Emily Twyla Smith

November 6, 2004

5lbs 15oz - 19 inches

Emily too was born on a Saturday. Weird that the first two were born on a Saturday, but it works.   Shawn's mom has baby radar. She knew when she needed to come to Ohio before Eric was born and she even knew this time when she needed to get here. I started to have contractions with Emily on Thursday afternoon. They never went away, seriously! I slept horribly that night and Friday morning woke up to tell Shawn that I didn't think he should go into work. At this time, he was working at DealerTire in Cleveland, Ohio. Which isn't too far away, but if traffic is bad it could take him around an hour or longer to get home. So he didn't go in. I ate breakfast and waited then called my doctor. She said I should go in. So we went around 10 a.m.

They took me into a waiting room to see if I was ready to be admitted. My contractions were 2-3 minutes apart. They had me walk the halls to try to get her to drop, but she refused. Since she hadn't dropped they sent me home. Which in hine sight was good because I was able to labor at home. The hospital where she was delievered at was only abotu 10 minutes away from our house - Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, Ohio. So while at home in labor pains all day long, I drank a lot of water, got a chance to eat food, take a cat nap, and waited. It wasn't until 10p.m. that I was feeling the need to go back. The nurses were making bets on whether or not I was going to return that night.

Going into the hospital at 10pm is an interesting ordeal. You can only go through the ER. Then you have to wait for someone to get a wheelchair. Then wait again for a different person to wheel you up to the Labor and Delivery wing. Then they weight you and take you to a holding room to check you out before you are admitted. Then you wait some more before someone actually comes to check on you. Once they did, they saw that the baby had dropped and my contractions were very close together. They admitted me. All I wanted to do was stand and swing back and forth. That was the most comforting thing. While they were admitting me they kept asking me if I wanted and epidural, but truly I wasn't in that much pain. So I kept refusing. They then needed me to lay down in the bed so they could take blood, start and IV line and take my blood pressure. By this time it is midnight. Then they decide to call the doctor for her to come. When she finally gets there I am already 10 cm dialated. She said she was going to go and check on a couple other patients and be right back. Well at a little after 1 in the morning, I am telling Shawn to go and get someone because I need to push. He goes and comes back with the nurse. The nurse checks and sees that the baby is already starting to crown. They yell for the doctor and by time she got in and got her smock on I was pushing. Two pushes and Emily was out. She was a little peanut compared to Eric. I had no pain meds either and they thought I was nuts. I didn't rip either. It was so enjoyable.

However, once they got me all cleaned up and Emily was weighted and measure and poked and proded I got a chance to hold her for a little while. They then took her and I was fast asleep. Shawn was there for the whole ordeal and thankfully he was able to take the pictures and watch everything because I had no more energy to do anything. At 2am, I finally woke up from my cat nap and got a chance to nurse her. She didn't take too well and I had a gut feeling that this wasn't going to be good, but I was going to do my best.

After being in the hospital for 36 hours, I had requested to leave. I had been through this before, I knew what I needed to do. They had no problem with letting me leave too. I just had to bring Emily back around 48 hours so that she could get a billirubin test done. So we went home. It was nice to be home and not poked and prodded. They kept wanting to take my blood pressure when I was nursing. Not a good thing to do seeing that my blood pressure would be high due to nursing. Finally I told them no once and they were like why. Once they took my blood pressure after I was done and they saw that everything was normal they had no concerns.

We have to also remember that there was Eric in the mix too. Since Grammie has baby radar, she was able to stay at our place and take care of him. But when they came to the hospital he was very upset that there was a new little baby in the mix. He didn't want to talk to me at all. He was rather mad about the whole situation. The funniest of all is that once we got Emily home, she was fast asleep in the infant carrier so we just left her in it and placed her in the living room. Curious Eric went over to look at her and took one look and hit her on her head and ran as fast as he could to the playroom. I laughed because that was his way of telling us what he thought. He was only 21 months old when Emily came along and didn't really understand everything.