Welcome to the world Baby Grace!

Grace Sally Ernzen made her debut in this world at 5:11 a.m. on September 17, 2010. She has blessed both Greg and I with so much love and special moments since then that I have not had the time to really get on the computer and share all of the fun things we have been doing since her birth. I'll definitely post more in the next few days to try to get caught up, but first a picture or two of Baby Grace and her short but sweet birth story.

I was blessed not only with a beautiful daughter, but also a short and relatively easy labor and delivery. For the last few weeks leading up to Grace's birth, I was worried that I wouldn't know if I had gone into labor or not. Everyone kept saying, "oh, you'll know," but I was still scared that my water would break in a slow leak and I would not know the difference.

Well, when my water did break, I definitely knew the difference pretty quickly. At 12:45 a.m. on Friday September 17, I jumped out of bed (or as much of a jump as a 39 1/2 week pregnant woman can do) because I thought I had just gone to the bathroom in my sleep. Lo and behold it was my water because immediately I felt my first contraction and knew that something more was happening. I woke Greg up and said "honey, I think I'm in labor. I'm going to take a shower to see if these contractions the real thing." I also wanted to take a shower because I thought it would be a day or two before I would be able to shower again (and I wanted to look halfway decent if I was in labor, ha!). Greg, still halfway asleep, says "okay, wake me up if you think it is real." Mind you, I hadn't had any major "fake" contractions, so it wasn't like we had any previous false alarms. Two minutes later Greg comes into the bathroom obviously awake now and definitely anxious, nervous, excited, etc., all of the emotions of a first time dad. 


The contractions don't stop, are starting to get really close together (like 3 minutes!) and definitely more painful. I call Dr. Gordon, and after the 3rd call I hear back from him and we get the okay to go to the hospital. I was admitted to St. Joseph Medical Center at 2 a.m., and had already progressed to a 5 at 100 percent. Two days prior at my weekly appointment I was a 3 at 80 percent, so it was great news to hear that we were definitely progressing further in the right direction. I got the epidural at 3 a.m. (thank goodness for modern medicine!!) and started pushing at 4:30 a.m. 


After 45 minutes of pushing, definitely the most exhausting thing I have ever done in my entire life, Grace Sally came into the world with a full head of hair and sweet little lungs as she let out her first precious cry. Greg stayed with her the entire time she was being cleaned off, bathed, bundled and checked out. I finally got to hold her and she started nursing right away. 


We are so blessed with our little bundle of joy and I can't wait to share more of Grace's life with you. I'll also finally post pictures of the nursery, which, ironically, I took pictures of on Thursday night (Sept. 16) and was planning on posting that Friday that Grace was born. She was just ready to come out on her own, and I am glad that she did. Looking forward to sharing more soon.