The Art of Running in the Rain

I started feeling mild contraction on April 2nd at about 3:30pm while my mom and I were getting pedicures. It was so different from Mira’s birth (my water broke first during hers) so I was confused if it was really going down or not. Dave and I decided to grab a bite to eat and walk around capitol hill while my mom went and got Mira from school.

I think it was around 5:30pm when we thought we might as well go to the hospital and see if we could be admitted. Things were still very mild at this point and somewhat inconsistent, but I could tell it was headed in the direction of labor.

We went to triage and they took some measurements and sent us away. Told me things needed to be further along for them to admit us so I should walk around the hill a bit more. We came back around 9pm and they took more measurements, unfortunately things hadn’t progressed very far so they admitted us under the pretense that we would be planning on helping things along. Mild contractions continued until about 11pm, but nothing really intense, so we decided to break my water. At around 12am contractions went from a 2 on the pain scale to about a 10 and I tried for about an hour and a half to find my rhythm, but damn it hurt. It was at about 1:15am that I decided I needed an epidural and it was an hour more until I was ready to push! I remember looking at the clock and thinking to myself I couldn’t have handled that pain for another hour and I was so happy I got the epidural.

It’s funny though because in my labor with Mira the hard part was the 7 hours of contractions, and the pushing was the relatively easy part. During this labor, once the epidural kicked in the contractions went pretty easy, but pushing was SO difficult. I had a really great team working with me and Dave is the best support a person could ask for. I call him Doula Dave. Once we found the perfect combo of doing a pull up squat + using a mirror for motivation she came pretty swiftly.

It was 4:42am when Colette Margaret Paolone-Webb made it into this world.

Our stay at Swedish was the same as the last time, awesome! It’s a great hospital and have wonderful amenities.

The only thing that we forgot about the first time was how many people are in and out of your room at ALL times. Just when you think you can sleep (because your baby is sleeping) some professional comes in and needs to do something to you or your baby. Luckily there were some nurses that acknowledged this and would let us sleep a little longer before running any tests.

The highlight of Swedish is their room service. Damn those breakfast burritos! So good!

My mom came by with Mira the day after Coco was born and seeing her meet Coco was pretty much the greatest moment (next to my wedding day) of my life. She’s so in love with her.

We are so happy to finally have our littlest little home with us!

Be well ❤