Jabara Krewe: Alaina Reese's Birthday!

I never thought in a million years that Friday the 13th would be one of the top three days of my life. It started out a little rocky, but all of the pain and frustration was of course worth it in the end.

After 5 days of "patiently" waiting, on Thursday, we took Cole to the zoo, I went to the doctor, walked around the mall, and before dinner, took Lola for a walk (which, we all know, is more like a jog). I finally started having contractions after dinner and by 11pm they were getting stronger and about 5 - 7 min apart. We decided to take a trip to triage to see what was happening. Well, after being hooked up to a monitor for an hour, they sent me home even though my contractions were 2-3 min apart. I wasn't dilated enough, so home we went to get some "rest" Ben got rest, I got an entire night of painful contraction every 2 minutes. At 5:30, I went into work with Ben and I was determined not to go home without my baby! The doctor (whom I was not a fan of at this point) wanted to send me home again, but luckily, another doc was kind enough to call my real doctor who told them that I could stay and have a "social induction" i.e. your husband is a resident of my husband's so I'll be nice and let you stay and have your baby. Social or not, I got to stay!

To make a long story short, pitocin was started at around 9am. At 10:30 I got my epidural (tank God for epidurals!). At 11 they checked me and I was a 5. They wanted to break my water but it happened on its own at 12. And that's when things got a little wild....I went from a 5-10 in one hour and was in excruciating pain because it was all happening so quickly. Finally they came in and gave me more drugs and once those kicked in at 1:00, I started pushing. I think I did 2 test pushes and then 3 real ones and the next thing I knew, at 1:25 I was holding our beautiful Alaina.

She's healthy, nursing like a pro (though I can tell she's getting frustrated because there's no milk yet) and gorgeous! We couldn't be more in love with her. Cole was very cute as well, after he was freaked out by seeing me in a wheel chair, he warmed right up to her and he was very upset when we all couldn't go home with him. Hopefully he'll continue to love her :-)

As it turns out, Friday, May 13th, was a pretty lucky day!