Announcing...

Laurel Christine arrived Friday night at around 10:47 p.m. She's beautiful and healthy and looks exactly like her older siblings did at birth.

We're all home now, sitting around and staring at each other in wonderment. Zooey is really happy with the new baby and intends to babysit (!) or just sit and watch her sleep. I suggested that might get boring, and he said he might go play for a little while and then come back and watch her sleep some more. Edyn just keeps pointing to the baby and saying either "Hi, Baby!" or "Night-night, Baby!" or "Hi, Mom."

This was the most difficult of all three of my deliveries. My body really wasn't ready for it. And Laurel wasn't ready to come out. With the threat of Group B Strep looming, we used pitocin augmentation to "help along" highly irregular contractions. But even when I was 8 cm, Laurel was still high up under my rib cage, unwilling to decend, despite all the walking, swaying, rocking and silent begging I did. I'm glad I had a full compliment of labor management techniques available to me -- I didn't make TOO much noise, difficult as the contractions were. I ended up with much higher levels of pitocin this time than I had with Zooey (same scenario with the early water rupture thing), and they were simply grueling. But with my husband there to support me through each one and his gentle reminders that another one was over so that meant we were one step closer to the end, I just kept plugging along.

Anyway, we're both recovering quite well. Laurel's a teensy bit jaundiced, but my milk is in and she's eating well this afternoon, so I guess that will be short-lived.

Thanks for all the prayers!

--Sparki