Welcome William Brady Hollis

Brady was born March 21, 2008 at 3:31pm on Good Friday. I was still a week from my due date, so I was not too concerned when I started having mild contraction the night before Brady arrived. Steve was at friends watching a basketball game that Thursday night. I called Steve to let him know my water might have broken. It was snowing and I was a little apprehensive but still not too concerned.

I woke up early the next morning, 6 am, and started having minor contractions again. By 8am I was ready to get dressed just in case I needed to go to the hospital. The contractions were getting painful, but they were still 4 to 8 minutes apart. I called the hospital and talked to a midwife, who told me to take my time and go ahead and have breakfast. After I got off the phone, I started to have really painful contractions. The pain was worse than the 3 painful contractions I remembered having with Brantley. I decided to forget about breakfast and we headed to the hospital. When I got out of the car at the hospital my water broke. It turned out I was already dilated to 5 centimeters when we arrived at the hospital at 10:30 a.m. By 11:30 a.m. I was in the Labor Ward getting an epidural. The midwife didn't look at me until 2:30 to determine I was already dilated to 10 centimeters. I pushed for a full hour and finally had Brady at 3:31 p.m. Overall, it was a good experience, but it was a lot harder and scarier than Brantley's birth.

I had a private recovery room and stayed in the hospital for two nights. We came home from the hospital on a snowy Easter Sunday around 1:00 p.m. Stephen picked my mom up from the airport that same day and my mom meet her new grandson that afternoon.