Being a photographer I knew how important it would be to capture as much as I could during this experience. Since moving to Georgia I only had a month to get ready for Maddie’s arrival and I didn’t get to where hiring a photographer was met so I decided to do what I could. Now I can say without a doubt that hiring a professional for any birth experience is a must.

Not that I couldn’t do a good job but anything can happen…

Throughout my pregnancy it was extremely boring in the best way. All tests can back normal, I didn’t have any amount of strange pain or anything that would suggest that I couldn’t have a traditional birth like I wanted and planned for. I was even lucky enough to have my water break to tell me it was time for us to go to the hospital instead of the more popular hours of contractions questioning whether or not to go in or not. Only happens to 12% of women and it usually means that labor will be fast and I’d get to see my baby girl in a few short hours. That’s not what happened.

At 4:24 a.m. my water broke and we drove the short distance to the hospital. I had been scared for weeks leading up to this because you’re constantly reminded of how much can go wrong and how much pain you’ll be in. But going to the hospital I was able to forget about all that and focus on being excited. I was excited and ready all the way up to being transferred to our delivery room being told this is going to happen fast because my water had broke. All that went away when we were told I was only 1cm dilated so I had a long day ahead of me. Once that came to light, me having a natural birth went out the window. I was given drugs to speed everything up.

I was able to handle the contractions up to 5 p.m. when I was told I was only 3 more cm dilated. After that I had to have help. It looked like I was going to have another 12 hours to go through. After getting pain medication I was able to relax and apparently it was too much. My heart rate and Maddie’s heart rate dropped dramatically so I had to be repositioned for the next hour and a half to see if her heart would rise again. It didn’t. This whole time I was thinking “Yeah it’s not perfect but everything is fine. Everything will be fine. It’s all fine.” Around 6:40  p.m. the doctor had come in and the only words I remember were c-section and emergency. Within two minutes I was rolled into the hallway while watching blur after blur of nurses as the run around getting the operation room prepped. While I was laying in the room and acting like I could understand what the nurses were telling me, all I thought about was “How did this happen? C-section was never mentioned. How am I in here and where was my husband?” He was finally able to come in and be by my side. At exactly 7 p.m. we heard Maddie’s first cry and everything leading up to that moment was forgotten. Chris was able to bring her over to me and all I remember was her crazy open eyes and how she was trying to eat my cheek. The moment was short lived and they took her from me so they could finish stitching me up. Time had never gone by so slow. I was missing her first moments while listening to the nurses and doctor talk about things that were not important like what they were going to do when they got off work that night. Not joking.

Once I got back to the room I was again being bombarded with instructions from nurses that I was not paying attention to and had to interrupt to ask if I could hold her like I had to ask permission to hold my daughter. Writing this blog was the only way I thought I’d get to remember Madalin’s birth day. At least as much as I could remember until my dad gave me my camera and showed me photos he had taken while I was out of it. They weren’t the settings I would have set but I had the photos. I started crying going through the photos and I realized then how important photos were for this day of my life and the first day of Maddie’s life.