Announcing...

I promised myself I would document child #2 with the same fervor that I documented Elena's first year. Nine months later I say better late than never.

To start, we got our positive pregnancy test on January 4th. From the beginning, this pregnancy was NOTHING like my my first pregnancy. It didn't take long for the morning sickness to hit with a vengeance. I struggled to keep down any food from weeks six through about week 16 or so. Juan was amazing through the entire ordeal. He totally took the lead with Elena and the house and taking care of me. It was all I could do to make it through a full day at work and get home. Elena time consisted of a lot of cuddling on the couch because it was all I could manage.

We had a few weeks of happy second trimester fun and soon we found out we were having a little boy. Juan was like a kid on Christmas morning when the ultrasound technician gave us the news. Our family would be complete! One little girl and one little boy.

Anyone who looked at me could tell that I was carrying this baby very very high. By early June, Baby V was consistently kicking my right rib cage. Our future soccer player was kicking so hard that he actually bruised the cartilage. Nothing I did made me comfortable. It took acupuncture and a course of prednisone, and finally 8 weeks later the baby dropping for me to get any relief.

The third trimester treated me to the hottest summer on record in Baltimore. I had to stay indoors just about all summer. By mid August I was having non-productive contractions daily.

They say tough pregnancies mean easy deliveries and in my case this was 100% true. As labor day weekend approached, we headed daily to Arundel Mills Mall to walk laps. On September 4, we did two laps (two miles) with no contractions. Disappointed by the lack of progress, I treated myself to a pedicure. With no contractions coming, I went to bed.
At 1:00 am on September 5, I was awoken by a strong contraction. 15 minutes later, another. From there they picked up. At 3:00 am I woke up Juan and took a shower and we started timing the contractions. By 5:00 am they were coming every 7-8 minutes. Juan headed out to get me food as we knew as soon as we got to the hospital I wouldn't be able to eat. At 7:00 am Elena woke up. Every time I had a contraction she got worried and said "Mommy OK?" So mommy had to pretend everything was OK during each contraction. By 7:30 am, we knew it was time to wake up Anna to watch Elena and call the doctor.

We headed to the hospital a little after 8:00 am. They put me on the monitors and checked me, and sent me to walk for an hour. When we came back from walking I was dilated to 3 cm and contracting every 5 minutes. We decided to have the doctor break my water to get things going. From there things went quickly. I got my epidural about 30 minutes later and didn't feel any more contractions after that.

At 4:47, I was feeling that something was happening. They came in to check me and asked me to do some "practice pushes" so we could see what would happen. After only two practice pushes they yelled at me to stop- the baby was ready to come. The doctor rushed to get the room set up and I was asking if I could push as they were finishing. Literally 3 pushes later, Daniel David was here. He came into the world at 5:18 pm weighing 7 pounds 13 ounces. He was given apgar scores of 9 and 9. We immediately fell in love.