The Anconas: I Wouldn't Trade It For The World

**started 2 days ago**

Well, 25 days ago, our lives were forever changed, and as the title says I wouldn't trade it for the world!!

Abigail Marie Ancona was born on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 9:45 am, 12 days early. That's right, it was a GIRL!!!!! I would say about 97% of people thought I was carrying a boy. I had random patients at work telling me all the way up to the end 'that it has to be a boy' and the other thing I heard a lot was 'you're going to go late, you always go late with your first'. Well, wrong and wrong.

On Thursday, February 4th, I felt a trickle of some sort. Being 38 weeks pregnant, I had to assess the situation a bit. Matt was in the office downtown that day, so I sent him an email (knowing he was in a meeting), to please step out and call me when he got a minute. I let him know what was going on and told him I'd get back to him with my assessment, in a little while. About an hour later, I knew that this was for sure amniotic fluid. Another email to Matt, with 'you may want to call me & try to leave the office as soon as you can' was sent. I got a phone call back a little bit later, and I told him this was the real deal and to look up the train schedule so he could head home on the next train.

I got ahold of my doctor (after 2 hours, they were having phone problems!), and was told to head to Labor & Delivery. I let them know that I had to wait for Matt to get home. So, at about 3:15pm, we headed to the hospital. I knew we'd be heading home with a baby, Matt was convinced they would send us home and tell us to come back when I was having contractions. Even though I was leaking fluid, I wasn't having any contractions. Before we left, we snapped a few pictures of us and Matt wandered around with me standing there telling him to 'hurry up, we have to go, we have to go now, please hurry up' It's a good thing we had packed our bags the weekend before.

After we got to the hospital, and were brought up to Labor & Delivery, it was confirmed that it was amniotic fluid. I was dilated to 1cm and about 20% effaced - long road ahead! I was hooked up to the iv, blood pressure cuff, heart rate monitor for the baby and a contraction monitor. The contraction monitor showed that I was wasn't having contractions at that time. I was also hooked up to Pitocin (the dreaded drug), which I knew heading to the hospital I was going to get, since I wasn't having contractions, and I was not to happy about that. The pitocin got turned up every 20 minutes (or about that), and the contractions became very regular and each one was getting more and more painful. At about 10:30 pm, I was dilated to 2cm and 80% effaced. Knowing that it takes the longest to dilate to 4cm and then about 1cm every hour after that, I asked for the epidural. There was no way I was going to have enough energy to push when the time came, if I didn't get some rest and relief before then. I had been trembling and concentrating on my breathing through ever contraction starting at about 9pm. Within minutes of asking for the epidural the anestesoligst was in the room, which was nice, it gave me less time to think about it!

At 3:30 am, I was dilated to 5cm and still 80% effaced. At 6:30 am I was 8cm dilated and about 90% effaced. At 8:55am, I was checked again and found out that it was time to push. I didn't have the urge to push yet, but was glad we were at the end and were going to be finding out who this person was. I started pushing at about 9:05am and at 9:45 am, we heard the words "It's a Girl!" That is a moment I will never forget. Not knowing what we were having was one of the best decisions we could have made.

Abigail weighed in at 7lbs 1oz and 21 inches long. Poor girl had a cone head from being in the birth canal for so long, but that got better within a day.

Both Matt and I are so in love with her and already cannot imagine our lives without her.

At this point, Abigail has become very aware of her surroundings. If your talking to her, she'll look your way, usually only for a minute and then she looks away. She's getting better about holding her head up on her own, though she still has a long way to go with that.

I'm hoping to get into some sort of a routine soon, and be able to update on a little bit more of a regular basis. Hopefully, shorter updates.