Cora Elizabeth Eversull was born on January 29, 2013 at 9:43 pm and did she ever come with a bang! People have asked me about my experience that day... and I have been hesitant to talk about it mainly because it was SUCH a whirlwind and took me until... really yesterday to be honest to sort out in my mind. As you all know Cora was due on February 10. Back in June when the doctor told us we were expecting they threw that date at us and we then planned our life around it. Funny how God and Cora had a different plan! Jason and I went to the doctor for a check up on Friday January 25 and I was 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced. Doctor terms... basically my body was showing signs but doctor reassured us that Cora would indeed be a February baby and off we went! On Sunday morning I woke up with a back ache and remember telling Jason that I thought I could feel Cora low in my belly. We went to church and I didn't think about it again! Well... Tuesday morning Jason went to work and I started getting ready for work. That same back pain went with me to work that day! About 1:30 while I was with a patient I began to feel something a little different... the back pain took my breath away for about 30 seconds then would go away. I decided maybe this was just Braxton Hicks (which everyone had told me about but I had not experienced to this point!) This continued with slowly increasing intensity until 4:00 when I saw my last patient and left for home. When I got home my mom was pulling into my driveway...she was coming to visit and help me finish up the nursery etc... and I told her about the pains I had been having the last few hours. My mom knowing me and being a wonderful nurse starting timing these "pains" behind my back! At this point I was having 30 second ...we will now call them contractions! 3 minutes apart!! My mom calmly informed me that I should call Jason and we were heading to the hospital at which point I began to freak out! I am sooo glad she was there.. especially since I could not get ahold of Jason at work!
We checked into the hospital ER at 6:45 and I was 2 cm dilated ... this is when I informed the nurses I might be interested in an epidural. For those of you who don't know... this was totally against my "birth plan". Jason and I had taken classes and read about 10 different books about the Bradley Method and natural birth. I had my heart set on this but couldn't imagine the pain continuing 8 more cm not knowing how long that would take. Jason got to the hospital about 7:15 and reassured me that I could in fact do this!! He was a wonderful coach :) ... in the next hour to keep this short and spare you the details things progressed VERY quickly! My water broke and I was 10 cm within an hour. At this point I was so thankful that we had prepared for natural birth because I no longer had a choice in the matter! Cora was born 4 and a half hours after I left work (maybe I should have stayed home that day!!) Needless to say... she entered this world with a bang and 2 weeks early!
The last three weeks have been a blur... but I have managed to catch some pretty great pictures of our girl! So I will end this post with her cuteness! :)
