Introducing...

Now that things are calming down a LITTLE bit, I thought I'd share with you all our greatest joy!

EmmaJane Lynn Williams
was born on June 30th, 2011 (6 days early!) at 3:24am
weighing 6lbs 4oz. and 18.5 inches long

Here are some pictures of her first week of life:Heading home!First walk with her papi! Playing after work

Still at the hospital, all happy and milk-drunk.

We are so happy she's finally here, she sure did surprise us!

My water broke on Wednesday June 29th around 9am. After many calls to mothers, husbands and finally the doctors office, we were told to go to labor and delivery (scariest words anyone has ever said to me). Once at the hospital they did some tests to see if it was actually my water that broke, and it was! So around 2pm they started me on pitocin, seeing as I was only at a 1, and had been since the previous Thursday. My nurse kept having to crank up my dosage because I was "looking too good" as she said, AKA I wasn't feeling anything.
Around 8pm, my contractions started hurting, bad. I'd say I felt about 15-20 really awful ones before I thought I should get checked. Luckily, the nurse that started my pitocin came back after a long hiatus with a different nurse and she could visibly see that I was in a lot of pain, compared to the last time she saw me. So she checked me and eureka! I was a 3-4, which meant epidural time. Like every birth story, I couldn't get my drugs right away so I was given stuff in my IV that passed me out for the next hour, which I didn't mind. My epidural did come, which was the most interesting feeling, it didn't hurt, it was just...interesting. It started working right away, but I got the shakes big time, it just felt like I was freezing and really nervous at the same time.
And my nurse told me to get some sleep so I can have energy to push that baby out, but yeah right. Everyone slept but me. How could I? I was about to become a mother, I was about to meet the little girl I had spent 9 months dreaming about.
Anyways, my doctor surprised me and came in around midnight to check me again and I was a 9! He was shocked considering my progress was so slow the last time he saw me (before my epidural). He was also very tired, EmmaJane was going to be his 5th baby delivered that night!
I tried to "sleep" some more and my nurse came in and put me on oxygen because the babies heart rate kept dropping with each contraction. So as you can imagine I really couldn't sleep after that.
Around 2am, my nurse came and we started doing some minor practice pushes. We did this for about an hour and she gave me a good 10 minute break and then it was time to kick everyone out and start pushing for real. So we did. And let me tell you, if I had actually written down a detailed birth plan, it would've been everything my nurse did for me. She let me progress well after I was 10cm dilated, she waited until I felt the pressure to push, she stretched me out to reduce tearing, she was beyond motivating when it came to pushing. And she was really funny. Imagine pushing a baby out and a little Filipino lady saying "Girl, I lazy, I want this baby out in 4 pushes, I no have time for this." It worked, 7 pushes and a call to the doctor later, out came EmmaJane!
Of course I cried. and cried. and cried. and well, so did she.
They cleaned her on top of me and took her away for about 2-3 minutes while they finished up stuff on me. and then I held her skin to skin for the next 2-3 hours, I loved it so much. The best part was this "golden hour" Hoag does, where no one disturbs you and baby and daddy for the first hour after she's born, it was so special, I recommend it. She calmed down right when I held her and I recognized all her little kicks and wiggles just like when she was inside of me.
We only spent 1.5 days in the hospital due to good health in both me and EmmaJane!

So here we are, parents. We can't believe she's ours!