8 weeks old...

Today Gabriela will be 8 weeks old. I can't believe how fast time is flying. It seems like only yesterday I was walking into the hospital unsure and uncertain of what I was going to experience. As if I were a first time mom all over again....

On Wednesday July 28th, I started to get contractions that were very irregular. At first they were 5-6 minutes apart then 15-20 minutes apart. I went to bed and they went away around 2am. The next morning I woke up with really bad cramps and decided not to go to work. Julio was off from work. Around 1pm, I called the doctors office because the cramps weren't going away. They sent me to L&D where they told me that my cramps were actually contractions and I was almost 5cm dilated. I was started on Pitocin around 5pm to try to get my contractions regular and they were going to break my water later on when they became regular.

Around 8pm, the anesthesiologist came with my epidural. It was wonderful! I got to sleep for three hours or so. I woke up around 11:30pm because I thought I had urinated myself since I refused a catheter when I got the epidural. It wasn't urine, my water had broken on its own. At midnight I started feeling a sharp pain on my right side and the doctor told me that I was 10cm and the baby must be pinching a nerve but he didn't want me to push yet. After 20 minutes, he comes in with a boom box and said, "Okay, lets party"...lol.

When they put my legs on the stirrups, the first thing Julio said was, "whoa! that's her head!" The doctors reasoning for waiting a little longer after 10cm was so that I didn't have to push the head out for long since it was already coming down on its own. Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" starts playing when doctor tells me, "Push whenever you want, don't wait for a contraction and we don't count. Do whatever your body tells you to." So I started pushing and halfway through Black Eyed Peas, "Tonight's gonna be a good night", Gabriela was born.

They cleaned her up and gave her back to me and left me, Julio, and my mom with her for some family bonding time. Our first visitor was Mary.  Gabriela was so beautiful and alert, looking around at all of us. She looked so much like Julian. She was 7lbs 9oz and 21 inches long born on July 30, 2010 at 12:43am.

                                                 Daddy was so in Love...

Julian meeting his sister for the first time...

 

Sometimes I start thinking of everything that I've gone through in the past year and can't help but to feel elated. I have an awesome husband, two beautiful kids and all in all, my pregnancy really wasn't that bad. Very unlike Julian's pregnancy....but that's a story for another day...