Lucy Kate
Born September 30, 2010
6:35 a.m.
Welcome to the World, Sweet Baby Girl!
Getting scrubbed up.JPG)
Little Lou came out screaming with a loud, lusty cry. Just like her big sister.
LOVE that grin!
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All of a sudden, my baby Peter looked huge compared to Lucy.
This little girl has been anticipating Baby Sister's arrival more than anybody, telling everyone she met Lucy's name and asking me every morning if Baby Sister was coming out that day.
Cue the Sesame Street song 'Cause I've got five people in my family...
The NameKevin, Jillian and Peter had all been calling Baby Girl "Lucy" for at least a few weeks now. I had liked the name but felt hesitant to call her that because I still had several names I really liked as well. (Ava, Lola, Sadie, Scarlett - don't be surprised if you see these in the future. It would have made things easier if we'd had twins and we could have come home having used two names we really liked.) So we spent significant time in the hospital discussing names. In the end Kevin had to put my toes to the fire and eliminate each of the names one by one. Do you like Sadie or Ava better? Let's try calling her Ava now. Let's try calling her Lucy now. In the end, the tipping point was the meaning of Lucy, which is bringer of light. Isn't that a great meaning? If you shorten it to Luc, spelled Luz in Spanish, it means light. Kate is after my sweet sister. After talking to my dad and mom, it seems we all have this problem when it comes to committing to names. I guess they were discussing Katie's name up until the few minutes before her baby blessing and my dad was asking my mom "What should I say? Is it Kaitlin McCall?" Even then, my mom didn't say yes or no. She said "Just say that and we'll change it later if we have to." Hadley's name became official 30 days after she was born because the insurance company had a policy where you had to have the name in by then to put the child on the policy.
It seems like she becomes more of a Lucy each day. So far her nicknames are Lulu and Little Lou. She has black hair and looks so much like Jillian and Peter both did. She's a GREAT eater and has been so mellow so far. Jillian and Peter are having a blast with her. The only problem we've had so far is fighting over who gets to hold her and when:)
They had the funniest chariot-type rides to get patients down to their cars. Behind me my bags are on a cart attached to this seat.
The Details
So...I had decided to go with the midwives instead of the doctors. At UNC you can deliver in the hospital and have an epidural if you choose, so I thought I would try it out. I had a great experience but towards the end was getting impatient:) Kev is on call every third weekend so I wanted the baby to come so he could get the maximum time with us and so I would be at my most recovered state when he had to have his next crazy weekend. But this is considered a social induction and they were willing to let me go 42 weeks, which would take me right up to his next on-call weekend, no thanks. (He was on call the weekend before my due date on Sept 24, 25 and 26. The midwife kept things interesting and stripped my membranes on the 23rd without really having a definitive go ahead from me. Kevin was worried the baby would come when he was on call and my mom was REALLY nervous too. He ended up being at home during most of the nights he was on call and no baby came that weekend.) Then the following Wednesday I had another appointment and she REALLY stripped my membranes. For like, a whole minute. Our due date was the next day, the 30th, and I was thinking the baby would come maybe on Saturday or Sunday. The rest of that day I felt really crampy. I had Kevin dye my hair that night because I didn't want it gray for pics:) and we cleaned the house, vacuumed, etc.
The Labor
At around 1:30 a.m. (on the due date!), we hadn't gone to bed much earlier, I was awakened by pretty strong contractions. By 2:00 I told him I was going to get up and shower and see if they went away but that he should probably call his mom to come over. They weren't going away so I painted my toenails and we got ready. The plan was to call our neighbor to come over until Gayle got there but no one picked up so we just waited for her. A little bit nerve-wracking but luckily I wasn't in as much pain as with Peter. So Gayle got to our house and we headed for the hospital around 2:45ish, I think. We got there around 3 and luckily there is not a line at triage:) We saw our midwife and she said I was at a five and 90% effaced. What's my birth plan? "I think I'd like an epidural." It just sounded too long to go all the way from a five to ten and I had gotten virtually no sleep that night. So they got my I.V. in, got my labs and got me to my room by around 4:00ish, I think. It's all kind of a blur:) The anesthesiologist finally came around 4:30 and decided to give me a spinal block plus epidural since my other kids came fast once labor started. That's a pretty dense but fast drug that they actually use for c-sections but I was REALLY grateful at that point because I was counting down each second, hoping each contraction would be the last I felt. At the same time the nurse had called in some other nurses to set up the table because the contractions were coming on top of each other and she felt like we were going to have a baby fast! It seemed like the spinal block had slowed down my contractions so around 5:00 I felt like maybe we could rest. By 5:45 I was woken back up just from the pressure of contractions and all of a sudden I felt and heard a huge "POP"! It seriously felt like a water balloon had just broken between my legs. I quickly called the nurse because with Jillian and Peter right after my water broke the baby came! At this point, I got butterflies in my stomach. We had thought we would have to wait to meet her when it seemed like labor was slowing. But we were going to meet her soon after all! The nurse came in with the midwife and they said calmly "Okay, there's her head, we'll have you start to push now." I pushed through three contractions and she was born on around the 8th or 9th push at 6:35 a.m. The whole process was pretty surreal. Much less frantic than with Peter and much less time and waiting than with Jillian. It took a few hours to grasp the baby we had with us was ours!
Kevin was able to take Thursday and Friday off of work. It was so enjoyable being at the hospital with just him and Baby Girl. Grandma G brought Jillian and Peter to meet her around 10:00 on Thursday morning and then they spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday at her house. They came home with new treasures and fun stories about what they had been up to at Grandma's house. We're so grateful our kids have such fun and doting Grandmas, who think up fun games and activities practically nonstop when they are with them. It was SO nice to know that while we were in the hospital they were being loved by Grandma! We decided to leave the hospital on Friday evening and spend a quieter night at home before the kids joined us. We rented some movies, got some Cheesecake Factory and reminisced about what it was like coming home with just Little Jillian. In fact, we kept calling Lucy Jill, they look so much alike and it felt so much like when we brought Jillian home.
Saturday and Sunday made up conference weekend and that was a neat way to spend our first few days home. My mom has been here since Saturday afternoon and now she's spoiling us. I've gotten to take several naps and just hold my baby all day long. The kids have gotten pumpkins, gone to the park and explored the Life Science Museum. Life is good. I'm really trying to relax so that by the time everyone leaves I can be feeling good enough to take one tiny adventure each day so we don't start to feel too cooped up.
P.S. I had a wonderful experience delivering at UNC! The whole philosophy of...everything was very holistic and I loved the nurse and midwife who delivered Lucy. I would definitely do it again (especially since she came on her due date, hehe.)
I wish I had a picture: I get out of the shower to find Peter with a pair of those lovely mesh panties they give you at the hospital on his head. Luckily they were a fresh pair:)
