Reagan's Birth

What a busy couple of weeks its been!  I finally have time to write about Reagan's birth.  I was almost 38 weeks, when I started having contractions more often.  I woke up Friday morning, having contractions for a couple of hours, but they eventually fizzled out my mid morning.  Saturday night, I woke up with contractions around 1am and they were about 5 minutes apart but not really strong.  They eventually stopped after about 2-3 hours.  We woke up that morning and went to church, but I ended up coming home after Sunday School from being so overly exhausted.  Sunday evening, we went to the zoo for Christmas at the zoo.  I was hoping the walking was going to help me go into real labor.  Well. again at 1am I woke up again with contractions.  This time they were much stronger.  Within a half hour of waking up I knew I was in real labor.  I woke up Chris and we started getting ready to go to the hospital.  Of course we had to call our friends to come over and stay with our kids.  Great friends that are willing to come over in the middle of the night, thanks Leanne and Jeremy!  We got to the hospital about 2:30am.  I was dilated to 4cm and having contractions every 2-5 minutes.  They admitted me and gave me my epidural!!  Yay!  But that always slows down my labor, so they just let me rest til my doctor arrived about 9am.  He started Pitocin and the contractions started back up some.  Around 10:30am, he broke my water and upped my Pitocin.  Of course I couldn't sleep at all, but Chris sure did!  About 2:20pm, I knew it was about time to have our little Reagan!  They started to prepare the room for her arrival, and she was out in 3 contractions!  She was born Monday, December 22 @ 2:40pm.  She was 7lb 2.5oz and was 20 in.  

It was love at first sight!  She was beautiful.  I loved cuddling with her.  Chris and I enjoyed spending time with her the next few hours.  Then Chris had to go home to be with our other kids.  Because the flu is so bad this year, the hospital had a no visitor policy.  So, none of our kids could visit us in the hospital.  Which meant Chris couldn't come up to the hospital very often.  Luckily he did get to come up some, since 2 awesome teenage girls came to take care of our young ones so he could visit and do a little work, and finish Christmas shopping!  The Still's were amazing to our family while I was in the hospital.  Besides their daughters babysitting, their family made meals for our kids the whole time I was in the hospital!  They were such a blessing to our family.  I had some great bonding time with Reagan in the hospital since it was pretty much just me and her the whole time.  We came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve.  The kids were all very excited to meet their baby sister!