Boo's Blog: One Year Ago Today... Part 2 (long, but with pictures!)

So when I left you yesterday, Josh and I were going to sleep around midnight. About 2am, I woke up feeling minor contractions... I pushed the nurses button and within minutes I was in horrible pain... so much for that epidural. They came in and tried injecting all sorts of drugs into the epidural, but they wouldn't believe me that it wasn't working. From 2-4am is sort of a big blur of delirium and pain, but Josh likes to tease me that at one point I asked the nurses for ice packs to put on my stomach, thinking that would help the literally gut wrenching pain of the contractions. Nothing funny about it! He was super supportive though... as I later said, much to his chagrin, he was "surprisingly" good during the rough parts.

During this miserable 2 hours, a lovely resident with a horrible bedside manner told me that they weren't going to take out a perfectly good epidural (clearly it wasn't perfectly good) and put in a new one, and that I should suck it up, women had been delivering babies without epidurals for centuries (Bad Hospital Experience, Part 3). I wanted to smack her, but she controlled the flow of pain medicine, so I was pitifully nice and begged for more... finally they gave me epidural # 3 of the night (before the week was over, I had received epidurals 4-7... all of which came 4 days after Jenna was born). Once the terror subsided, we rested for another few minutes, but before long the nurses said we were ready, it was time to push. From 5am-6:30 or so, I pushed while hooked up to an oxygen mask. Jenna's heart rate was dropping, and I needed to keep the oxygen mask on to keep her safe. Had things taken any longer, they were threatening that I'd need a c-section.

Then, suddenly, the nurses screamed that we needed Dr. Herbst immediately. Of course, no one could find him. Being that he's a family friend, and I knew my VERY chatty dad was in the waiting room, I asked someone to go check and see if my dad was tying him up. No deal. They tried paging him, but he had been on call overnight and left his pager somewhere in the hospital. Well, she was coming out, like it or not, so they started looking around the hospital to find another doctor. At the last minute, Dr. Herbst came rushing in. At 6:41am, exactly 24 hours and 1 minute after we checked into our room, Jenna Diane Greenwald made her grand entrance.
Knowing she was a girl, that part was a bit anti-climatic. Imagine our surprise, however, after watching 24 hours of a CNN story mentioned in yesterday's post, and having no redheads in either of our families, when the first words Dr. Herbst said were "she's a redhead!!" Sure enough, Jenna was born with a full head of red hair. Perhaps it was a sign... CNN was doing its part to tell us the world needed more redheads. And once she was born, there is no question that the world instantly became a better place.

Jenna, the past 365 days have been the best of our lives. You have brought so much joy to so many people, your smile and good nature bring out the best in everyone around you, and your daddy and I are so proud of the little girl you have become. We feel so lucky that we get to guide you on your journey, that we are in charge of helping you forge your way through life, and even better, we get to tag along for the ride. I have no doubt that every experience I've ever had, both good and bad, was to prepare me to teach you and guide you, and I look forward to every joy and challenge along the way. You can always count on us for support, guidance and most importantly, abounding love. Happy first birthday, little girl. We love you more today than yesterday, and we look forward to a million more tomorrows.

At one year old, Jenna is:

Smart
Funny
Good Natured
Playful
Walking everywhere
Starting to run
babbling non stop
saying Mama and Dada
saying "up"
pointing to EVERYTHING in sight
pointing to elmo if you ask "where's elmo"
loves rubber ducks
loves her Mom Mom, Pop Pop and Grandpa
reaches for things that she wants
Stubborn
Loves to Dance
Loves blueberries and black beans
Hates fish
Drinks from a straw
is a great sleeper and a lousy napper
Loves her mommy and daddy
Loves her "blankie"
Sneezes like her daddy
a drama queen
dramatic eater (opening her mouth extremely wide to eat 1 blueberry or cheerio)
Loves cheerios
loves being upside down
loves the pool
doesn't like the sand or getting dirty
is afraid of big horses
has 9 teeth with more on the way
(I'll think of more later!)

Here is the birthday girl first thing in the morning (looking more like a 5 year old than a one year old!)