Kathryn Ella Weide

Our baby girl arrived on Sept. 8 at 1:13 pm. She was 7 lbs 6 ozs and 18 1/2 inches long. We were so surprised that it was a girl. Although my mother said she had a hunch.

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On Saturday, the 5th, my Braxton-Hicks contractions began to get stronger. I could tell they were different than before, but they never were regular. This went on through the weekend.

The evening of Labor Day Shae and I went over to my parents house for a cook out for "the last supper." When we arrived there, about 4:30, I began to have painful contractions. I sat down and they seemed to subside. After we ate they started again, but subsided when I began walking around. We went home and got the kids ready for bed. I wasn't packed for the hospital yet because I figured I would have time in the morning. We didn't have to be at the hospital until 11:30 am on the 8th.

At about 11 pm my contractions came back and began waking me every 20 mins. I wasn't really concerned because they were still 15-20 minutes apart and varying in intensity. Although I did have to breath through most of them. I called the nurse in the morning about 6 am and she told me to come in if they got more than 5 an hour. Then she told me to drink a bunch of water and take it easy. She obviously didn't know what she was talking about since I had just told her I had a c-section scheduled that day and that with surgery you can't drink/eat anything after midnight. So I woke Shae and told him we would need to get ready to go in case we needed to get into a hurry. We got Landon off to school and I packed and got ready. I have to admit that contractions are hard, but more tolerable than those produced on Pitocin. At about 8 am the contractions moved to every 10 minutes, but I still wasn't sure if I should go in, so we sat down to watch some TV. At 9 the phone rings. It's Dr. Brown's (my ob's) nurse asking if I could come early because the doctor was running early (surprise, surprise). So we left for the hospital and everything went smoothly from there. Except those pesky contractions that continued to cause me pain until the epidural was administered at around 12:45 pm.

We are very thankful to have had a safe delivery and beautiful baby girl. We are adjusting slowly and have found adding a third is a challenge. Landon is doing ok with it, but Collin is taking some time to get used to it. Fortunately, Shae has 6 weeks off paternity leave. He is doing a great job keeping the housework up. And he sat down yesterday evening and wondered how there could always be something to do. The laundry or something, so I am thinking he may be getting a glimpse of my life.