Hannah Dorothy Ogden ~ July 24, 2011 ~ 8lb. 12oz. ~ 20 1/2 inches

As a child, my family always celebrated Christmas on the night of Christmas Eve.  We would read the Christmas story from the Bible and open presents.  Following her mom’s side of the family, Hannah was right on schedule...for Christmas in July.  Our “present” arrived “Christmas Eve,” July 24, at 11:20 pm.

I first began to hope I was in labor at 4am when I noticed some light bleeding.  I went back to bed and tried to sleep.  Being nine days overdue, I was so excited at the possibility of FINALLY meeting my baby girl that I found it too hard to sleep.  Nathan and I spent our time reading, talking, and watching movies.  At 8am we notified the midwife and made plans to stay home from church.  I had some back pain that seemed to come and go, but nothing regular or too severe--I assumed my back pain came from my back surgery (2 years ago) and the stress of carrying the extra baby weight.  In fact, I didn’t really believe I was in labor.  By 1pm we were tired of waiting for anything to happen so we drove to the mall to eat lunch and do some walking.  After 4 laps around the interior of the mall and a delicious Subway sandwich (I was SO hungry!), we drove home.  During our last lap around the mall, I finally started to believe I might be in labor.  

We started home from the mall around 4pm and settled in for another long weight--contractions were still about 10 minutes apart.  Our midwife, Melanie, called us around 6:45pm to see how we were doing; by then the contractions were about 8 minutes apart.  She left the decision up to us about when to come in to the birthing center, and we decided to wait a while longer until the contractions were about 5 minutes apart.  All of a sudden, at 7:20pm, my contractions went from 8 minutes to 2 minutes with no rest in between.  We made our way as quickly as possible to the birthing center after that (about a 50-60 minute drive in hard labor!  poor Nathan). 

We arrived at the birthing center at 8:30pm and I was 6cm dilated.  Come to find out, I had so much back pain because Hannah was turned around at first. After about 2 hours of long, painful laboring, I was fully dilated and could finally work on bringing Hannah into this world!  By 11:20pm she was here--I got to help catch her even!  She was perfect.  I’ll never forget holding her and seeing her for the first time!  We were discharged at 3:00am and headed home! We've enjoyed her first week of life just watching and loving her.  I can’t get enough!!