A New Addition

I’ve been away for a few days because our new baby Aspen was born earlier this week! It was a super fast labor and delivery {thank heavens} and we actually came home pretty quickly too – so far she is off to a great start! We sure love her. 

I’ll resume normal blogging activities next week, but in the mean time you can enjoy some of these pictures of our new addition and cute Abram. Hopefully I’ll get some legitimate non-phone pictures in the next few days.

I started having contractions last week…every night but they never went anywhere. So on Monday when I had them, I didn’t think anything of it. In fact, we were in town going out for dinner and I mentioned to Andy that they were getting a little more intense. He started to worry and insisted I time them, I was unconcerned and told him that even if I did go into labor it would be hours and I wanted a big meal because I was starving last time! Eating a lot turned out to be a poor choice.

As we drove home, I realized that these contractions were not going away…and that I probably should start timing them. And maybe call my brother and his wife to be on stand-by if we needed them to come stay with Abram.

Once home, I got a warm shower and the contractions got worse and we told my brother he better come over. An hour later, we were out the door on the way to the hospital and I was more than ready for some medicine. Ha! I had a minor panic attack when we left the house that I was going to be sent home, probably residual anxiety from Abram’s birth! Andy assured me that wouldn’t happen and that I really needed to get in the car. Poor guy, managing me in labor has got to be a stressful job!

Once at the hospital, I wasn’t really paying attention to anything but breathing through contractions. Andy later told me the nurses were acting pretty quickly, I think we came in at just the right time. I was dilated to a 7, got my epidural about 20 minutes later, my water broke about an hour after that and I went from a 7 to complete in about 5 minutes. Which made the nurses really have to scramble since my doctor wasn’t ther yet and they kept telling me “Don’t push!!!” Ha. Which is pretty hard not to do, especially because for some reason my epidural wasn’t numbing me down in that area so I could feel everything – and really felt like I needed to push! And pain. Lots of pain. It was only 10 minutes though and then my doctor was there and I could push. And 4 contractions later, after about 30 minutes, Aspen was here!

She is my hero. I may consider having another child if I could get a guarantee that all labors and deliveries will be like hers.

Andy went home after she was born, Abram was awake decided having a party with my brother and his wife was a much better idea than sleeping. Which may be because he had quite the crash earlier that day and was hurting a little. But since it was 2 am, we figured he better go back to bed, all I was going to do at the hospital was sleep anyways.

So far Abram likes Aspen. He wasn’t sure about the whole hospital situation, but he was pretty excited I saved him some apple slices and graham crackers every time he visited. He thinks she is funny when she cries, wants to touch her eyes, likes to stroke her cheeks with his cute little fingers and wants to share all his food with her. My heart is happy.