The Simple Things: Claire Bear...

Today is Claire's 3rd birthday! HOORAY!!! So, expect a lot of Claire-centered things today! To start it off, here's Claire's arrival story. It's still one of my proudest moments!

So, here's the story of how Claire made her entrance. My friends Liz and Cyndi threw me a baby shower2.5 weeks before Claire was expected to come. All afternoon I had had Braxton Hicks contractions, but nothing painful at all. They continued throughout the shower and we joked that I was just waiting for the shower to be over to have this baby. That wasn't far from the truth!
I got home at 11:00ish, got ready for bed and crawled in to go to sleep at 12:00. At 12:15, I was having some discomfort and noticed that it was about 7 minutes apart. I called the doctor and told her that they were coming pretty regularly and though the contractions didn't hurt too bad, I came quickly with Emilie and I thought I should head to the hospital. She agreed, but I could tell that she thought I was a LONG way off. Wrong.
The hospital is about 25 minutes away from here in Greenwich, CT. By the time we were 10 minutes away my contractions were 4 minutes apart and increasing in intensity. When we pulled up to the hospital they were every 2 minutes and pretty painful! They put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me up to the maternity ward. The nurses were nice..."how are you doing? etc." That's when I screamed "I NEED TO PUSH!! I NEED TO PUSH NOW!"
They put me on the table and determined that the baby was coming. Unfortunately, there was no doctor...which meant I couldn't push and they couldn't give me medicine.
All of the sudden the baby's heartrate started to drop and I had to push. Two pushes later and Claire came out! What surprised us all was that she was BREACH! That's right...she came out bottom first, with her feet up by her face!
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise that the doctor wasn't there. Had she been there, they would have done an emergency c-section. The natural delivery was painful...super painful, but the recovery has been exponetially better than with Emilie.
I feel super grateful that Claire made it here safely. She was in fact, the first breech delivery that any of the nurses could remember. Apparently there are so many things that could go wrong with a breach delievery that they do NOT do them. But Claire made it safe and sound, and for that I'm super grateful.
So, from the time they put me on the table to the time that I had Claire was 11 minutes. Unbelievable!!
Here are some pictures of us at the hospital (note: I am not a beauty queen after having a baby...nor do I try to be!)