I'm finally here...

What a turn of events!!!!!!!

This morning at 7:10am, little Mackenna Elizabeth Schlieman made her grand entrance! What a ride we had to get her here though!

At about 1:45am, I was woken up by what I was accustomed to with my kidney pain. So as usual, I got up, took a pain pill, walked around for a little bit and figured I'd get sleepy and fall back asleep as this has been my normal routine with my new life of this pregnancy. Well that wasn't the case this time...I was instantly in tears and knew something was just "not right". I decided to take a bath around 3am thinking that would help with my pain, but when I could barely sit down, that didn't work. I was hysterically crying and Nate was in bed just telling me to hang in there and breath through the pain and stop walking around as the urologist said any standing and sitting, makes it worse (plus this was getting a tad hard to handle in his defense since the docs had said this is what to expect from here on out and I was not only keeping him from his job each day, but also keeping him from sleep!). But the problem was I couldn't stay still which was starting to scare me...it was SO BAD & UNCOMFORTABLE. Finally at about 4am, the "leaking" that I was used to wasn't leaking anymore, but a huge gush of water...my water broke!!!!!! I rushed into the bedroom and told Nate I think it's for real this time and we need to get going. By the time he was up and we got going, it was about 4:30 and as we were walking to the car I remember saying that I didn't think I could make it the 30 minutes to the hospital!

Thankfully Nate was a speed demon and got us to the hospital in about 20 minutes. On the drive, my contractions were about 2 minutes apart, something I wasn't paying attention to, but Nate was realizing and timing them which made this all more real to him! When we got to the ER, the same people that had checked us in the last 2 days, were there and said, "Back again?" but as soon as they saw me, they too knew this was different. They got a nurse immediately and raced me up to Labor and Delivery in a wheelchair. Nate had to run and park the car, but thankfully was able to catch us just before the elevator door shut. I was in shock at what was going on and when I was getting undressed and into the bed to be hooked up and checked, Nate was sending texts to our immediate family letting them know that we're about to meet our daughter! When the nurse checked me, she looked up at me and said, "Honey you barely have a cervix left, it's time to push!" I wanted an epidural so bad, but it was way past that point and I was about to do this completely natural! I looked at Nate and said, "Oh my God, I can't do this!" but the nurse chimed in and let me know that all the hard work was near over and I did most of it at home - I couldn't believe it! I was dilated to a 9 and a half! At 5:30am, at a full 10, I started pushing - with a few complications to keep it a little delayed, I pushed for almost 2 hours and by 7:10am our little angel was here - all 5lbs 11oz & 19.5 inches of her!!!!!!!!

They placed her on my chest for just a moment and then rushed her away to make sure she was ok. Through all the activity of the morning, I forgot that she was nearly 6 weeks early - Nate said there were about 17 people in the room, most of them being from the NICU. Thankfully I was preoccupied with some other post delivery things so I didn't see any of it, but Nate did and said it was pretty scary. Just a few moments after, I was holding my beautiful baby girl for the first time, completely healthy and ready to be a part of our family!

It is truly amazing what your body will allow you to do when you have no other options. The pain I felt was like nothing I can explain, but now that it's all over, I feel so blessed that it happened the way it did, am so proud of myself for sticking through it and am so happy our baby girl is here! She is a true blessing and a gift from above!

On a side note, with her no longer in my belly, I feel like a new woman with virtually no pain in my kidneys, so understandbly, I am celebrating in more ways than one today! I'll go down to urology tomorrow most likely to finally have an X-Ray of my kidneys to see what's going on in there, as I was only getting ultrasounds before because of Mackenna.

Daddy is doing perfectly and was SUCH AN AMAZING COACH guiding me through everything...and I don't think I was that mean (he might have a different story) :) He was nothing shy of amazing (even though he forgot to grab my hospital bag on our way out to the car, HA!) and I'm so gratetful to have gone through this with him and I fell in love with him all over again today, a deeper love than I've ever felt and am so happy he's by my side...if we would have waited ANY longer, looks like he would have been delivering our baby on the side of the road! WOW, what timing will do! It's a bittersweet moment for us, as we were so anxious to have an induction date for our family to be here for the big day. But thinking about how it all happened, it was pretty special and intimate and a great story from here on out! We know they are here in thoughts and are sending their love and we can't wait to see them as they all take turns to meet the newest addition to the Schlieman family!

Thank you for all your throughts and prayers and kind words through this whole journey! We are overjoyed with our baby girl and can't wait for everyone to meet her!

Love,

the NEW, PROUD parents of one incredible little lady!