Happy Birthday Sarah

Sarah B turned 5 years old today. Where has the time gone? It seems only a short time ago I was impatiently waiting for her to be born.

Sarah was 2 days late. That was the longest 2 days of my life. I was convinced at that point that I would be pregnant forever. In that line of thinking, I decided it would be perfectly ok to go see my sister at her work. They all loved to see Gracie and I was bored and aggravated at staying at the house.

We arrived at her workplace and while Gracie was visiting and my sister ate her lunch I sat down in her chair. I bent over to put my purse on the floor and felt a "pop"........then a gush. Oh, yes. My water had broken. This was at 12:30 in the afternoon.

My sister comes back to her desk, and a rather large puddle. She says, "Are you shitting me?" I said, "Well, I didn't pee in my pants, if that's what you are wondering." Time to go.

We gather some water proof pads, (she works in a Dr. office) and off we go. By the time we got to the car, contractions were very hard. All my sister kept saying was "Mandie, please don't have that baby in the car. Please wait til we get the hospital. You know I don't want to see that." I had Gracie with me and I was trying very hard not to scare her to death. Luckily she fell asleep on the way to the hospital.

I called Brandon and told him to come to the hospital NOW. He apparently had a car full of people with him for lunch and had to take them back to his office before he came to hospital. Knowing him, that was the scariest ride those poor people ever took.

We got to the hospital at about 1. I asked my sister to take Gracie to the waiting room. I knew this wouldn't be pretty. I had decided ahead of time that I would have Sarah naturally, no drugs, just like Gracie. The nurse came in and tried to start an IV for fluids, but was having no luck. She would just start to stick the needle in and a contraction would hit. I was most definitely not being still, so that took quite a bit of time.

Brandon finally came and I was so relieved and happy to see him. Before I knew it, I was pushing. She got to a certain point though and I lost all control. When I had Gracie, I don't think I pushed for maybe 10 minutes and she came rocketing out. Sarah was an entirely different experience. This hurt, BAD. I couldn't push her out. I would try, but she would just start to poke her little head out and I froze; back in she would go. I just wanted to cross my legs and forget the whole thing. Make it go away. The doctor was getting very frustrated at me, and I wanted them to just get her out. I didn't know how I was going to do this. I was scared.

I mustered everything in my body and gave it what I could and at 1:58 she was born. All 8 lbs and 2 oz of her. Roughly an hour and a half after my water had broken. That had to be some sort of record. Poor Sarah paid for it though, coming so quickly. Her little face was so bruised and she also had a broken clavicle. The pediatrician said it was fairly common but I couldn't help but blame myself. If I had just sucked it up and pushed her out maybe she wouldn't have been so banged up.

The guilt faded and time has marched on. She has paid me back in spades for her birth. She is stubborn, willful, and pushes my buttons. She is quite a tough little girl. She also has a spirit about her though. To end I will share a conversation she and her little brother had in the van this morning.

They were piling in the van to go to school, and Colin turns to Sarah and says, "Sarah you farted."

Sarah says very matter of fact, "Colin, no I didn't. It's my birthday. Birthday people don't fart."