK WHAT WE MADE : )

VIOLET ELIZABETH GRINE
Well she finally arrived... and not so easily. Violet was born on Saturday March 1, 2008 at 11:13am. She weighed in at 7 lbs 12 oz and is 20 1/2 in long. By the sound of that she'll be taller than her mom and dad. We were pretty shocked at her size. She must get the height thing from my side, oddly enough from the Verble side (Gr. Grandma Eleanor Violet Verble).
Since the question has been, how did it go, I thought I'd share instead of constantly repeating myself.
We went to the hospital on thursday afternoon thinking my water had broken. It was apparently a false alarm. She had moved even further down and was sitting on my bladder funny and it was just pee. Nothing a diaper couldn't have remedied. HAHA! I was told to take it easy the next day. So I did. I stayed home from work and watched a movie. Oddly enough Knocked Up.
I was having some bad cramping around 5:30 am on Friday. I thought nothing of this. I've been feeling these for weeks. They however didn't get any better that day. We decided to go for a walk in the afternoon. The weather was super nice. It didn't really help to much so I decided the garage was dirty and needed sweeping and cleaning up. So there I am waddling around sweeping the garage and apparently in early labor. I'm sure my neighbors thought I was nuts. I managed to get some dinner down around 4:30 and then started feeling really bad. We decided to start keeping track of the contractions(cramping). To me they seemed all over the place. There was no consistancy to them. There was no magic number of 1 min long at 5 min apart for 1 hour. So at 7:30pm we finally headed to the hospital thinking we were surely going to be told to go home. When we arrived and I was hooked up to the machines I was told they were actually bout 2 min apart. Yikes! I just wasn't really feeling most of them. However I was still only dilated at a 3. So I was forced to walk the halls for 1 1/2 hrs to get things going. This SUCKED!! I was checked again and told I'd moved to a 5 and the were going to admit me. YEAH!!
I was progressing very slowly. I was given an Epideral around 10:30pm and was dilated to a 5 1/2. I have a bit of a phobia about hospitals and needles and machines I can't identify, so I was super nervous about the Epidural. I was shaking uncontrollably and trying so hard to sit still. The nurses were super nice and we finally got it done. I was able to sleep the most of the night. By 6:00 am on Saturday I was only dilated to a 6. UGHHH I thought. I was finally given a boost of medicine to induce me. By 7am the epidural had started to ware off. I was given another dose and was told this will be enough for the next 3 hrs and by then I would have delivered. By 9:00am the doctor said it was time to push. I complained then that I could really feel the contractions and my legs. She told me that being this close to delivering she wanted to hold off on any more so I knew when to push and I should still be ok because generally it doesn't take longer than an hour and a half of pushing.
I pushed for 3 hr and 15 min. So I sort of I felt everything that last hour and a half, that wasn't pleasant. I pushed for so long because Violet had become lethargic and initially stopped helping me. Until her little head popped out we didn't know that the cord was wrapped around her head. This didn't happen until sometime during labor. So there was plenty of oxygen getting to her but not enough to make her active. She became very tired and that left me all the work of pushing because she didn't feel like going anywhere. I had also pulled a muscle under my rib cage that made it unbearable to take in a deep breath. It took Chris, the doctor and four nurses to help me push. I was tugging on a towel with a nurse at the end while I had an oxygen mask on. The Staff was beyond supportive and encouraging and some how I was able to gather enough strength for one more push. This is when things got a little scary. There was no crying or moving. They rushed her to the NeoNatal table to work on her. It took about 5-6 minutes. This was the longest 5-6 minutes in our lives and I'm pretty sure we were holding our breaths the entire time. No one would make eye contact with us. Suddenly there was about 15 people in the room assisting. We couldn't see anything. Then came her little scream. Finally.
She is perfectly healthy now and everything is fine. She is very sweet and mellow so far and basically just eats, sleeps and poops, we knew this of course. We can't wait till we can play with her. We now have a great story to torment her with in the future. HEE HEE!
Right now every muscle in my body is sore. I used muscles I didn't know existed. I can hardly move my arms. But I am feeling a little better with each passing day. And my new best friend is.... the rubber donut. Mmmmmm....rubber donut.
: )