Baby girl's arrival

I have no doubt there will be plenty of pictures to come, but not too many right now so I will post a link to the ones we have. We have just been lazy and not taken too many pictures. I'm starting to feel willing to move around some more so I will make the effort to get the camera soon :)

For now I am going to write down her delivery details (she is sleeping). I will try to not write anything too detailed, but honestly birth is kind of gross! Amazing, but gross. I had been having contractions for a while; it probably wasn't really that long looking back, but time passes differently when you're miserable. Wednesday night I felt nauseous, which was the same thing that happened with Matthew. Contractions started around 2 a.m., they were kind of close together, but not very intense for a couple of hours. Then they slowed down, but were a lot harder. We called the midwife around 6:30. I had an appointment scheduled for 10:30 so she said to just plan on coming then unless things picked up very suddenly. We made phone calls and dropped Matthew off at a friend's on our way to the birthing center.

*Climbing onto my soap box* There are lots of different ways to have babies and lots of different women. I think each person should do some research and then decide what they think will provide them with the best experience. A birthing center is not run by crazy, old fashioned people. They just have their own philosophy. Okay, I'm done, now back to our regular programming-

When we got to the center around 10:30, I was dilated to a 5. I was having a lot of back labor so I got into the tub (I wasn't able to get in with Matthew so I was glad to be able to this time). I didn't really want to do water birth so I climbed out after a while. Oh! One funny thing. Brian was so wonderful and he was helping coach me and keep me calm and relaxed between contractions. So he was "shushing" (?) me like I do with Matthew almost every day when he needs to calm down, and I said "No, I don't want to be quiet" in a very stern angry voice. However, you are not allowed to make funny jokes about what a woman does during labor-consider yourself warned. I was a lot more vocal this time than with Matthew, but that's just what happened since I went completely natural. The midwife was awesome in encouraging me and reminding me to drink my water.

I don't know what time I started pushing, but I did a couple, then the midwife said that position wasn't good for the baby so I moved. I pushed a couple more times and at 11:48 she was here! I went from a 5 to pushing in a little over an hour. I did end up with a couple of stitches and a shot of pitocen because they wanted to make sure I didn't bleed too much. And she is just perfect :) At both ultrasounds they said she was going to be closer to 7 lbs, but she wasn't. She weighed 5 lbs 13 oz (which is going to be easy to remember because that's her birthday too) and was 18 1/2 inches long. We stayed at the center a few more hours for monitoring then headed home. Brian was joking about how he wouldn't even be heading home from work and we had been and had a baby in less time.

I know Heavenly Father was in charge of everything. Things couldn't have worked out better! I was worried about how the timing would work with Brian and getting Matthew taken care of, but it was perfect. I knew I was in labor before he would have left for work and we dropped Matthew off at a decent hour so I didn't have to feel guilty about inconveniencing anyone too badly. Lots of thoughts and feelings going on right now that are a little too personal for me to post, sorry.

She is a little angel :) Matthew just adores her! He wanted to see all of her little fingers and toes, help get her pajamas on, show her her around the house, read her a book and much more. Brian is pretty smitten with his baby girl, even though he was nervous when we first found out. Her hair is kind of crazy lengths and patchy, but I guess she can't be completely perfect. She likes to have her hands right up by her face. She hasn't taken to the pacifier right away, but she did get her thumb in her mouth before we even left the birthing center. I think she likes her brother. He can be talking (which he does a lot) right by her when she's sleeping and she's so content. But if I move her just a little bit she stirs. When she's awake she just looks at him and it's so cute :) So many blessings and so little time . . .

When we finalize the name I will post it along with whatever pictures we've managed to take. And now she's waking up, what good timing!