Introducing...

Well, she's here!  The newest, most cuddly, good-smelling, and sweet member of our family, A!

 

Alright, well she actually arrived here three months ago, but then we had the holidays and then we moved, and then the stress finally hit me in the form of some bad baby blues, so I am just now getting around to posting about our lovely little girl.  Be patient with me, friends.

Warning:  The following is excessively detailed and maybe a tiny bit graphic, but I want to record the details before I forget them.

First off, the answers to the usual questions:

What were her stats?  She was 18 inches long, and her recorded weight was 7 lbs. 15 oz. which would have made her my biggest baby yet, but we found out later they weighed her wrong.  Yep.  The following evening in the nursery she weighed in at only around 5 lbs. 15 oz.  Since she was otherwise perfectly healthy and eating well and had NO reason to have lost that much weight that quickly (as well as the fact that everyone was thinking she seemed awfully small to be nearly 8 lbs.), our pediatrician figured out that there must have been a mistake in weighing her.  I think the nurse that weighed her may have been a student nurse and maybe didn't know how to work the scale right, who knows.  We aren't too bugged about it, but we just have to guess at her actual weight which we think was somewhere around 6 lbs.

How did everything go?  Really well, but really fast!  I have gone early with all my kids now (hallelujah!), so it wasn't a huge surprise when I went into labor six days early, but it progressed really quickly, which wasn't so expected.  We got to the hospital around 12:30 a.m. and they checked me in and my nurse hooked me up to the monitors and stuff, then she disappeared, promising to come back and check me in an hour to see if I was really and truly in labor and if I was going to get to stay at the hospital or be sent home to wait.  I know that's standard procedure, but really?  This wasn't my first rodeo or anything.  It's not like these were little contractions--they were the real deal, squeeze-the-blood-out-of-your-husband's-hand type.  It's probably because I said my pain level was a 7.  I should have listened to Brian Regan ("Say eight!  Say eight!"). 

Anyway, about fifteen minutes later the contractions were getting really, really bad, like dig-your-nails-into-your-husbands-hand type, and the nurse came back because the monitor that was supposed to be registering my contractions wasn't working.  I don't think it ever really worked the whole time I was in labor.  I mentioned to the nurse that the contractions were getting really intense, but she just said she would be back in 45 minutes to check me. 

After the longest, most painful 45 minutes of my life she came back and checked me, to find me dilated to a five and my water about to break.  So they called the doctor and the anesthesiologist because I'm one of those girls that doesn't care about proving she's a woman by going natural--bring on the epidural, baby!  About one minute later my water broke, and the nurses started to bustle around pretty darn fast, like they knew things were going to start happening soon.  The anesthesiologist arrived shortly thereafter and said he wasn't sure if there was time to get the epidural working before I delivered, but did I want him to still try (absolutely!)?  He was just cleaning my back in preparation, when I felt that urge to push I had heard about but never really understood until then.  I announced my need to push calmly (o.k., I might have screamed it), to the nurse who then hurried over to catch the baby, and the anesthesiologist quietly packed up and left, having not had time to save me from experiencing natural labor in all its glory.  About one and a half pushes during that one contraction and our little girl was out!  My doctor was on the elevator at the time and managed to arrive just in time to sew me up since I tore a little.  Once all was said and done, I went from being dilated to a five to delivering my baby in ten minutes.  Yikes, and ouch!

 

What is she like?  She is absolutely, seriously and without bias the best baby I could have asked for.  She is so sweet, and chill, and smiley!  She has been a great sleeper from the beginning, although she grunted and made so much noise in her sleep when she was brand new that we couldn't have her in our room.  The boys all love her so much, they can hardly leave her alone, even to sleep.

 

Here's C, "reading" to baby sister.

 



J holding her for the first time. 

Daddy holding his baby girl. 

I am so grateful that everything went so well, and that I have these three beautiful children in my life.  I make so many mistakes as a parent, but they love me in spite of it all, and we are figuring out this whole thing together.  Here's to being a family of five!