A Family of Four

May I finally and officially introduce

Alba Zoë Patterson

born February 27 at 9.38am

weighing 8lbs 15 oz

20 inches long

We're so glad she's finally here, born on the day my dad was born. We just keep on stealing the birthdays. Anyway, all went well, for which we're grateful. I'm back home already, because it was boring to be at the hospital, all alone without my little Sophia and without Henry. :( And, you seriously don't get any rest there, with the nurses checking your vitals and all every 5 minutes. So annoying. And lame food, too. So, I'm home. Alba is still sleeping, Sophia is napping, and I figured I'd quickly update the world on our life, and post a few pictures. I'm happy to be home. The only sad thing is that after all the craziness yesterday, and Henry hardly getting any sleep (we went to the hospital at midnight on Saturday), he still had to go in to the VA today, and when I called him at lunch he didn't sound too thrilled - meaning, he wasn't doing so hot, because he was superexhausted...Pray for the poor new dad.

Anyway, here's the quick run-down on the delivery. I went running on Saturday for a little bit, hoping that maybe it'd put me into labor. I guess it did, because I started having a contraction now and then in the evening. Around 10pm though they really started picking up more, and at midnight I decided that with contractions lasting a minute and longer, and being on average3-5 minutes apart, I was good to go. Off we went to the hospital. The contractions I was having were definitely stronger and more painful than anything I had with Sophia, so I was hoping things would go quickly and that I was already fairly dilated. But, when we got to the hospital, I was only 4-5 cm dilated, and the contractions were actually slowing down again. Fantastic. Then it took almost an hour to get me hooked up to the antibiotics I needed due to my Group B strep results. At that point it was 1.30am, my contractions weren't as frequent anymore, but still painful, and I just found out that the whole antibiotic IV thing would take 1 hour, and then had to repeated in 4 hours, and they wouldn't do anything to speed things up (like break my water or something). Sweet. I started having this feeling that this delivery would also drag on, like Sophia's did, and that trying to have a unmedicated birth while strapped down to an IV for hours, would somehow not be fun. To make things short, I decided to just forget about it all and go for the epidural. Considering how scared I am of the epidurals, I was really glad to see the same guy walk in who gave me my epidural last time (he was great). And when I heard the screams of a lady who was doing an "unblocked delivery" while I got my epidural, I figured it maybe wasn't such a bad idea. Anyway, so at least that way I knew Henry would get some sleep instead of being up all night long trying to help me. I'm glad I did what I did...it took me all night long to progress to 8cm, and at 8am or so I was still at 8cm. However, at that point I was done with all the antibiotics, and the midwife was finally back from another hospital to break my water. You'd think with only 2 cm left to go, after breaking my water things would go fast. but, it still took over an hour to make the last 2 cm! Geeze...at least pushing Misses out was faster this time. But really, the whole thing still took almost 12 hours. Anyway, I'm kind of sad that I didn't push through with trying to do things natural, but I was concerned for Henry not getting sleep and needing to perform well for his rotation stuff at the VA, and I was worried not being able to handle the pain while I was strapped down to a bed with an IV for hours. So, I gave up. But, maybe the day will come where I won't have a clueless, helpless mother from Germany about to land while I'm in labor, or a husband who's stressed to the T with school and can't afford to loose sleep, or Group B strep. Maybe, for one baby I'll have all the time in the world, am free to do whatever, have all the support, and no worries and I can pursue a natural delivery - just to realize that it's really much nicer to work through all that without any pain. :) We'll see. In the meantime, I'm glad all went well, that we had no complications, and especially that she's been with us the whole time since she's been born. With Sophia we had all those breathing problems etc. and they had to whisk her away to the nursery to monitor her. It's been nice to simply be together from the get-go this time. And it's been wonderful seeing Sophia so excited to meet her sister.

But, now I'm home. I'm feeling great, and hope I can get into a rhythm quickly. Mostly I just hope that I can keep Alba quiet for this week during the nights, so Henry can sleep and do well this week at the VA. I think if he shines this week, we'll be fine and he'll pass. So, keep on praying.

And here are also a few pictures. Henry was the photographer, and didn't use the flash since it kept startling Alba. So, we don't have any good pictures. Sorry. I'm sure we'll have some nice ones soon.