Pics of Maya @ 3 weeks old

Mayamiko's Birth Story

I finally have a little time to write about giving birth to my beautiful Mayamiko Sophia. First I must say that until it came time to push, I was not having fun!
I woke up at about 4:00am Wednesday morning to what I thought was Braxton Hicks contractions. After an hour of contractions I was convinced that they were fake and was waiting for them to end so that I could go back to sleep. They didn't stop, and they were starting to get stronger. So around 6:00am I went back into my room and told my husband that I thought they were the real thing, but I wasn't quite sure. I told him that I would go to my mom's house when he left to go to work, and if they got any worse I would call him.
By the time I got to my mom's house my contractions had picked up in intensity and were now about 10 to 12 minutes apart. Two hours later they were steady at 5 minutes apart, so I called my doctor's office and asked them what I should do and they told me to head to the hospital. I called Bernard and told him, and he said he would meet us there.
When we arrived at the hospital they checked us in and put us in what I deemed "The Jail Cell", to monitor me and the baby. The nurses checked me and said that I had not dialated much and was just barely at 2cm. They told me to go walk for a couple of hours and they would check me again. So Bernard and I started to walk, during our walk the contractions picked up in their intensity yet again. When we arrived back in our holding cell the nurse checked again and I was still at 2 cm! At this point walking was out of the question because of the pain that I was in. By mid afternoon they offered me pain meds through an IV and I decided to take them. If you want to hear crazy stories about how I reacted to these drugs talk to Bernard, Wanda, Kiersten, or my Mom. I guess I was acting pretty silly! At 5pm I still had not progressed from 2cm, so they sent me home.
I wanted to cry at this point. I was in so much pain and nothing was happening. So we got home and I went to sleep, the hospital had given me something to help me sleep. I slept for about an hour. By 6pm my contractions were about 2minutes apart and I was in serious pain. That's when I started to panic. I started begging for my mom, I called on the name of Jesus several times, I hung on to Bernard like a life line, and fell out on the floor. Bernard finally called my mom and asked her to come. When she didn't come quick enough (within 5 minutes, no way she could have made it that quick)I told Bernard to take me to the hospital. So we got into the car and started to pull out, that's when I decided that he needed to call 911 because I was sure I was not going to make it! So we sat in the driveway arguing about calling 911 until another contraction hit and I stopped arguing about it.
When we arrived at the hospital, they put us in another holding cell. Then nurse "Hatchett" came in and was really mean and insisted that I calm down. She told to do a breathing exercise that I was told not to do by another nurse. I did it because I didn't know what else to do at this point. She checked my cervix and told me that I was still at 2cm. She told me that they would hold me in a birthing room for 24hrs to see if anything would happen. It was at this point that I started thinking about an epidural. My contractions were coming on top of each other and I was not dialating.
It took them a while to get me moved into the birthing room, so by the time I got in there it was time for another check. My prayers had been answered I'd dialated to 5cm! I asked for the epidural. This was not something I wanted to do, but it was 8:00pm and I was tired and didn't know how much longer I could take the pain. So I got it, and it was like a magic pill. I went to sleep and didn't feel any pain for a while. The epidural started to wear off around 11:30 or so and by that time I was 10cm and feeling the urge to push. The nurses called the doctor in and I started pushing a little before 12:00am, by 12:23 Mayamiko Sophia was here! When she came out she had to be taken immediately to be cleaned up because she had had a bowel movement in me. I also found out that her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck as she came out. God took care of her and she was born a healthy baby.