Oh my glob! We had a baby!

My daughter turned one week old today.

I'm still in shock that I can write that sentence AND have it be applicable to me.

When I look back at this last whirlwind of a week, the days and nights blend together, creating a homogenous splatter of diaper changing, animated movie watching, breast feeding, laundering (no, not the dirty money kind), and hormonal tidal wave riding.

I can't say it's been the worse time of my life; and that's because of my beautiful daughter, Merriwether.

Merriwether was born on Wednesday April 23, 2014 at 1:09 pm. She weighed 8 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 20 inches long. Every inch of her is perfect; however, I'm an incredibly biased judge. You can ask her father for a more evened opinion.

I went into labor last Tuesday late afternoon. I spent the middle of the day putting together boxes for Keep Covington Beautiful's Great American Cleanup, looking forward to the prospect of participating in the clean up that went off without a hitch this last Saturday. At 4 pm, Jason, Sara (his mama) and I went to our non-stress test where we saw our little Poppyseed just haaaaaaaaaaaanging out in my uterus with no real sign of coming out.

That changed within the hour. By 5 pm I noticed, for only the third time in all the nine months and nine days of pregnancy, contractions -- real, LIVE contractions. Not wanting to get any hopes up, Jason and I continued with our typical week night routine of hanging around in our tiny TV room, catching up on Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers; Jas finishing up some work for Epipheo, me diving into a magazine that had just offered me a job interview. We even had friends come over to snag an old sofa and ran dinner over to his mom who was strapped down with work issues.

The contractions, as they're supposed to, got stronger. By 10 pm, things that people who have never experienced childbirth will not want to hear about started to happen. In my heart and head I knew my body was finally doing what it was made to do. After 41 1/2 weeks of creating life...and stressing over the health of that life...it was finally GO TIME. As our practices in the Bradley Method of childbirth and the advice of our incredibly knowledgable and experienced friends suggested, I labored in the comfort of our teeny apartment, varying breathing through contractions by leaning on my exercise ball, throwing all of my body weight on Jas, laying on my side and walking around...a cycle that repeated itself for 7 hours. While I was able to rest and sleep in a meditated state in between contractions, the evening was fairly restless.

By 4:30 am, I knew I wanted to be in the hospital within the next 30 minutes (St. Elizabeth Edgewood is, like everything here, a 20 minute drive away from our apartment). Packing up our labor bag and briefly saying goodbye to the kittiez (we did have the wherewithall to feed them before we left!), Jas and I headed to the hospital in our Versa, nagivating through the early morning twilight and calming our nerves with the familiar melodies of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

By 5 am I was admitted into the triage center at the Family Birth Place. I'll admit, with the amount of pressure and intensity of the pain I was already experiencing, I was really scared I wasn't going to be dilated enough and that they'd send me home. Luckily, that wasn't the case and, at 7 cm dilated, I was admitted into labor and delivery.

That's when shit got real. Like, really real and really blurry. I can't recall all of the next 6 hours of breathing, bearing down and pushing, but minor, random memories spark up, like looking at the clock to my right and wondering how and why this could take so long; Jason's mom, peeking in to bring him chocolate milk and me realizing we didn't put my chocolate hazelnut milk in the fridge for after baby was out; A Charlie Brown Christmas playing on loop, thanks to Jason and our iPad; the FOX tv station being on THE ENTIRE TIME I was in labor (thank goodness it was muted); my doctor telling me that this is LABOR and labor is work and it's the only way to create life; Jason reading encouraging words from a coworker (I'm talking about you Lucas); begging for ice chips; Jason wrapped up in the purple blanket my Great Aunt Robbie made for me 10 years ago.

And of course, lots of yelling. The Bradley Method explains that women who go through natural childbirth (natural being totally unmedicated) armed with the Bradley Method don't scream and yell like those women you see on TV/in the movies giving birth. I call bullshit. I grunted, moaned, cried and yelled my way through three hours of being stuck at 9.5 cm and another three hours of pushing. I also drifted on and off into a deep meditation between contractions, enabling me to gain my strength for the next contraction. I altered positions on the bed, shifting from sitting down (ooooooooooh the pressure!) and kneeling backwards on the bed (ooooooh the weakness of my arms). After about 45 minutes of pushing while sitting, with the INTENSE encouragement of my doctor, nurse and Jason, I was positioned in the backwards kneeling position so that I could get baby out with one final push.

As you can assume, it worked and baby was born. Since I was backwards I had to turn back around while baby and the umbilical cord were both still attached. In the greatest feat of the day, I hiked a leg OVER the cord and flipped around, unveiling the site of my daughter. She was placed on my chest, after she sort of flopped out of the doctor's arms. With Jason on my left side and my daughter on top of me, life couldn't have been any better.

I'm seriously all teary eyed just reliving the moment.

And to think all of that happened JUST a week ago? That I had a baby inside of me 7 days ago? That my life dramatically changed FOREVER? Well, that's crazy. Super crazy...yet at the same time, absolutely right.