Born: August 1, 2004
Time: 10:54am
Weight: 7lbs. 4oz.
Length: 21"
Cassandra's Birth Story

I woke up Sat (7/31) with what seemed to be my water leaking. This continued all day & I talked to my midwife and we waited it out and that evening decided I would come in on Sun and she would check that it was amniotic fluid. About an hour later (8:30) I started getting contrax about 10 min apart and a bit stronger. By bedtime I was breathing w/them a little more. About 3 am they were 5-7 min apart so I called her again and she said to see if they progress to 3-5 min apart. I went back to bed and they actually went back to 8-10 min. So in the morning I was exhausted and sick to my stomach from the cramping. She called me about 7 am and had me come into the hospital to be checked. At the hospital she tested & found it was amniotic fluid and I was at 5 cm (I was at 3 cm the previous Thursday at my appointment). By then I was relaxing & breathing with contractions but they weren't terrible. My water bag was bulging so we decided to break it all the way vs. have to use pitocin (since my water had been leaking 24 hrs at that point). She broke it and we headed to our room. That was 9:15 am. She wanted us to walk the halls for an hour but by the time Dave got my stuff and we got settled (about 9:45) the contractions were strong enough where I could not have stood during one. So we opted for the hot tub ~ things started going fast after this.

The contractions were strong and very painful but the jets, warm water and my wonderful hubby rubbing my back until it was bruised (seriously) helped. At around 10:35 ish I could feel some pressure so they checked me and I was 7 cm. They paged my midwife who had run to get Starbucks cause she thought she had awhile!! Ten min. later 10:45 I was completely dilated and with that contraction I yelled "I have to push!!" and everyone yelled "No!!!" :) So I breathed through it and got out of the tub and back to the bed. Three contractions and 9 minutes later of pushing and Cassandra Grace entered the world (10:54 am)!

Poor Miss Cassie had blood taken and had a slightly high white blood cell count so they did a culture (think that's the word) but had to hook her up to an iv of antibiotics at about 1 am Mon morning and she had to keep that in until the culture came back negative 48 hours later :( Poor thing! But glad there wasn't an infection.