Welcome, Sophie Beth!

The Short Story:
Sophie Beth was born on Monday, September 30, 2013 at 2:33 p.m.
She was 21.5 inches long and weighed 9 pounds.
She's perfect.

The long story:
Sunday, September 29 I was 38 weeks and 4 days along. I had been pretty tired and sluggish all day long. Up until that morning, we still hadn't decided on a definite name for our baby. I woke up feeling like we should go with Sophie Beth. Sophie was a name that we had been throwing out there for a little while (among others) but Beth was a totally new contender for a middle name (my middle name is Elizabeth). Clay agreed to the name and my water broke at 9:00 that night. Apparently she was just waiting for the right name to make her debut. We called our sweet neighbor, a grandma in our ward. Once she got to our house, we headed to the hospital.

Once we were at the hospital, we checked into triage. They monitored me for an hour, then made me walk around for an hour. Over and over. Finally around 5:00 am Monday morning, they started me on Pitocin. Unfortunately for both Clay and me, we were still in our triage room. It was small and uncomfortable for both of us. I had to share a bathroom with the room next to me. And she was in full blown labor. That was fun to listen to. Right around the nurses shift change at 7:00 am, my contractions started getting more "frowny" on the delightful smiley face pain scale posted to the wall. My new nurse noticed that I was doing some pretty deep yoga breathing with each contraction and she set about getting me an actual room so I could get my epidural. Even though I was only dilated to a 3 at that point. That was a whole lot more work than either of my other two kiddos for sure!

About 9:00, they moved me to my room. It had a nice bed for Clay to stretch out on, and it was nice to be in a room with windows after being in a tiny little cave for almost 12 hours. Shortly after that, the anesthesiologist wandered in and set to work on my epidural. It was fast and easy enough even if I had a contraction or two while he was in the middle of placing it. Once the relief kicked in, they upped my Pitocin and I took a nice nap. At 1:30, Clay went down to the cafeteria for some lunch. I wouldn't let him eat in the room since all I had eaten was ice chips since dinner the night before and I was starving. While he was eating, the nurse checked me and I was at an 8. That surprised me. I texted the message, "8" to Clay and he hurried back up to the room. A couple minutes after Clay got back to my room, my doctor wandered in, checked me, and said, "You wanna have this baby right now?" Ummmm, sure? I did five or six sets of pushes and the doctor suctioned her out at 2:33. Turns out the cord was wrapped twice around her neck so she was pretty blue. She ended up with a pretty nasty unicorn horn and bruise on her head from the suction, and turns out she was posterior just like the other kids. Apparently it's unavoidable for me. The swelling went down pretty quickly and the bruise faded significantly over the next couple of days. Overall it was my easiest and most uneventful (in the best way possible) delivery of the three I've had. We still ended up with a pretty big baby at 9 pounds. Every time a new nurse came in, she couldn't believe how big Sophie was. 

A couple hours later, Clay picked up the kids and brought them to the hospital to meet their new sister. They were both cute with her, but were mostly interested in the fast food dinner Clay had picked up for them on the way to the hospital. That night, Clay put them to bed and our neighbor came and spent the night again so that Clay could come back to the hospital. The next night we didn't want to ask someone else to come sleep at our house and thought it would be best that the kids not go try to sleep somewhere else so Clay stayed at home and Sophie and I stayed at the hospital on our own. It wasn't the easiest night, but we managed!

This has by far been my easiest recovery. I managed to get by with just motrin for the pain. I usually milk that Vocodin for as long as possible, but I surprised myself by not needing it at all this time.  It was great having Steph here for almost a week. We miss her! My mom will be here in a couple more weeks and we definitely look forward to her visit.

And now for the pictures!

 

About to head home:

My THREE sweet babies! We are so happy that Sophie joined our family!