Welcome Little Bailey!

This is a magical story that begins with the most delicious prime rib dinner I've ever had and ends with one of the cutest little blessings to ever enter our lives...

Our good friends Jackie and Nate were nice enough to treat us to a home cooked, home delivered meal yesterday night. They bought a huge prime rib around Christmas and had been waiting for an occasion to cook it on their Traeger grill. What followed was arguably one of the yummiest meals I've ever had. And apparently Bailey agreed too. I thought I had felt a few contractions while I was napping earlier in the day and I was feeling crampy during the afternoon, through dinner and into the evening. Mostly I just wrote it off as cramps caused by Bailey's head being lodged so far down and didn't really start to think that it might be 'Go Time' until we were saying good night to Jackie and Nate a little after 9pm. Not being one to want to unnecessarily shock my husband (the planner of all planners) I basically just gave him some cryptic looks and a few non-committal comments along the lines of "Don't get your hopes up, but we might want to maybe think about getting out the hospital bag"

A few hours later, we were sure I was in labor and had decided to go ahead and get to the hospital. My goal was to get to there early enough to labor in the tub, but alas: No Dice. We were checked in around midnight, I was dilated to 5 cm and Bailey was having heart decelerations during contractions. Just like her big sister, we figured she had the cord wrapped around her neck and I was kept on monitors to keep track of how she was handling the contractions. What followed in the next two hours was amazing; I don't really like to take credit for it, since it's really up to the Big Guy upstairs, but he made sure I rocked at coping with the pain and focusing on getting that little girl into the world safely.

The nurses were literally still setting up equipment when I started feeling the need to push and by the time the doctor finally got his ducks in a row and had me push once, (accompanied by a very loud feral, spartan woman roar) he told me that I would have Bailey on the next push. My obvious reaction was something along the lines of "Yeah right...I'm a mom I know how the 'one more bite' tactic works" But, whodathunkit, Bailey came out on the next push (also accompanied by more roaring...I'm sure the staff loves me) lovely and lavender, with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, arm, torso and legs. What a mess! She didn't cry, she just stared at all the new things going on and only offered a few sissy little protests as the nurses rubbed her down with towels on my belly. The first picture of the two of us together captures my feelings at the moment pretty accurately: What the heck just happened?

John and I spent the next hours trying to understand how this kid basically rocketed into the world. She weighed 7lbs. 11oz. and is only 19 inches long (2.5 inches shorter than her BIG sister) She breastfed for an hour soon after she was born and then commenced to take an 8 hour nap. I tried my hardest to get her to wake up for a feeding in between, but this girl L-O-V-E-S to sleep and I can't say I blame her. Not to jinx our situation, but she is really seeming like the most content little baby I've ever seen. Her cry is so quiet, it sounds more like a gentle suggestion that she might be uncomfortable and if someone wanted to do something to fix it that'd be great.

Big Sister Audrey had a heck of a day today too. It's her half birthday! She woke up and was whisked away to the magical land of IHOP with her Grandma and Grandpa S. where she reportedly ate her weight in pancakes, eggs and juice. They then came by to visit us at the hospital and she got to meet her new little sister. There was a lot of talking about "Baby! Baby!" but mostly, Audrey was fascinated by the fun clip-clop noise her shoes make on the floor and the cool buttons mom has on her bed. I think we're going to do just fine integrating these two into each other's lives.

Neither John or I have gotten a lot of sleep in the past two days, but we're running on euphoria, chocolate pudding, crummy hospital food and the knowledge that a whole lot of people have us in their thoughts and prayers. I am feeling great--good enough that the hospital staff seems skeptical of how good I claim to feel. And we're looking forward to some visitors this evening to keep us entertained. I've posted pictures on a new album on Picasa and we'll continue to update them as we take them and get them downloaded. We're really looking forward to going home tomorrow and settling in with our new family of four. Thanks so much to everyone who's thinking of us and wishing us all well. We feel amazingly blessed!