It’s been awhile.  I’ve been reveling in sweet baby snuggles, and the month before that, dealing with pregnancy in the late summer was a bit much for me.  Blogging was the last thing on my mind!  Our air conditioner broke on three separate occasions, and my husband eventually purchased a window unit for our room while it was repaired again…and again…and again, ha!  Thankfully our upstairs unit was functioning well (mostly), and we even moved our mattress up a flight of stairs during one of the outages.  We persevered and everything has been working well since about a week before our baby was born.

During the last month of my pregnancy I was measuring 2-3 weeks large, and my midwife wanted to induce me on August 31st.  My due date has fluctuated from August 22nd to the 30th based on dates and scans, but as time went on I was pretty much certain that I was in fact overdue.  I was a worried about being induced (I never had been before), but I was ready to have this sweet baby!  I had had contractions off and on for weeks now at this point, and I was just so tired.

To my delight, my water broke at around 5:40 am on August 30th, so the induction was not necessary!  I called to my husband who had just started getting ready for work and then we jumped into action.  My fifteen-year-old daughter wanted to come along, and my sixteen-year-old opted to stay home with the little kids while my mother in law was in route.  (She said that she did not feel comfortable watching a birth.)  At this point I realized that I was losing a LOT of water, which was a bit concerning to me.  I thought that possibly Mabrey was small after all, and that I was measuring big due to amniotic fluid.  At this point it really didn’t matter, because she was on her way!

I was thankful that I wasn’t really contracting because my midwife told me that she thought I might go fast since this was baby #8.  (One of the reasons she wanted to induce me.)  Once we arrived I pushed to get an epidural as soon as possible, because I have had babies come really fast after my water broke.  I was able to get an IV started, be assigned to a room (#34) and have the epidural within about an hour and a half.  While I wasn’t thrilled that a student was shadowing the anesthesiologist (she went super slow and explained EVERYTHING in great detail…too much detail for my liking), it went pretty well and I was pain free.  After a natural delivery with my sixth child, I decided that I was an epidural girl all the way if delivering in a hospital, ha!  I’ve had hemorrhaging issues with my last babies, so home births are not something I’m comfortable with.  I again lost a large pocket of water, and my nurse said it looked to be the amount that a normal woman lost in it’s entirety.  This was the third time this happened, and I became a bit concerned.  What if my baby had a swallowing issue, or something else was wrong?

When I arrived at the hospital I was a four, after my epidural I was a six, and it wasn’t too much longer before I was ready to push.  Mabrey was almost born with one contraction, but she didn’t quite make it.  My body decided to pause and didn’t contract again for a few minutes so I pushed her out after waiting in limbo for a few minutes.  She came out with the sweetest cry, and was absolutely perfect.  All traces of fear left me, and I was just so thankful to God that all was well.  She weighed in at 8 lbs. 8.5 oz. (my biggest baby to date) and was 20 inches long.

After a few hours we were moved to a more permanent room for the next few days.  Our kids visited, and then Rusty and I settled in.  Mabrey passed each of her tests with flying colors, and our only real concern was that she pretty much refused to wake up during the first 24 hours.  After that point however she woke up hungry, and she now weighs over nine pounds.

We are just so thankful for this precious gift!  She is the sweetest little miracle, and is so very easygoing.  We are still in the “adjustment” phase (our almost 2-year-old still isn’t quite sure about her little sister), and I’ve been dealing with slight nursing issues (on my end, not Mabrey’s), but I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.  Hopefully I’ll be back on a more consistent basis soon.  Right now we are concentrating on enjoying every sweet ounce of Mabrey Hannah!