The Froehlich's: Our sweet baby girl, Cora Lea, has arrived

Welcome to the world, our beautiful new baby girl-Cora Lea Froehlich! It was a little rough labor-but worth every ounce of pain. (I need to detail it out here so when I get the time to get back to my scrapbooking & baby book, I'll have it all written down) On Sunday, I woke up with contractions, but I had almost stopped getting anxious when I got these, b/c they had been ongoing since Tuesday. But, these seemed a little different. By 9:15 AM I started recording them since they were about every 10 to 15 minutes apart, sometimes closer, and had a little "kick" to them. At 1 they were even a little closer so I called the hospital & they told me to wait until they were even much closer together, and lasting for 60-90 seconds apiece. About 3 I decided to take a nap since every night prior when I went to bed they seemed to disappear. But, I slept in and out of them for 2 hours, and knew that something must be developing b/c they weren't going away with rest. I got up about 5:30 and couldn't move once I got one- yup- it was time to go in. We scrambled getting everything together. We already had plans for Olivia to go to our friends, the Gilles's (and Olivia's favorite-Dr Steve's). Olivia couldn't have been more excited to go stay with them and play with the girls. We dropped her off-she jumped out of the car when she saw the girls and had to be reminded to come back to the car to give us a kiss good-bye. It was very comforting knowing that she wasn't going to miss us! By the time we got to the hospital it was about 6:30. At this time I really couldn't walk through my contractions. Once I got to a room, the nurse came in-I was only dilated to a 2-3 (which I was a 1-2 for the past week). She kept asking-are you sure this is it? "um...&$*!@ yes this is it!" I don't think she thought I was all that ready to go b/c I wasn't dilated very far. I kept insisting that I get the epidural ASAP. They paged my doctor in, which seemed to take forever, but probably wasn't, and I still wasn't getting started with the IV drip, which was required before the epidural. Once Dr Khayat did arrive at about 8, I was a 4-5. He then broke my water, and the IV drip was finally started. I was told that I had to go through half the bag before I could be administered the epidural. I had already about broken all of Pat's fingers by this point (he even had to take off his wedding ring), and didn't know how I could make it through another 1/2 hour - hour before getting the drugs. Well, a few contractions later, and I could feel the baby coming-I shouted out that I was pushing, and it was like all hell broke loose in the room. No one was ready for me to go this early. My bed hadn't even been broken down into the delivery bed yet. The nurse ran out to get the Dr and the scramble started. I pushed for 3 contractions, and Cora was born. During the delivery, the umbilical cord was tied quite tightly around her neck, which was a huge scare (Dr said it was one of the tightest he's seen) and she required oxygen for about 7 minutes after, but everything turned out perfect. I can't thank my Dr and the nurses enough for their quick reaction and especially to my Dr for his professionalism and expertise when it was such a critical situation. I didn't get the epidural, but looking back, I'm kind of glad to have the experience of going all natural. Can't say I'd do it again, but to have been through it once and to feel everything of a new life being born is quite amazing. We named our baby girl Cora Lea- Cora I had gotten from a baby's names list and was popular in the 1890's. We had a couple names picked out previously, but once I saw this, I instantly knew that that was what I wanted to name her, and Pat agreed. It is a beautiful name, and fits her perfectly. Her middle name, Lea is after Pat's dad-Lee, and is also Pat's middle name. Cora was born at 8:29 PM and was 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and 19.5 inches long.