She's here!!!

Announcing the arrival of the beautiful addition to our wonderful family!!

 It's a girl!!! 

7 lbs 5 oz, 21 inches of perfect.

The morning started with them not being able to give me my IV. They tried 4 different times, thinking they had it a couple of times and releasing the IV fluid into the ever-puffier back of my hand instead. Man, was my hand lumpy and messy (and seriously bruised and swollen for more than a week afterwards)! But 3 nurses later, they finally got it in the side of my arm, painfully going through a nerve to get there. Not the best start! Made my superstitious side a bit nervous too since the last time they'd had that much trouble was when M was born, and things didn't really go too smoothly after that start.

But we got in there and before we knew it, our baby was crying! They brought her over for us to admire instantly and said, "here he is!" Coop responded, "a he? It's a boy?" The nurse said, "oh, I didn't look actually. Nope. It's a girl!" Unfortunately, her blood sugar levels were way low which meant her temperature was dropping so they had to whisk her away to get her stable.

 As they sewed me up, I started to have problems with my legs from the epidural and got miserably nauseated, so they gave me an anti-nausea medicine, which I promptly had an allergic reaction to! Poor Cooper. The things I put him through. For the next hour plus, I thrashed and flailed around like one possessed without any ability to control my own head or arms. It was awful. And pretty freaky for Cooper to watch. But they had wonderfully competent doctors closely monitoring me and my blood pressure the whole time to make sure it didn't get worse, reassuring him that I would be okay. And eventually things calmed down and we were able to hold and fall in love with our baby girl. She is so worth the long struggle to get her here!

She's such a darling little peanut! So grateful she's here!

Almost looks like a smile already. She certainly has been wide-eyed from the beginning. Actually the very first thing they said about her was, wow! She has some serious lungs! And she does. It's not just a tiny newborn squeak, but a full-blown eagle screech. Followed by a snort. Rather ladylike. She's going to make sure she's heard over the noise at home! 

And speaking of home, we decided to leave just two days later to get home and introduce our little lovely to the rest of the gang. Because the flu is so bad here in ND, the hospital was on lockdown and nobody under 13 was allowed to visit. The girls were devastated. We skyped frequently so they could see her (hearing G say her name was about the cutest thing ever, and the second the video was up dude would be demanding to see her. Looks like they might like her!), but it's not the same. So as soon as we were given the okay, we checked out, bundled up, and drove on home!