Charlotte Arrives!

You may remember from reading here that I was scheduled to be induced on Monday, March 4, which meant we expected to meet our little girl on Tuesday, March 5.  Well ... the best laid plans, as they say.  Due to a very busy L&D department, we were rescheduled for Tuesday morning and thanks to a very stubborn little girl, didn't meet our Charlotte Rose until Wednesday, March 6.  They also say that everything happens for a reason, and I truly believe that’s the case here.  Because of our “delay,” Charlotte shares a birthday with my maternal grandmother, Anna’s namesake, and I can't think of a more appropriate way to remember such a special woman. 

The labor process was loooooong ... starting at 9am on Tuesday and ending at 2:20pm on Wednesday.  I guess it’s a compliment that both of my girls enjoyed their tenure in the womb so much that they didn't want to leave?  I was given Cytotec for about 10 hours in hopes that it would both help me dilate and start mild contractions.  When that yielded minimal results, we moved to Pitocin and eventually manually broke my water.  All of that combine with walking the halls, some precarious positioning by my nurse, and the fact that Charlotte finally read her eviction notice, led to us meeting our newest angel on a snowy afternoon in March.  I saw a total of five nurses, two OBs (I outlasted the 24 hour shift of the OB that scheduled me and wound up delivering with the same OB that delivered Anna), and felt like I may never leave that labor room. 

But, of course, it was all worth it!  I pushed for about 30 minutes (versus the 3 hours with Anna) and had a much better epidural this time around;  I could feel enough to wiggle my toes and the pressure of contractions, it was actually really neat to feel the urge to push and to know that I was doing it right.  As soon as she’d been given a quick once-over by the OB and nurse, Charlotte was handed to me and stayed on my chest for over an hour.  The nurses assessed her APGAR scores as I held her, and within 10 minutes of birth she was nursing ... she also peed on me twice during her first hour of life, but I was so happy in that moment that I didn't care one bit.  It was amazingly serene and almost seemed too quiet this time around; we didn't have any family at the hospital, so Mike quickly sent text messages to our parents with the news.  Because the newborn nurse hadn't yet taken her from me, we didn't even have weight or length information, but knew she was 100% T-totally perfect. 

This recovery has been much harder than I remember with Anna; probably because with Anna I didn't have an “Anna” : )  Without getting into too much graphic detail, I've had a higher level of pain and don’t feel as I though I recovered nearly as quickly; I've also felt much more hormonal and utterly exhausted at times.  It doesn't help that one, or all, of us has been dealing with a cold for what feels like the last three months; I *really* wish we’d purchased stock in the Kleenex company right about now!  But, I feel better each day, we’re all adjusting and new routines are slowly finding their way into our lives.

At the end of the day, the memories of an uncomfortable pregnancy, a long labor, a more difficult recovery, the lack of sleep, the craziness of hormones, and working to find new routines are completely overshadowed by the fact that I’m now the mother to two of the sweetest and most perfect little girls in the world.  I’m SO grateful that God chose me to be their Mother and can’t wait for all of the adventures that lie ahead!

Love at first sight!

 

For those of you that stuck around to the end ... we had family pictures taken in our home over the weekend, for a sneak peek, click here.