Birth Story:

At 4:30 am on October 4, 2007 I arrived at the Hospital for a scheduled induction. I was 38 1/2 weeks pregnant. I was checked into my room around 5am, hooked up to the fetal monitors and had an IV started. I was 2cm dilated and 85% effaced. I was having mild contractions, but nothing that was unbearable.

Around 8am Dr. Cole came in to check my progress, I was 4 cementers dilated. She told me that she was going to come back around 9am to break my water. About 10 minutes after she left my water broke on it's own. A huge uncontrolable gush of fluid came rushing out and soaked my bed sheets. (makes me happy that I was at the hospital and not some where in public. That would have been embarassing.) After my water broke, My contractions were getting more intentse. Thats when I called for the anesthesiologist and my epidural. To my surprise the epidural was painless I didn't feel a thing.

After my epidural was in place, they attach a fetal heart monitor to the top of my babys head. It was more efficient then the heart monitor around my tummy. I had a foley catheter put in. I thought it was going to hurt, but it didn't. I couldn't even feel it. It was nice not having to get out of bed every 5 minutes to use the restroom.

At 10am the nurse came in and checked me again. I was almost a full 6cm dilated. After she checked me, another huge gush of fluid came rushing out, It was like my water broke again... this would happen another 2 times before I finally gave birth. It was weird. I was filled with tons and tons of extra fluid. Since I was progressing so fast, I started calling all of my friends and family to tell them ok any time now. HAHA lol boy was I wrong. Pretty much after I called everyone, I stopped dilating. From this point on I just did a lot of waiting. During my time of waiting, my epidural kept wearing off so I had to keep calling the anesthesiologist for more shots of pain medicine. I probably got about 5 shots of extra pain medicine through out the day. The pain just kept comming back. The only bad part about the pain medicine was, it made me very nauseous for about 5 minutes and I would throw up everytime. But it was worth it, it was like a gift from heaven. Instant pain relief and it made me feel so relaxed but also very sleepy.

Ok so around 8:45 pm after several hours of waiting I was finally 9cm. The nurse had me start pushing, so I could start moving my baby down the birth canal. I had been pushing for a while and I wanted to give up, I had horriable prssure pain and was so tired. When Dr.Cole arrived, I asked her to please do a C section. She agreed but reminded me that it was major surgery and the recovering time would be a lot longer. Dr. Cole left and my best friend Mr. Anesthesiologist came in and gave me more pain medicine. ahhh the pain was gone again. Dr. Cole came back and since my pain was subsiding again, I started to have second thoughts about the C section. I talked myself back into having my baby naturally. I kept telling myself, I can do this. So finally around 9:20pm I was almost a full 10cm and it was time to really start pushing.

I pushed and pushed. And just when I thought I was pushing as hard as I could, the nurse was encouraging me to push harder. Saying you can do this Diana, you're doing a great job. It was actually a very good motivator. I pushed for about 45 minutes. So it was a total of about 2 1/2 hours from first push to last push. Finally at 11:17 pm out popped my little girl. Or I should say my BIG girl. Sydney Nicole McAndrews weighed in at 9lbs 13oz and was 22in long. I had just given birth to a giant. I had to get an episiotomy but it wasn't bad, I was still numb from the epidural so I didn't feel a thing. lol My recovery was fast and painless, things have healed up quite nicely and I'm feel pretty much back to normal. Holding my daughter for the first time was one of the most exciting and joyous times of my life.

Sydney Nicole McAndrews: minutes after she was born: