Delivered

Yes! Sophie is finally out!!! I went in for my routine check-up on 11 Aug and my Dr told me I was already 4 cm dilated. So it was straight into the delivery suite, and next thing you know, there she was.

I didn't get to to experience the contraction thing though - I had felt a few very mild menstrual crampy type pains the night before, but they never reached the crawling on floor / throwing up stage. I only realised that day that my Dr's clinic is on a floor with a direct secret passage type connection to the delivery suites in the adjacent hospital building. I thought I'd have to take the lift down, waddle next door, take the lift up... nope. Cool!

The first thing she did was get her nurses to page for an anaesthetist, although I was still half tempted to see if I could cope without one. In the end they had to page 3 different ones cause they were, one after the other, all too busy... I couldn't bring myself to say, "urm, sorry, but I'd like to try without..."

In the end, I think going with the epidural was a good idea... I sailed through my first epidural because I had no idea how uncomfortable it would be, but the second time round I kept flinching because my memory kept saying, "ok, this is the part where it hurts!". The epi went in before Dr broke the water bag, so I didn't feel a thing this time. They kept the dosage at its lowest though, so I did start to feel something towards the end. All in, it lasted about 3 hours, nearly the same as my first. : )

Recovery was much faster this time round, had a great time in the hospital the first two days and was trawling down to the shops on the third day (I stayed four days, for non-medical reasons : P ). Wheee.

Sophie is now 14 days old