Sweet 16

Today I gave birth to my first born daughter. After 27 hours of labor, 2 hours of pushing and an emergency C-Section, Gillian was born. It was an amazing, beautiful time. I remember it like it was yesterday. Gillian was 2 weeks overdue and I was admitted to the hospital to be induced. I went in on the 4th knowing that it could take several days for her to be born. I was induced at 7am on the 5th and at Noon, my water broke with meconium. Around 6PM, the major contractions started. I thought I would be able to handle them with no problem. Just breathe a little and voila! Well, at 10PM, I was begging for meds, epidural, ANYTHING and the nurse said I had to be at least 3CM's and refused to check me because the monitor wasn't really showing any contractions. Everytime I had a contraction I would sit up and mess up the tracing. The nurse finally came back at 3AM and checked me and said I was 6CM's and I could have an epidural. The MD came in and gave me the blessed epidural and I went to sleep until they woke me up at 6AM, checked me, declared me fully dialated with a lip. They had my start pushing, but the baby wasn't engaged. They did some kind of test and noticed that her oxygen was low and said I needed a c-section stat. So, everything started happening in a blur and the next thing I knew, Gillian was born. The whole time I was pregnant, I thought I was having a boy and all the sono's I had never showed the sex. So, when they said it was a girl, I was so, so surprised. They took her away because it was a crash section and after a while, brought her back to me in recovery. I remember holding her and thinking to myself, "OH my God, what have I done?" The enormity of the responsibilty that was handed to me in that baby was overwhelming. But from there on, we've been a team her and I. Learnig to breastfeed, potty training, traveling, just being together. So, it was only fitting that the first thing we did this morning was to head down to the DMV and apply for her learners permit! She passed the test the first time and we went to a parking lot so she could practice. She did much better than I thought, but we still have a way to go before we are ready to hit the open road.

So, to my darling daughter. Happy Sweet 16 sweetie! I love you!

Mom