It's a Girl!!

Surprise, it's a girl!! (To anyone who know we were expecting, this is no surprise. To anyone who didn't know, surprise, it's a girl!!) Baby was due yesterday, scheduled for tomorrow, and arrived today. Lauren Ivy was born at 5:27 pm, weighing exactly 8 lbs and measuring 19 3/4 inches.

Here's a shortish version of a relatively short 'coming into this world' story: I felt a little off when I went to bed last night, but I really didn't think anything of it. (Hey, when you're pregnant, when don't you feel 'a little off.') When I woke up this morning, I felt weird. (I don't know how else to describe it; I just felt weird.) Lily forced me to eat some breakfast, and I spent the morning working on my to-do list for the day (some cleaning, packing for the hospital, getting the house in order, etc). Contractions started about mid-morning, but they weren't too bad and they were fairly infrequent. Jimmy came home from work just before noon, and we decided that we should probably pack the car and head toward the hospital. (The hospital is about an hour away.) When we got in the car, contractions were about 8 minutes apart. The doctor, taking into account travel time, had told us to head to the hospital when contractions were 5-7 minutes apart, so we thought we had plenty of time. We called Grammy S and made arrangements to drop Lily off at her house en route to the hospital. By the time we were fairly close to Grammy S's house, contractions were about 4 minutes apart, so we called Grammy S, changed the plans to have her meet us at the hospital to pick up Lily, and rerouted, taking the most direct route to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital around 1:30 and then spent about 30 minutes in the waiting room before being escorted to the last available labor and delivery room. From my perspective, nothing good happened during the next hour or so. Contractions continued, my nurse disappeared, and I filled out paperwork, some of which I had filled out and submitted weeks ago. At the end of that hour, they finally got my IV started, the nurse told me I was too far along in labor for an epidural or pain medication (which really made me mad since we'd essentially wasted the last hour plus in the waiting room and on paperwork), and she called in the doctor. When the doctor arrived, she disagreed with the nurse, called in the anesthesiologist (much to my relief), and said things were going along just fine. From that point on (or from the time the epidural took effect), things went just fine. I called my mom around 5pm, just before I went into hard labor, to let her know that baby was on her way. Half an hour later, baby arrived. (And half an hour after that I was still filling out the paperwork that gave the doctor permission to actually deliver the baby.)

Since Lily was induced, I wasn't quite prepared for the whole 'spontaneous labor' thing. However, I did learn a few things in the process.... Labors apparently get shorter with subsequent children. Next time, start toward the hospital at the first sign of contractions in order to allow sufficient time for paperwork and hospital snafus to be handled in an orderly (or not-so-orderly) fashion.