"Race Report"

Well, we're home and Critter has arrived. Or, I guess I should say Critterette. Yes, it's a girl. She's not quite old enough for me to have figured out a suitable name for her, I guess we'll just go with Baby Girl for now.

The whole induction thing was much less invasive than I had expected. The dr. broke my water about 11am and she shot into the world a little after 2pm. You don't need all the details, things were steady from 11am until about 1:15pm. Then at 1:15pm the nurse said we could walk around the maternity ward if we'd like, I was going stir crazy in the room so I said yes. After three laps I was feeling really uncomfortable, we got back to the room and she was on her way. There were about 25 minutes of some intense pain and a little nervousness due to a compressed cord and the fact that they couldn't find her heartbeat. Finally they got the monitoring back and the dr. barely had his gloves and gown on before he reached up and caught her. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about being in labor for only four hours, but that last part was quite overwhelming.

She's doing well, her brothers are thrilled to meet her and they've both shown much more interest and concern for her well-being than I had anticipated. I'm pretty exhausted because we probably got a total of three hours of sleep at the hospital, I don't know who can rest at a hospital- it's impossible. Glad to be home, our family of five.

Thanks for the many well-wishes throughout this pregnancy. I'm looking forward to getting back into shape after the next couple weeks of recovery, another journey I'll be sharing.