Caroline's Arrival

Wow!!! It's amazing how much your life can change in one week. We welcomed Miss Caroline Olive almost one week ago. Her entrance into this world was vastly different than Miss Lily's. Lily arrived 4 weeks early after my water broke at home. However, once that happened, my labor was very slow and I ended up needing some Pitocin to help things along. I had the wonderful epidural with her and things went perfectly according to my idea of how labor should go!

Miss Caroline arrived at 39 weeks and 3 days--she sure made us wait!! However, once I was actually in labor with her, she came like gangbusters!! I started contracting Friday night, but never had consistent contractions that were the "right" time apart to go to the hospital...so we waited. After about 5 hours of contractions, I was still not close together or very consistent but I was in so much pain with each one, that I decided to call the doctor and ask about going to the hospital...I wanted to be sure I got there in plenty of time for the epidural!! He said I could go ahead and go and so we called my friend to come up and be with Lily while we were in the hospital...and then it all changed! Sometime during her drive up here, my contractions went from inconsistent to right on top of each other. By the time we got in the car, they were only a minute apart or so. By the time we got to 285, I was pretty convinced I was going to have the baby in the car. By the time we arrived at the hospital, I had progressed to full redneck situation and screamed my way through the waiting room in a wheelchair. We arrived at 2:00 a.m. and Caroline was born at 2:34 a.m. And no, I didn't arrived in time for an epidural. I did get one dose of fentanyl, which worked for about 30 seconds and then I was back in full redneck mode of yelling!! Because I never planned for natural labor, I had no coping resources whatsoever. I am so thankful for a good labor and delivery nurse who was able to help me pull it together in there!! Caroline had to be delivered by a random midwife who was not in my practice because we couldn't wait for my doctor to get there. The one good thing about the process was that it all went very quickly. And Caroline, of course!!

She weighed 7 lbs 14 ounces and was 20 inches long. We had planned the whole pregnancy to name her Olive Caroline or Norah Caroline, but once she was born, we both felt she didn't look like either an Olive or a Norah, so we pulled a switcheroo and flip-flopped the names. We love it and we think it fits her.

On the way home from the hospital...

So far, she is a good baby and only cries when she is hungry for the most part. She has her days and nights confused and we are still working on some eating issues, but otherwise things are going well. She is just so super sweet! We are waiting patiently to see if colic will rear it's ugly head in our household again, but we are hoping not. Certainly, Lily never slept this contentedly even prior to her colic. We are absolutely thrilled to have two little girls!

Lily has been a super great big sister. She always wants to help and hold the baby. I think it's been hard for her to have to share the attention and wait for things, but she is adjusting well.

First bath...Caroline reacted about the same as all babies react to their first baths, I think...