Three Wonderful Weeks!

Larsen is 3 weeks old today. Her official due date is tomorrow. Hard to believe I could still be pregnant...that would not be fun. It is so much more fun to have her here. Larsen had a doctor's appointment yesterday, just a quick check to make sure things were going well. We knew she was eating a lot and plumping up nicely, but we were still quite surprised to find our she weighed 8pounds 13ounces. That is up 2 pounds 1 ounce from her first visit two weeks ago. Larsen is still pretty sleepy, but seems to be more alert each day. She loves lights and seems to especially enjoy enjoy when her Daddy and Big Brother talk to her. Bridger loves to give Larsen hugs and kisses and continues to handle the change rather well though we can't seem to get rid of his 5:30am wake-up call which is not so fun. We have been getting out so much more than we did with Bridger, but you can't just sit around with a 2 year old. We have been hitting all the local playgrounds and went as a family to Easter service. Last week we even went to the zoo (with a lot of help from the GranDeCamps with Bridger.) Larsen generally hangs out in the Moby and we don't hear a peep from her until it is time to eat.

Before she gets too big I better write out her birth story so I don't forget-here goes. Tuesday night April 5th we had Chipotle with my parents and talked about how nice it would be if the baby would arrive soon so they could meet her while they were visiting for Spring Break. However, I was still feeling tons of movement and I didn't feel like she was settled down in so I wasn't expecting anything. Everyone felt that it was so uncommon to have a 37 weeker last time, that for sure I would go closer to my due date. My OB, however, really wanted the baby to come early so I could try for a VBAC. She felt like with a smaller baby I would have a greater chance for success. Well it turns out Miss Larsen was listening to the OB. At 4:30am on Wednesday April 6th I woke up and went to the bathroom and felt what I thought was a strong Braxton-Hicks contraction. When I got back into bed I started having regular contractions that were somewhat painful but not so bad. I thought that they would eventually pass. When we all got up around 6:30am I warned Matt that I was having some contractions, but that I thought it would pass or I would have this sort of thing for a long time since it took over 24 hours to fully dilate with Bridger. Matt had to go into work for an hour to pass off patients since he was both in clinic and on service in the hospital that day (what timing!). The contractions got stronger and stronger as he was getting ready to leave, but we still both thought it would be a long time and there was no rush. I did call the doula and told her no rush also. It turns out she couldn't be there that day but would have a back-up come in her place. While we were sorting all of this out I did shower which was helpful, but things were getting bad enough I decided to try the tub. I was clearly in a lot of distress, which was worrying my mom and making it apparent Matt should not dawdle at the hospital. I was starting to become a bit frantic, and then I felt the baby drop and quite a bit of pressure and then I was really frantic and I was in a ton of pain. I had thought about maybe doing things naturally, but at home with no Matt and no doula and poor Bridger asking why Mommy was "singing" was not exactly what I had planned. Matt did come home, right before we were going to have to have my parents drive me. We got in the car (after I scared the neighbors sitting outside as I was screaming in pain on the way to the car). The ride to the hospital was the most miserable 20 minutes ever. We had trouble finding parking as we were going to research exactly where the L&D parking was that weekend and had no idea. We managed to find a wheelchair after exiting the parking deck elevator (again after totally scaring the elevator crowd as well!) I kept thinking I was a total wimp since at that point I had only been in labor 5 hours and couldn't possibly have made much progress. When we got close to the lobby I was in a miserable state and VERY LOUD per Matt. This attracted the attention of a security guard who was going to point us in the right direction, until my water broke in the midst of a contraction. That caused the security guard to take the wheelchair and run with me to an elevator to get me to L&D while Matt got his badge. Apparently my vocalization even caused a priest (we were at a Catholic hospital to come out of his office to see what was the matter). When I got upstairs I was immediately swarmed by everyone on duty and had an IV, vitals taken, and checked in a matter of minutes. I am sure they all thought I was crazy. It turns out though that I was 9.5cm and the baby was coming down nicely. I literally begged for an epidural, and never even opened my eyes to look at the anesthesiologist. However, he had it in in 2 minutes once he arrived. That took enough of the edge off that I could get to pushing and actually appreciate that Matt was there and we were going to have a baby girl without the need for a c-section. After about 20-30 minutes of pushing Larsen made her grand entrance at 11:50am. She was put immediately on my chest and Matt and I were in shock how quickly we went from maybe labor to a baby. She was beautiful and quite petite at 6lbs 14oz, but perfect.

Trying to do a photo shoot on the quilt made by Aunt Jen

Thinking about lifting up her headNope just going to lie here with a sleepy grin instead