Lillian Kate Byron - A long overdue post!

On Feb 19th, at 11:22, Lillian Kate Byron made her entrance into this world. My mom and I had spent the day shopping at IKEA in Regensburg and I felt contractions all day! Then Frank and I had a date night with our friends Dave and Elke. I felt sick all night and kept getting up to go to the bathroom, afraid to wake up Cooper. At 4 in the morning, my water broke while sleeping with Cooper! I jumped up, water gushing all over the floor, to get Frank up. Frank was sound asleep, and said "can't we wait a little while?" to which I firmly replied "Get up!". I threw my stuff into a bag and woke up mom so she could stay with Cooper. Then off to the hospital we went! To help me relax, Frank put on classical, but it was horrible shrieking violins so we turned that off. The contractions were 6 minutes apart so I wasn't too worried. We got to the hospital, walked three flights of stairs, and were the only ones there. Sat and waited and then the serious contractions started. When the Doctor looked, I was 5 cm dilated. They did bloodwork and put in an IV and put us in another room to wait. At this point, I was really hurting with each contraction, and they were 3 minutes apart. I told Frank I was ready for the epidural cause I was determined to not be miserable with this delivery. They said they had to wait until the blood results came back which was another hour!! Finally, as I am already groaning and feel like I am dying and throwing up, they came with the epidural. It was so hard to sit still for them to put the needle in! 5 minutes later, I was still freaking out in pain, on one side!! The epidural was only working on the left side. I was crying and they fetched the lady to come again, which took another hour. 2 more attempts later, and the epidural was finally working. I could breathe, and talk, and be nice again. I was fully dilated, but the midwife wanted me to lay with my legs up to get the baby positioned right. She would come in every so often to check and delivered 2 babies before Lily! A team of 3 came in and said it was time and she pushed all her weight from above while I pushed as hard as I could, pulling on metal bars, and they pulled from the other side. Lily's heart rate dropped dangerously low, they took blood and saw she was under distress and said one more try or we were off to the C-section room. The  second try worked and they cut me and the midwife pushed extremely hard from above... Lily came out blue as could be and I was terrified! It took a minute or so, but then I heard her cry. She had a full head of thick black pokey hair and was dark, looked like a little Inuit baby. Super cute. They laid her on me right away and Frank cut her cord. She was 3600 grams and 52 cm long and 1 week early. I love her dearly.