Baby has arrived!!!

Oh, the joy of not being pregnant anymore!!!  And the sweet, sweet feeling of holding a tiny, precious newborn is one of the greatest blessings.  Her soft skin and sweet smell, her absolute dependence, our snuggling skin-to-skin, all of it is wonderful.  And I'm so happy to not be pregnant. :)

The labor went incredibly quickly; my body is designed to make great babies and have them very efficiently.  I  strongly suspected on Saturday morning that something would be happening soon, so we bided our time and stayed at home.  It was a bit of a boring day.  I let my middle-of-the-night friend know I may be calling her to come over to be with our kids, as well as our doula, and went to bed.

Sunday morning I woke up at two for probably the third time to use the bathroom that night.  I had thankfully slept some, but not well, as I was anticipating the inevitable.  I was having some contractions, but irregularly, so I timed them for an hour and waited for the intensity to pick up a bit before waking HH and calling my friend.  By three I knew it was go time, so I woke the necessary victims and off we went.

I think we arrived at the hospital around 3:45 or so.  Apparently I look too happy when I come into the hosptial; no one thinks I'm in labor, but the monitoring confirmed that I was.  Having had the last three babies naturally, I wanted to give an epidural another try; I wasn't feeling the natural love this time around, especially since the contractions were quite strong almost from the get-go.  I tried to make this clear, but it was a full hour before I was getting my IV fluids and other stuff going.  Only half an hour before baby was to pop out.  Not enough time.  It's probably enough time for normal people, but as I mentioned above, I have babies incredibly efficiently.

Attempting to have the epidural put in was torture.  The contractions were crashing down on me, and I had to sit in a very uncomfortable position for 15 minutes while he tried to put it in.  The cardinal rule for me while laboring is freedom of movement, so to have to sit in a confined position for so long at the end of my labor when the contractions were at their worst was not fun.   My bones are too close together or something that made putting in the epidural difficult.  The anesthesiologist was asking if I had scoliosis. Nope.  Finally my water broke and we gave up on the epidural.  Now just to push out the baby, which took about two minutes.



Adele Marie was born at 5:15 am and is perfect in every way.  Really, she is a stunning baby.  She eats and poops like a champ, so her chance of happiness in this life is good.  She weighed 7 lbs. 2 oz. and measured 19 1/4 inches long.  I love snuggling her, being in a quiet room just holding my precious one.  The siblings came to visit after church and were loving on her; it was adorable.  Little Man thinks she came out of my mouth.  We will stick with that for now.  They will be great little helpers at home, but I know that any time she cries they will tell me she's hungry.  They were already saying that today, and they did the same with Little Sis.  Hey, food helps me feel better.