about the girl

well, the girl is one week old today. it has been the fastest week of my life. of course, it could be relative, since the previous 2 or 3 weeks of pregnancy dragged on forever…

one week ago, we were kicking off the pitocin party in the hospital and contractions were just showing up on the scene. here’s the rest of the story of the girl’s life, so far…

labor
around 11 am, i was about 5 cm and they kindly broke my water. this kicked up the pain level of the contractions, so i requested my epidural. :). with isaac, the epidural was relatively pain-free, but my blood pressure dropped like crazy right afterward. this time, getting the epidural was pretty uncomfortable. the doc kept hitting nerves and such on the way through, sending shooting pains down my back and legs. good times. then, to keep my blood pressure in check, they started with a pretty low dose and worked up. which was fine, except for two things. my contractions were moving into high gear quickly AND the epidural was missing a spot on my left side. another doc came in and helped get me fixed up, but until she did, i questioned my toughness and wondered how women had babies in the pre-epidural days.

around 1 pm, the nurse checked me and i was about 6 cm. the epidural was cranking through my lower half and i decided to rest up for the last 4 cm long haul. we turned the lights off and i managed to doze a bit here and there for the next hour, or so. something about knowing you’re going to have a baby soon makes it hard to sleep. 🙂

delivery
sometime after 2, the nurse and my doctor came in to check me again. the doctor had me push just a little, i guess to see what would happen. what happened was, he said, “we’re going to have this baby now”. so, while he got suited up in his baby delivering clothes, we called our parents (at 2:31 and 2:32 – i checked later)… and we got ready.

(i was quite surprised. when it took 2 hours to go from 5 to 6 cm, i thought we were in for a long afternoon.)

anyhooo…
on the first contraction, i pushed a couple of times and baby anna (“the anna baby” as isaac calls her) was born. at 2:39. awesome.

hospital
while anna was away being scrubbed up and examined, derek went out to get me a quizno’s sub, to spare me the hospital food. they brought the girl back and we hung out with her for a bit, before sending her off to the nursery for the night so we could rest. the next morning, she arrived, sleeping away. we were stunned at the difference between isaac and the girl. even in the hospital, isaac screamed and slept very little. it was miserable. anna, on the other hand, slept and gazed back at us and cried very little.

we had some pals come to visit. mark, allison (and almost born babydunc), kerry and jude all popped in to meet the girl. as did isaac and derek’s parents. isaac was amazed at how small she was. he asked to see pretty much every “tiny little” part. cute.

we sent the girl off to the nursery for the second night, derek came home to make sure all was ready for the arrival of the girl and the mom. i got a nice solid night of sleep, as did derek, i presume. in the morning, we collected our new kid, our belongings, lots of freebies from the hospital (and by free, i mean expensive) and rolled on out. we picked up the boy, who was very happy to have us back and headed home…

about anna
anna has been an amazingly “good” baby. of course, we only have isaac to compare her to. and he was definitely challenging. she sleeps lots. eats well. doesn’t really cry, well, pretty much ever. it’s crazy what a different baby experience we are having with this one.
i’m thankful to have had isaac (and survived to tell the tale), because it makes me much more appreciative of how it’s been going so far with anna. AND, i think i would rather be bringing home the easy baby to an assertive 3 year old. so, i’m glad we got the difficult one out of the way first. even if i thought i was going to go crazy and we would never consider having children ever ever again…

so, that’s the story of the birth of anna. it’s not for you. it’s for me. because i know in three years, i’ll never remember how it all went down…