The long awaited day has come and gone:) Sarah arrived on June 5, 2009 at 3:04 AM. She weighted 7lbs 12ozs, has dark hair and dark blue eyes (for now). Her face came out a little mis-shappen, but it is starting to look more normal now. She came much quicker than the other two...Derek took 16+ hours, Emily 10 hours and Sarah was a little over 5. The delivery went wonderfully...if your interested I'll give the whole synopsis at the end of this post but will spare those who don't want all the details:)
Derek and Emily met Sarah at 5AM that morning...of course they don't sleep in on that morning:) Oh well. They both were excited to see the baby, although Derek was very whinny that morning as soon as he learned he would have to leave to go to Grandma Lamb's in a couple hours...he wanted to stay with the baby. Of course when Grandma did get here, he was all anxious to go.
My little Emily girl now does not seem so little:) She is definitely not a baby anymore when you actually have a baby. She seems to have grown up over night. She is quite possessive of baby Sarah, and if I let her hold the baby she doesn't want to give her back.
Derek has been a big helper mixed in with a little more
whiny than normal. Hopefully everything will normalize soon. They spend Fri/Sat/Sun with Grandma and Grandpa Lamb, and yesterday Grandma Brimhall picked them up to spend the week in Snowflake. It is truly a blessing to have such wonderful parents who are willing to help out. We had Derek and Emily Mon and most of Tues...wow!!!...those were a bit stressful. Derek and Emily just can't understand why we can't go places and do all the same things we normally did. I'm sure they think Darrell and I have turned into such mean parents:) But, it will all even out eventually.
Sarah is a wonderful baby. She took to nursing very very quickly and has had no problems in that arena. We had one really long night...Saturday night that she cried most of the night, but Darrell put the swing together on Sunday and she slept beautifully in that between feedings. Last night she had one 4 hour stretch and one 3 hour stretch of sleeping which was wonderful for me. Emily slept in the swing for a good 4 months after she was born...I think Sarah will follow suit. Sarah looks very much like Emily did when she was born.
And now for the details...if you want them. I was getting into bed Thursday night at 9:45pm when my water broke. I was totally surprised! It's amazing that no matter how excited and ready you feel, that as soon as your water breaks or you have a contraction you are totally caught off guard and don't feel at all ready:) We planned a home birth for this baby and so I called my midwife after my water broke. She told me to call again when contractions were 7 minutes apart and strong. Well the first hour no contractions, then they started coming about every 15-20 minutes. Around 2am they had been 7 minutes apart for about 3 contractions. I was wondering if I should go ahead and call. They were definitely strong, but the ones in the hospital seemed way worse. But, since this was my first home delivery I decided to call.
After hanging up the phone they started coming every 3-5 minutes. There were small contractions mixed with very painful ones. I tried standing for a while but that took too much energy. It was most comfortable sitting straight up in bed and just relaxing into the pillows. Our midwife Mary (by the way we hardly took any pics during the delivery because it was so fast and we just forgot...we forgot to get one of Mary...we tried to get one yesterday when I went to see her, but Sarah was too upset, so we'll have to try at my next appointment...but if you are interested you can see her picture at
http://beyondconceptionmidwifery.com/about.htm)
Mary arrived at 2:40AM. By this time I was quite uncomfortable but feared that when she checked my dilation, that I would only be like 4 cm. I then would feel like a total whimp:) Well Darrell started to fill up a pool with hot water to labor in while Mary checked me. She then told him to just turn off the water because there wouldn't be time to labor in the pool. I didn't want to birth in the pool so we didn't need it except to labor in. I was totally shocked that I was ready to deliver, and soooooo glad I called Mary when I did. Usually both my midwives...Mary and Nedra would attend, but Nedra would not have had time to get there so Mary didn't call her. Mary got everything set up and ready for delivery while I had a few more contractions, threw up, shook like crazy during transition...and then it was time to push.
Mary specializes in preventing tears by not letting the baby's head just pop out fast. She had me push and then stop so she could hold the head in and allow the skin to slowly stretch. Then I would push a little more and hold again. The stopping was probably harder than the pushing, but again WOW! I had epidurals with Derek and Emily and had never actually felt the baby come out. I didn't think I would be able to do it. But barely 5-10 minutes later (I don't know exactly...it seemed like hours but it really wasn't) out came her head followed by an enormous amount of relief and there was Sarah. It was truly amazing! We loved having the delivery at home! My water broke at 9:45pm Thursday night and everything was done, cleaned up, and Mary left a little after 5am. Just 7 hours for the whole thing...WOW! Then we were just in our home comfortable home with no IVs, no nurses, no vial machines...it was great. The only part I missed from the hospital is food magically appearing every 4 hours:) But having the baby at home was totally worth it!
I really liked my midwives during all my appointments, but it was wonderful seeing how she was during the delivery. We both just loved her! She was so calming...so experienced...so wonderful!! She has been doing this for 30 years and over 2000 babies...so she definitely knows what she is doing. I was a little sad not to see Nedra also, but it was nice getting to know Mary more.
Well I think that is all for now:) I think I should go lay down for awhile before Sarah is ready to eat again:)
