This was my first pregnancy, and my then fiancé and I couldn't be more thrilled, except for the fact the we were in mid-wedding planning! I had already bought my dress, which was a corset-style strapless number. I would have been 6 months along on the date we had planned, so we moved it up a few months! Thank god our new date was just after my first 3 months of nausea hell. It went great, as did our honeymoon in Cancun!

Everything was going fine with the pregnancy. At about 7 months along my husband was scheduled to start active duty army (he's in the reserves), and we were going to be deployed soon within this country. So we quit our jobs and gave our landlord notice. We soon found out active duty fell through, and we had to move to another town and find another doctor. This isn't easy when your 34 weeks pregnant.

Luckily, I found a great doctor. I had an appointment with her on Thursday, March 4. I was just abut 36 weeks, four weeks from my April Fool's Day due date. She didn't check for dilation and said everything looked great.

The next night I was at my cousin's house. She fed me this great meal. For some reason I had this really full feeling, and I couldn't even have dessert. I went home and took some Tums. I couldn't sleep until about 3 a.m.

I woke up suddenly around 6 a.m. after a very strange dream. In it my husband and I were in a graveyard. He looked at me and said, Gush. I thought it meant I had to pee, so I went, and it didn't satisfy my understanding of the dream. I went back to my bed and rolled over, and sure enough, there was a gush! We made it to the hospital as dry as I could get, in the icy weather that almost caused me to not come home from my cousin's the night before. I was dilated to 2 centimeters when I first arrived, and for the first five hours contractions were bearable so I just paced the halls.

Once I was dilated to 5 the extremely bad back labor set in. I was ready for the epidural, which was nice for the hour it worked on my whole body. Then it faded to no help.

I was ready for more when I all of the sudden had doctors everywhere in my room watching the fetal monitor. They gave me oxygen and had me lie on my side. I didn't know what was going on, when they had to do an internal monitor because his heart rate kept dropping.

I was in total agony and very close to delivering when they had me sign a Cesarean section consent form. Within minutes my husband was in scrubs and they were wheeling me down to the operating room. My husband had to wait while they prepped me. I woke up shivering and in extreme pain with no baby in sight. No one knew how he was or if he was OK. My husband wasn't there either. I had lost a lot of blood and gotten an infection that caused a 104 degree temperature the first night. Recovery was no fun for about the next four weeks. It took at least that long before I felt like I could function like a normal person!

March 6, 2004, was the greatest and scariest day of my life and my husband's! Later, you realize it is so worth everything you go through. I even plan on doing it all again at least one more time!