Taylor Grace Nguyen
Born Novermber 15, 2008 at 10:20am
6pounds, 19inches

Well after many series of Braxton Hicks (false labor contractions) starting on Tuesday, Angel was finally admited to the hospital at 11:45pm Friday night. Angel was so calm and collective at arrival, that the nurse was very shocked to find that she was dialated at a 5 (to be admitted, you need to be at a 4, and a 10 indicates ready to be delivered). The nurse thought for sure that she would be sending Angel home.

Angel chose to go the au naturale route (no epidural). After finding out that Angel was at a 5, the nurse said it typically takes one hour for every cm dialated. We estimated with that theory, the baby would be delivering around 5am. I coached Angel for 5 hours, with controlled breathing techniques we learned through our baby hypnobirthing classes. This was no easy task by any means, but I was able to get Angel to focus and take her to her "happy place", with Jack Johnson's help of course.

By the time 5am rolled around, the nurse checked Angel again to see how far she was along, and found that she was at 7cm dialated. The nurse told us through her experience that Angel was not too far away, judging by her breathing groans and eye focus during conontractions.

So 9am rolls by, and the delivery doctor checks Angel again, and finds that she has stalled at 7cm dialated, and started to recommend artificially breaking her water or giving her a epidural, to speed along the birthing process. At this point, my ego started to kick in. I was not totally opposed to Angel getting an epidural, but since we came in the hospital with a baby plan goal of going natural, I was not going to let Angel give in that easy after coaching her for 9 hours without sleeping. Angel got very distracted by the bad news of being stalled at a 7, so I had to get her to refocus. I could see Angel's body language was tensing up, and she started looking at me for direction.

At this point I turned to the one person that has always provided me with guidance, I quickly prayed to God for a sign. No joke, the Lord answered my prayer in a matter of minutes! Angel's water broke like a falling bucket of water straight on to the floor. I quickly told Angel this is a sign, we are delivering this baby natural! We were not in the clear just yet though, the nurse told us we still need to be at a 10 for Angel to begin pushing. This seemed to be impossible, since only 7 minutes ago, Angel was at a seven.

Angel then started to feel that she desperately had to start pushing, and told the nurse she was ready. The nurse told her no way, that is not possible, because she was just checked at a 7 by the doctor. Angel agressively insisted that it was "go time", and the nurse said, ok, let me check you again. The nurse checked and asked us what our favorite number was... Angel yelled out, "TEN!". Indeed, Angel by the grace of God, was at a 10, and was ready to push!

Only 10 minutes of controlled breathing and pushing, our beautiful baby girl, Taylor Grace was born!!!