An Caisteal: she's here!

I'm sure all of you reading this already know, but our baby girl arrived! Enora Lucia was born on October 13, 2012 at 4:39pm, weighing 7lb 8.8oz and 21.75 inches long.

The birth story is not very exciting, but it's long if I go into all of the details, so I'll give you a shortened version of it:

Around 4:30am on October 12 (her due date!) I started feeling contractions. They were 8-10 minutes apart and felt like mild period cramps. Keith left for work at 7 and I told him I'd let him know if there was any change in the frequency or pain level. I went to the doctor for my weekly visit around 9am and he told me I was 2-3cm dilated and 70% effaced. He stretched my membranes to encourage the labor to progress and said he guessed I would deliver that day or the next.

I headed home and began working when I soon noticed that my contractions picked up. They jumped in frequency to 2-3 minutes apart, but the pain level had not changed - still just mild period-like cramps. I waited a bit to see if anything changed but told Keith about how close they were and suggested that he come home.He picked up lunch on the way and after a couple hours of debate (frequent contractions but little pain) I finally decided it was time to head to the hospital.

The nurses checked me at the hospital and said I was now 3cm dilated and 80% effaced. They watched me for a bit and my doctor came in and checked me again, said I was now 3.5-4cm dilated and decided to admit me. He broke my water at 6:30 to encourage labor to speed up, but it wasn't working as well as he wanted so they started me on pitocin to strengthen my contractions. That was probably around 8pm. Shortly after that I got an epidural - hooray for pain relief! - and from there on out it was a big waiting game. I labored throughout the night getting as much sleep as I could and by 2pm the next day (!) I was finally dilated enough and fully effaced so we could begin pushing. After two and a half hours of pushing, an episiotomy, and a forceps delivery, our little girl was born into this world! She came out with a small cry and passed all of her health checks. What a relief it was to get her out and see that she was healthy!

Enora is now ten days old and doing really well. She is a great sleeper and would probably sleep all night if we didn't have to wake her up to feed her. I am still recuperating from the episiotomy and Keith is doing amazing as a new dad. We have already taken a few trips out for dinner and breakfast and she seems pretty content to sleep in her carrier and go on car rides. All in all we are so happy that she is here and is so far a relatively easy baby. We know that can change at any time so we're enjoying her peacefulness while we can.

This wouldn't be a post without some pictures! To make it interesting I'll put some pictures up that don't make it to facebook, since most of you are probably my facebook friends anyway. Here you go: