Always eat breakfast...cause you might end up having a baby.

   

        Well, we started this blog to write about what being pregnant and then having a baby was like, and then promptly got too busy having a baby, to write about it! Josh covered the basics in his last post, so I'll just fill in a bit here and there, starting on the morning of December 18th...

       I went in for a sonogram, because our little Blueberry had been breech. It turned out that she had flipped back over, and all the technician had to say, was that my fluid (Baby's swimming pool) was a bit low. I left in good spirits, and went across the street to the Labor and Delivery floor of Albany Med, to pre-register us, since we knew we were due very soon, and  I'd been told that pre-registering saves you from having to bother with it when you come in, and are in labor. I passed by some guys working on fixing hospital beds in the hallway, and one asked me, sounding quite shocked, if I was in labor, and remarked upon the fact that I was walking by myself. I reassured them that I was not in labor, pre-registered, and then headed to my doctor's appointment (they'd scheduled the sonogram for the same day so the doctor could see the results, and me, in the same day).

       I walked into the office, sat down to check in, and the doctor came over to me. This is the point at which things started moving very quickly.

      "Do you know that your fluid is low?" she asked me.
       "Yeah, she mentioned that, actually-is that bad?" I hadn't thought much of it, but clearly from what she said next, the doctor very much did.
        "Well, your water broke! I'll take a look at you to be sure, but we'll probably send you over to the hospital tonight or tomorrow."

WHAT.

       I sat down to wait, not believing the doctor was actually going to do that..my disbelief was unfounded, because after a very brief exam, she left the room, and came back to say "My friend, you're going over to the hospital now. You're having a baby today!"

       I'm pretty sure my face looked something like this-

       After repeatedly asking different forms of the word "Really?", and being told that no, I could not eat lunch first, (hence the title-I didn't having anything but "clears" for the next 5 days). I started making phone calls and hopped the bus. We walked back into the very part of the hospital I'd left not hours ago, and were led to my (private!) room. Even at this point, they weren't sure they were even going to keep me (there was still some debate about whether or not my water had broken), but eventually, they determined that I was staying.

         To make a long story shorter, that was the beginning of 3 days of inducing labor, asking (screaming) for pain medicine, and finally, on the afternoon of Saturday, December 21st, 2013, the doctors decided to give me a c-section. Within the next two hours, our little one came into the world, and at 4:40 p.m., we became parents!  Josh was not embellishing when he said that the staff at Albany Med was wonderful. They are some of the best people in the world, and I will be grateful to them for the rest of my life. They were helpful, knowledgeable, efficient, and most of all, kind to me when I needed it badly. We couldn't have chosen a better place to have our baby!

       I'll stop here for now, but I'm bursting with stories from that week-we stayed in the hospital for the customary 4 days after the birth-be back later!