(I borrowed the five years meme from jayesel.net)

Five years ago takes us back to 2004. January and February were uneventful. On March 1st, 2004 I realized I had missed two periods, and that perhaps my extreme fatigue and very sore breasts were happening for a reason. I took a pregnancy test, and it came up positive. The next few weeks were quite emotional and stressful, as Dan and I broke the news to our families and figured out just what the hell we were going to do (needless to say, the pregnancy was not planned!).

In May 2004 I was five months pregnant with Alyssa (we didn’t find out her gender until June), and a month shy of turning 20 (this was a big deal to me, as it meant giving birth when I was 20 and thus *narrowly* escaping the label “teen mom”!). I was living at home, but only because Dan and I had moved back from Pittsburgh the previous December (a few weeks before I got pregnant! Heh.) and were in the process of regrouping financially.

Dan and I were engaged, obviously, and scrambling to find a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment or house to move into. We got jobs with our previous employer, and he was promoted to management within a few weeks. We worked together a lot, though there were times when we would work overlapping shifts, but one or the other would leave first.

Right after my birthday (June 13th) I got my very first car (prior to this car I had just used Dan’s 2001 Kia Spectra), a 1986 Buick Century:

On August 1st, 2004, we signed a lease two a small (okay, cramped) two bedroom house (a summer cottage that had been redone in order to be used year round), and moved in five days later. Dan, his brothers and their dad’s pickup truck took care of hauling our stuff from my mom’s house and his parents’ house to our small two bedroom house. I was also popping out big time:

On October 1st, 2004 Dan and I got married. We had been engaged for three years, but decided to get married before Alyssa was born, even though it meant forgoing the fancy wedding we thought we would have.

Alyssa was born on October 27th, 2004, nine days after her due date. Early labor started on a Saturday, painful contractions begin by Sunday evening, and by Monday they were rather regular. Dan and I went to the hospital around 5am on October 26th, but I was discharged a few hours later because I was not progressing. I was having regular contractions that were 3-4 minutes apart, but I was not dilated past 3cm, and my effacement hadn’t progressed beyond 10%.
I went back into the hospital on 1am on the morning of the 27th, screaming in pain and demanding that something be done. At that point the only sleep I had in the past 48 hours consisted of Percocet-induced restless tossing and turning for about six hours. Even the painkillers weren’t enough to keep me asleep during the contractions.
My water was broken for me around 1:30am, I was given an epidural to help me relax at 4:15am, and by 7am I was ready to push. Dan got to the hospital by 7:30am, I began pushing a few minutes after that, and Alyssa was born at 8:06am. 7 lbs., 2 oz., 20 inches in length.

On December 23rd, 2004, my grandmother died. It was the worst day of my life, being rivaled only by what I am going through now with watching my grandfather die.

And that should pretty much wrap up where I was five years ago. Quite a difference from where I am now!

Related posts:

1. Pregnancy/parenthood meme
2. 18
3. Sad, but true
4. Help me before I lose my mind
5. Five years