Sydney's story (by Summer)

This is my birth story for Sydney which I am making before I forget. Sunday Aug 5 about 3 am I woke up with some pain and I thought it might be contractions but didn't want to get too excited. About 10 I told Justin he might want to find someone to cover for him at church just in case. I was still having these contractions but they really didn't hurt, just felt like hard crunches. We timed the contractions for 3 hours and decided this just might be it! They were coming every 5-6 min for about a min. still not very painful though. We called our midwife Jean and she told us to come on down to the birth center in Denton. ( before i had also called mom and told her to ditch church) When we got there we found out one of the rarest things was going on: there was another woman in labor! Jean told me that it had only happened once before at Thanksgiving! Well the center has 2 birth rooms and I wanted the big nice one (surprise surprise). Well Jean checked me and I was at a 4!! Jean said it looked like I was in labor. Yay! The Friday before I was only a 1. Dad was flying and we called him and told him what was going on and he was able to come home!! To keep things going we walked and walked and walked. We had come back to the center to rest and get out of the heat and I told Justin I wasn't feeling the contractions anymore. (in the background the other woman was pushing and screaming bloody murder, very scary) Jean checked me again and I was still a 4, so we decided to get things going again and try walking. I was not going home!! When Justin and I got back about 6 or 7 Jean was going to check me again and said if i hadn't progressed she was going to send us home! oh no!! Good thing I was a 6! At this point we decided to break my water to really get things going. The contractions started coming hard and fast and really started hurting. I had wanted to try a water birth but when we got into the tub it was way to warm and was making me feel faint so we scratched that idea and got on the bed. (oh the other woman had given birth and I got my big room ha!) The contractions really starded hurting and Jean checked me about 10 pm and I was at a 7. She told me to try pushing with the contractions to see if it helped with the pain. I guess I went from a 7 to a 10 in about 45 min and started pushing for real. (oww) At 11:01 Sydney Summer Crook was here!!! Justin actually did the delivery with Jean's help and put our perfect little girl on my chest. I couldnt beleive she was here!! 7lbs 3 oz 19 1/2 in tons of red hair! She had some bruising on her face so they gave her some oxygen and lots of rubbing to make sure she was ok. After making sure everything was ok we went home about 3am. It was so awesome to have my husband, Mom, Dad, and Destiny there for me. (Dad was in the other room :} )
Well thats pretty much it and the end is in a video our good friend Destiny made us. It was so awesome to expereince natural child birth in such a sucure safe place. It was hard and very painful but now after no drug side effects and a perfect healthy girl I wouldn't ever do it another way. We are so blessed and look forward to every second of life with her.