Baby Girl

We had our baby girl December 19th. And we sure were surprised since we thought it was going to be a boy because I carried her vary similar to the way I carried our son. I was all baby sticking way out front. Though in hindsight I do think she sat a little lower down than he did. It was really fun not knowing what she was and I am glad that we didn't find out now because I would have been stressed out trying to figure out how a girl and a boy were going to share a room and have it look good too.

 We had her at home and the labor took 11.5 hours. It sounds like a long time expecially since I have always only counted the part of labor with bubie that was the hard part and it was 7 hours. If I were to count the early labor pains with him (which didnt bother me, my mom laughed when I commented how easy it was) it would have been about 20 hours.

My water started to leak with our little sweet pea at 7:00 am and from there I called our midwife and then continued on with my day. Hubby took our little man to a friends house and my contractions were pleasantly mild. I did the dishes and ate breakfast and my husband and I made up our bed to prepare it in case we had the baby there. When I finally got checked at around 11 and I was dilated to 6-7. That totally surprised us because my contractions were no closer together than 4 or 5 minutes. At that point we blew up the birth tub and filled it which took about an hour. That is always the part of labor that I look forward to the most, since I practically grew up in the hot tub at the swimming pool. I got in and the midwives showed up. They checked me again at around 1:30 and I was at 8-9. I was so shocked because the contractions were not intense and still not very close together. I was talking and we were laughing in between each one. Around 3 pm I started to want to push. I was fully dilated and I pushed and pushed and pushed. I pushed for 2.5 hours. Some pushing happened in the tub, some on our bed. At the end my contractions were still too far apart and I didn't feel I was getting anywhere. My midwife told me I was going to have to get the courage and push the baby out. My legs had started to cramp up and it was terrible. Honestly the leg cramps were the worst part. I had been thinking for some time that if worst came to worst I would squat to have the baby. I knew from our birth class before we had bubie that squatting was a really efficient way to get a baby out.  Since my legs were killing me and I had such weird contractions I decided it was time to get it finished. At that point I announced that I was going to go over by the closest  (where there was a decent sized patch of bare floor) and have the baby. And I did. One last agonizing push which seemed to last forever and then I remember our midwife asked if I was going to see what we had. I looked down and saw the babies face starring up and me and then had to look further and saw that she was a girl.

I was really happy to have this baby because I was not happy pregnant. She was killing my back and I had a slew of other complaints. Hubby kept saying that he thought my delivery would be a breeze because my pregnancy with our son was so easy and the delivery was so hard. I keep thinking that I feel like my labor with our little girl was so easy because I kept expecting my entire body to be in pain and to be throwing up every 10 minutes which is what happened in my first labor.  I think the biggest reason I was unhappy being pregnant this time was that I had absolutely no energy or drive. That is not like me because I am usually a really high energy, go, go, go project kind of girl. I am really looking forward to this next year in our home as a family because I feel like I am going to be myself again and be able to do so much.

 I am glad hubby took this sweet little picture of her feet. I love babies feet. Her feet are so different then bubies feet were. she has slender feet with pretty toenails. His feet have always been fat, wide, and cursed with the flat toenails that run on my dads side of the family. Pregnancy and birth truly are amazing events. I remember my mother telling me that birth is a miracle when I was pregnant with our son. She is right.

 Our little man is always trying to touch her. He calls it "being soft" which is him touching her face and head and I don't think it is always very soft. He likes to give her kisses and has generally been sweet. Although the past couple of days he has started to be a little more rough,

Things have started to calm down for us around here. Baby Girl is six weeks old now. I am going to try to be better about blogging. Start checking in on us more...we have a lot of growing to do around here.