Bjorn returned from his deployment early in preparation for Audriana's birth. Over deployment, Sopanha sent him a few books based on recommendations of some of our friends who have been through this themselves. Bjorn definitely read up on it and was a great birthing coach (more on that later...). Because of Bjorn's early arrival from deployment, we got to celebrate Thanksgiving together. It was wonderful.
From the onset, Sopanha's due date kept fluctuating. So when December rolled around, we were ready. We had several false alarms. Sopanha's parents flew in with the hopes that Baby Anderson would have made an appearance by that time. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Finally on the morning of December 11th, Sopanha decided that we should go to the family birthing center. It sorta felt like it could be labor pains and we were past our due date. When we got to the hospital, Sopanha was only 1.5 cm dialated. Since we were past our due date, the nurse suggested that we go for an hour walk around the hospital and come back. We did that and there was no change. We were both disappointed. Coincidentally, we had a midwife appointment that day. When we went to see our midwife, Mary, in a matter of 30 minutes, Sopanha had dilated to 4 cm and her water broke. After that, the real contractions began and it was no joke! Mary told us that we should continue walking, as first pregnancies generally take quite a while before the actual delivery.
We decided to walk to the hospital (it was right next door to the clinic). Unfortunately, Sopanha ended up needing to be wheelchaired next door. We got to the Family Birthing Center at 3:00pm. Audriana was born at 6:59pm. So contrary to our Mary's expectation, Audriana was a speedy delivery! We barely had time to get Sopanha admitted to the hospital in between contractions. While Sopanha was about 7 months along, she decided that she would try to do the delivery drug-free. When we got to the hospital on December 11, Sopanha declared that drugs were her friends and insisted on their presence immediately. Unfortunately, the epidural never took and Audriana was delivered au natural.
Bjorn was an awesome coach! He read up on "The Birthing Partner." He was so good about helping her breathe through contractions and the nurses were extremely impressed with him. They even asked if he learned his coaching skills through a birthing class. He causally told them that he just read a book on it. They swooned and he smiled smugly (okay, Sopanha isn't really sure that that happened since she was busy with contractions, but she did recall that there was a vague smugness to Bjorn's voice).
Our beautiful little girl was born with a head full of hair, blue-gray eyes, and red pouty-lips. She weighed in at 6 lbs. 14 oz. and 19.5 inches. We instantly fell in love with her!
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