she is here!!!!!!

Miss C (e-mail me for full name) arrived yesterday at 11:39 am! She was 7 lbs. 12 oz., so she falls right in the middle with Mr. M as far as size goes. She is healthy and cute as can be!

This birth would qualify as one of my longest labors, but could also be one of my shortest. I never did get into a good labor pattern at home, even though I'd been up for about seven hours before we left the house around 7:30 am. I had contractions all night, but none were painful, just enough to keep me awake. I could tell I was going to be having her soon though, and figured we may as well head in and get things moving. My doctor broke my water at 8:30 and that was all it took to get things going, but still nothing got painful really until just before Miss C was born. So, if I were to count all of the time I spent awake that night this would be about and 11 hour labor, however if I were to just count the time I spent in active labor this would be about a 2 1/2 hour labor. Either way it was not bad since I really only had about 30 minutes of the more intense contractions, and even those were not too bad since after one of the worst I jokingly said "this is when I think maybe I should have had an epidural"!

We did have a "bump" in the plans though, Miss E did not get to attend the birth. Due to the H1N1 virus the hospital had just instituted a policy of no visitors under age 18. We had thought about bringing her and making an appeal to the administrators (we were told that was the rout to go), but a couple of our kids had been a bit off this week (99.5 temp, hardly anything but Mr. S had his hives get gets AFTER a virus) and we felt we could not honestly make such an appeal. Miss E was fine with this since this allowed her to spend the morning playing with her friends! My friend (who was supposed to be Miss E's buddy) did come along anyways and it was nice having her there.

We were out of the hospital at the 24 hour mark and on our way home to introduce Miss C to the kids. Our wonderful new neighbors (the ones we got the piano from) watched the kids while Rob got us, they left as soon as we arrived though. Everyone was so excited to see Miss C. Miss J has done fairly well, though I can tell she is a bit confused. She is trying to figure out her role

in all of this. She has such strong mothering instincts though, so she is trying to take the role of care taker for Miss C. She loves holding her, patting her, finding her hat, giving her blankets, all that sort of stuff. She does not even care when Miss C cries, she thinks it is cute and signs "cry".

Mr. S is trying to remember what it is that babies can do, and is finding out that its a very short list (and he is not a fan of the crying)! The big kids are just thrilled with her and they are all loving having their turns holding her and looking at her.

I'm looking forward to getting some rest now that I can get comfortable. Rob is going to be handling things around the house for the next couple of weeks and I'll be spending quite a bit of my time upstairs in bed with Miss C.