Our local hospital is not the easiest to get around in. A fair comparison would probably be the set of the movie Labyrinth. We haven’t run into David Bowie yet, but the path from the parking ramp to the labor and delivery rooms is a zigzag of white and teal hallways. Tara and I made our way to triage last night at about nine o’clock and were moved to a more permanent room when they discovered she was dilated to 5 centimeters.
In short, Tara was incredible. She breathed and willed her way through each contraction for 7 hours, not to mention those she had before we got to the hospital. At four in the morning we [read: Tara] decided that drugs were absolutely necessary and I was compelled to agree. It took quite a while to actually get an anesthetist into our room because there were also two c-sections going on elsewhere at that particular time. The drugs helped, we could sleep for a couple hours.
When we awoke a couple hours later Leah had positioned herself properly and Tara was ready for the actual labor, this time with an epidural to ease the pain. Probably nothing can prepare you for the sensory onslaught that is delivery. I won’t bother to share the details.
Leah Mikayla was born November 24, 2006 at 7:34am. She is now only a couple hours old, but she seems perfectly at home.