Finley Anne

Well, my official due date is this coming Thursday, and I am so glad that we already have had Finley here for 3 weeks! It was so awesome to skip the last 4 weeks of my pregnancy, only because Finley was healthy and ready to make her debut!  Here is a little bit of the story of her arrival.

On Saturday September 16th I woke up around 4am to go to the bathroom.  This happened every night multiple times.  As I sat up to walk to the bathroom something felt a little bit different.  I sat on the bed for a while before moving and Rob asked it everything was ok.  I told him I think my water broke, but I'm not sure.  So I went to the bathroom and tried to go back to sleep.  I pretty much knew at that point that my water had broken and that I would be going to the hospital that day, but I had so much on my to do list before the baby came that I was in denial.  I had to clean up the house, wash the baby clothes, pack my hospital bag, buy Zac a new winter coat because his was too small and it was getting chilly...etc.  So I just watched the clock tick by while I thought of all the things I wouldn't be getting done before the baby came.

By 6 or so I got up and took a shower. I wasn't really having any contractions, but I was a little bit nervous (and so was Rob) that I would start labor quickly and have the baby pretty fast.  So Rob started calling Crys to see if she could come be with the kids while we went to the hospital.  Thankfully she said she could so I got some things done around the house quickly before they got there.  

Here is a picture of my big 36 week belly before we left.  I'm pretty happy that I didn't have to wait any longer to meet little Finley.  :)  Not much room left in there. 

We got to the hospital and Rob was hungry so we stopped at Chick-fil-a (right across the street from the hospital) and went through the drive thru.  As we were stuck between cars in the drive thru waiting for our food, my water came gushing out even more.  I couldn't stop it.  Fortunately, I was prepared and had towels and such.  When we got to the hospital and walked in, I carried a towel with me and the nurses knew what that meant.  ha ha.  They got me to a room and were really nice. 

I had to have an iv because I had been tested for group B Strep the day before but the results hadn't come back yet.  So just in case, they gave me some penicillin just as a precaution.  And because i wasn't really having any consistent contractions, they started me on pitocin.  I wasn't wanting an epidural so I was nervous about the pitocin, but decided I would try it and if I needed one, I would get an epidural.  I spent a lot of time walking the halls of the hospital and bouncing on the exercise ball. 

The contractions started to get pretty intense around 3:30pm.  My nurse was amazing and was very encouraging.  She wanted me to be successful at doing it without an epidural.  She would push on my hips during contractions or give me encouragement. I've never had such an awesome nurse.  When I was ready to give up she told me "I think she is making her move...you can do this!"  And sure enough, within a couple of minutes she checked me and said I was at a 9.5.  I told her I was ready to push and of course, she told me not to because the doctor wasn't there yet.  She was paging nurses and my doctor like crazy trying to get them to come.  She was running around the room trying to get everything ready and nobody was showing up.  After about 2 minutes, my doctor walks in very calmly (while the nurse was frantically calling whoever she could).  She asked him "Did you get my page?!?!" and he very calmly said "yeah".  ha ha.  All the while, I'm on the bed trying to breath so I don't push.  

After the doctor got there...it took about 2 minutes and Finley was born.  :)

I was so happy that she wasn't a tiny baby.  She was a healthy 7 pounds 4 oz.  Which is tiny for us...but I was worried she would be really small because she was only 36 weeks. 

I didn't take a ton of pictures this time...I mostly just enjoyed holding her for the first few hours.  She was born around 4:24 pm.  The funny thing is that my "baby shower/ girls night" was planned for that night and the ladies were meeting at 4:30 to go out to dinner.  I missed out on my own party, but I'm glad I was able to text them all a picture of Finley while they were together.

Rob went home around 9pm so Crys and Alan could go home.  I stayed at the hospital and he came back in the morning with the kids. 

They all loved meeting their new sister.  

They didn't love watching her get a bath because she cried up until they started washing her hair.  ha ha.  Rob is such a good dad.  He looks good with a baby in his arms.

They finally weighed her a few hours after she was born.  I made sure to take a picture with the weight showing...with Riley, Rob took a picture of her on the scale, but totally cut off the weight!  ha ha.

Cute newborn baby.

Our five kids.  We love them all.

The traditional first diaper change done by daddy...actually I think this was the second poopy diaper she had.  I was there alone when she had her first one, so I got to change that.

Even though they usually don't let babies who were born that early go home before 48 hours, we got to take Finley home after 24 hours in the hospital.  It was so good to be home.  My parent's drove up the day after she was born and my mom stayed for a couple weeks to help.  And she is so so helpful.  Thanks mom!  I'm definitely not getting even half as much stuff done with her gone, but that's ok.  Finley is worth it.  

Finley's first bath at home.  And if you look closely, you can see the yummy caramel apples that we made earlier that day.  Yum.