HAILEY IS HERE

Hailey Marie Hamilton arrived at 7:44am on Sunday, July 30, 2006. She weighed 7lbs 6oz and was 20.5 inches long. She scored almost perfectly on her APGAR test, and was delivered without the use of any pain medication whatsoever. She has a full head of brown hair with blond undertones.

Now that we have the basics out of the way, I'll tell you some of the gorey details. On Saturday night, I started having contractions around 10:00pm. I had a feeling that I would go into labor on Saturday because it was the one day in the last month that my doula was out of town. Neither of us thought that I would be 8 days late so it didn't seem like the trip would be a big deal. Surprise, surprise...it's the day Miss Hailey finally decides to come.

So, I didn't recognize the contractions at first because it felt like back pains, and there was no pain at all in the front. I started timing the pain around 11pm, and they were about 8 minutes apart. It didn't take long to go from 8 minutes apart down to 5 minutes apart, and we were packed and in the car by 12:45am. We arrived at the hospital around 1:15am, and I measured only 4 cm. I was so pissed when I first got there because I had hoped to labor at home until I was at least 6 cm. Luckily, it only took about an hour to get from 4 cm to 6 cm.

Within another 2 hours, I was 8 cm. Since Amy, the doula, was not around, my Mom served as my doula and Luke was the coach. It was great! They were absolutely perfect and kept me completely calm and relaxed through each contraction. Since I had so much back labor, my Mom stood in front of me so that I could hold on to her while Luke sat behind me and rolled ice or massaged my back. It worked out very well (that's not to say that it wasn't ridiculously painful).
The midwives and nurses basically stayed out of our way since we were doing so well on our own.

At about 6:30am, I was 9.5 cm and ready to begin pushing. Pushing was by far the most invigorating, amazing, and painful experience of my life. Still, I knew I was at the end so it didn't take that much motivation for me to really give it my all. I pushed for about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I was able to reach down and feel her head when it crowned. Then, before I knew it there was a screaming, slimey baby on my belly. I kept her on my belly for a long time before they finally took her to clean her up. It was amazing!!!!

Here's the picture from just after she was born. Since we are still at the hospital, we haven't been able to get the pictures off of the camera, but we'll put them up asap.