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Annabelle, only a couple minutes old, with eyes open alert and searching for the voices she recognized. |
Thursday night Laura started having stronger, more consistent contractions. She had a feeling that this round that was about to start was the start of early labor and she was right. She had a restless night trying to get sleep in bouts but not with great success. Around 4am we were both up for the day. The contractions were strong enough that she had to breathe through most of them and focus specifically on mitigating the pains. At 5:30am they were around 5-6 minutes apart and we called our doula. The doula arrived an hour later and we continued the birthing day with our normal routines for relaxation to help the labor progress: walking, birth ball, taking baths, resting when possible and general distraction.
At 12:30 pm the contractions were around 3 minutes apart and starting to get very strong. We decided to start heading into the hospital as it was a 45 minute drive. After some unexpected traffic jams we got to triage at 1:30pm. The triage nurse wanted to make sure Laura was "actually in labor" because she was dealing with the contractions so well that they weren't convinced that she was dilated enough. The astonished nurse announced after a examination that Laura was 8cm dilated! The nurse couldn't believe it and immediately led us to labor & delivery. We were there for 4 hours before the heavy pushing started, 30 minutes after that and our daughter was born at 5:56pm, Friday, July 15th. She was 7lbs 6 oz and 20 3/4 inches long.
Annabelle was born completely naturally; Laura did nothing but an absolutely amazing job. Even in the throws of the final transition stage where people lose their minds and wish people dead or worse, she was polite and thankful to the doctors and nursing staff. Although, we won't speak of the brief cursing bouts. Even in the hardest, strongest contractions the cursing wasn't directed at anyone it was just an expressed out; she just needed to use a little sailor's tongue.
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| Her first swaddle. |
Since the moment she decided to leave her liquid world, Annabelle has proved to be a wonderfully content baby. We are trying to implement all the things we learned about newborn care in books such as "
Happiest Baby on the Block," and other similar texts. And so far so good. She hasn't had any crying fits at all, not one. Each time she wakes up all she does is get a little vocal just a "coo" or related quiet whimper. Then we:
Feed. Swaddle. Swing/Sing to sleep. Repeat.
After two nights in the hospital with every check perfect and every nap a solid two or more hours, we were discharged Sunday morning with many compliments to the baby's great temperament. I would like to think this is more behavior from us, but I have a strong feeling that so far its a nice mix of nature
and nurture.
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