Her name is Elizabeth May. I looked up the meaning of her first name and it said, "God's promise" or "I am God's Daughter" which made me cry (big surprise) and fall in love with the name even more. May is the maiden name of Todd's ancestor Ruth May Fox who seems to have been quite a wonderful woman. We think the name will be just right for our little lady.
A quick birth story: I was supposed to be induced on Sunday, but on Wednesday morning (right after my weekly OB appt) I was out in our driveway and tripped backwards over a piece of furniture. I fell onto my rump on the cement so I called triage to see if I needed to be concerned. They had me come in to be monitored for 4 hours, but then I was having too many (unpainful) contractions so they had to keep me for 24 hrs. Let me mention that I made some phone calls to friends to ask them to watch Audrey and Drew and I scared the daylights out of a lot of people because I sounded like a crazy, blubbering mess on the phone. THANK HEAVENS for nice friends! My mom also flew in that night (perfect timing) and that helped alleviate a lot of stress.
The next day I asked if they would just induce me instead of coming back on Sunday and they were willing to do that, but then they did an ultrasound and found out that she had flipped since my morning appt. and was now breech! So, then plans were made to take me to the O.R. and try to flip her from the outside (yikes). We waited for Todd to get off work (last few days of residency) and then prepared to go to the O.R. They did another ultrasound just to check and that little acrobat had flipped again and was no longer breech. Hallelujah! They instantly put a big velcro belly wrap on my tummy so the baby would be too squished to flip again. And then they started me on Pitocin and gave me an epidural. Oh, how I love a good epidural. The labor took about 9 or 10 hours and wasn't super pleasant, but she's here now and she's a DREAM baby. We are extra grateful right now for a mellow baby because the other parts of our life are craziness.
Our awesome Labor and Delivery nurse basically stayed with me the entire night. She was like a midwife or doula.....she rubbed my back for over an hour while I threw up and then rubbed my club feet for a while. SO, so nice.
First family picture....we all look a little trashed, but we sure love each other.
The beautiful view out our 9th story window. I love Ann Arbor.
Love.
Audrey can't get enough of her sister. She does, however, forget her name. I heard her tell someone the baby's name was Emily.
So, there she is. We adore her and I adore being de-pregnant-ized, so things are good.
Where's Baby Waldo?
We are heading into a crazy week now because we're moving. We are so happy to be moving back west and towards our families, but it is also so hard to leave this town and the people we love here. So hard. I'm still using denial as my coping mechanism.Wish us luck on the next couple weeks!
