February 26th 1997

It was February 25th 1997. I was 21. I was laying in bed probably eating ice cream as this is what I did most every day when I was pregnant with her. All of a sudden my pants were wet. I jumped up out of bed because I didn't want to pee my brand new mattress. I got up and went to the bathroom but I didn't have to pee. After I changed my pants, I laid back down. It happened again so I jumped up and ran to the bathroom again only to realize that it might be my water. I still had a few days left to go. SHe was due march 4th. So I called the Dr as I sat on the pot. I told him that every time I laid down I was leaking but if I sat up or stood up it stopped. He said we should go to the hospital. We had chosen to have her at St. Mary's. On the way to the hospital, still not in any real hurry, David asks, How long do you think we will be there? I really didn't know if he would send us back home or not so I told him I wasn't sure. He mentions that since he had just gotten home from work, he did not get to eat dinner. Could we please stop at McD's? I said sure but have since given him trouble about it since that day every year. After arriving at St. Mary's and getting signed in, they reassured us that yes, my water had broke and we were not going to go anywhere. They were going to wait a little while longer to see if I was going to go into labor by myself. I didn't (in the amount of time thay wanted to me to) so they started me on Pit. About 26hours later, after the pit, I was still only dialated to 6cm. She was starting to go into disstress and contractions on Pit are like having 10 contractions in one. They decided I was going to have her via an emergency c-cection. After she was born they realized that she was facing the wrong direction and that was why she was not progressing. Her fave was being smashed, she was considered posterior position. If they had realized that sooner, it would have been a completly different outcome. Josephine was in the same position and they turned her and she was born v-bac. Abi was born February26th, 6:50pm, 19 and a half inches long, 8pounds, one ounce. She had a lot of facial bruising from being posterior. But she was my beautiful baby girl who we named Abigail Shirley-Marie Sandbach. She was born on David's mother's birthday. He had origianly asked me if she was born on his mother's birthday, could we name her after his mother. I had told him yes because what were the odds. HUH!! Little did I know. Well, after lots of crying becasue I didn't want to change my baby's name, we decided on hyphening her middle name. We had picked out the name Abigail from our baby book one night while eating hot wings at Hooters. The Marie is my middle name. It is also my mother's middle name and my Grandmother's middle name. I had come to really love her name that we picked out and to ask a woman who just gave birth to her first baby girl to change her name... Seriously??? Well, I love the name we gave her and I could imagine her name being anything else. Well, now tweleve years later I have this beautiful young lady that is to talented and smart. I can't believe how far we have come. She made the honor roll in her first year of middle school. She is playing the trumpet and the french horn right now at school. She is doing great on both. She is also a Cadette in GirlScouts and loves it. I can't wait for Char and Cara to get into Daisy's. There are so many new adventures to go through with Abigail and I am ready for most of them. Some of them I still have a lot of learning to do. Parenting is a learing experience. I am enjoying this rollercoaster though.