Baby Anna is here!

Anna Brielle Harris was born July 22, 2011 at 11:26am. She weighed 7lbs 12oz and was 21 inches long. She is the most beautiful baby. Here is the story of how she came into the world.

Thursday I was having contractions off and on, but nothing regular. My mom and I ran some errands and then that night we went to a card making class. We got home and the contractions were starting to hurt, so I ran to the grocery store to make sure the boys and my mom had some food, just in case. When I got home, I was too wound up to sleep, so we watched a movie. By the end of the movie, I was having some pretty good contractions, so we made sure things were ready to go and then we went to sleep at around midnight.

But sleep didn't come for me. Between the contractions and being anxious to meet my baby girl, I just couldn't sleep. Then at 2am, I got up to go to the bathroom and my water broke. And just like last time, once my water broke, the contractions came hard and strong. So we jumped in the car and drove to the hospital. We checked in just before 3am, and I was dilated 3cm. My contractions were so painful and really close, but Steve was great and really helped me through it all. I got my heplock and blood drawn, and by 5am I was more than ready for my epidural. Thankfully my blood platelets were high enough, so we were good to go. After my epidural, my nurse checked and I was 5cm. Things were looking great.

I was trying to get some sleep since I had been up since 7am the day before, but I just couldn't. So I just spent some quiet time with just me and Anna (Steve didn't have any trouble falling asleep once my epidural was in). At 8am, my new nurse (they had a shift change) checked me, and I was still only 5cm. We were both a little worried that I was going to stall, but she was super positive and encouraging. Right after she checked me, I felt the contractions get much stronger, and I really concentrated hard on opening up.

At 10am, my nurse came in and said that Anna's heart rate was dropping with each contraction, and because she was such a wiggly baby, they wanted to do an internal monitor to keep better track of her heartbeat. But when she went to check me, I was 9.5!! So she said it wasn't necessary and went to tell my doctor we were getting close. At around 11, I could really feel the contractions. They were painful even through the epidural and I started feeling the urge to push, so I called my nurse and sure enough, we were ready.

I pushed for about 15-20 minutes, and it was so hard!! I had forgotten how hard it was. Labor is well named. But again the nurses and my doctor were so encouraging, and Steve was amazing right there with me pushing me along. And then she was here!!!

Her cry was just beautiful, though very different from Erik's and David's. I don't know why, but I really expected her to look and sound like one or the other. But she's just her own beautiful little person.

The doctor put her on my chest and she snuggled right in. Even all messy she was the most beautiful little baby. Then a nurse wiped her off while I got stitched up. And then I got to hold her for an hour before they took her to get a bath. It was just so wonderful and healing to have her in my arms. I was smiling and crying and laughing all at once.

And it is amazing how different my recovery has been. I'm still very sore and tired of course, but nothing like last time. Last time I felt (and looked) like I got hit by a bus. But this time I felt so energized somehow. Which meant that I still couldn't sleep even though I knew I should. I finally did get some rest at about 10pm while Anna was in the nursery.

Our hospital stay was so great. The nurses were wonderful and so encouraging of my VBAC. My original nurse even came to check on me when her next shift started because she wanted to see how our birth went.

We came home Sunday afternoon, and we are loving being a family of five. Anna is such an angel baby. She is a great nurser and a great sleeper. I hope she keeps it up. She already has her daddy wrapped around her little finger, and David and Erik are very proud and happy to be big brothers.

Anna less than an hour old

So happy to finally have her in my arms.

I'm so in love with our tiny miss already.

David holding Anna.

A proud big brother. (Ignore the cookie crumbs on his mouth. It was hard to keep 2 three-year-olds entertained in a hospital room, so we resorted to bribery).

Erik likes to pet Anna like a puppy.



He also really enjoyed drinking from my big hospital mug.



Steve is so in love with his little girl.

Mommy and Anna, ready to go home!

Daddy and Anna. They are just smitten with each other!!

Everyone loves Anna, but Anna does not love her car seat. :)

The Little Pool and Outside Chalk

Trying to stay cool despite the Texas summer heat, we purchased a plastic pool for the boys to play in. And I admit, I like to sit in it too. :)

Our apartment pool (which the boys call "the bigger pool") still isn't open, so we spend a lot of time in the "little pool."

And Steve discovered that adding "outside chalk" (that's David and Erik for sidewalk chalk) makes it even more fun! It turns to paint, and we had so much fun finger painting and making footprints.

Erik getting in the pool the "silly way."

David and Erik splashing in the little pool. David is wearing my headband because he thinks it makes him "look so cute."

Our family's footprints

Baby Anna at 33 weeks

We've decided to name our sweet baby girl Anna Brielle, and we're so excited to meet her, though I do hope she stays put for at least another 5 weeks. Yesterday I got to have an ultrasound, and everything looks great. All her organs are normal, she's growing right on track, and she's in a great position!! And the tech even switched over to the 3D ultrasound just to give us some fun pictures. They didn't turn out super good because she's already pretty engaged and she's quite the wiggle worm, but here's a sneak peek at our baby Anna:

Baby Anna at 33 weeks

Erik's version of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"

In which Erik says his first swear word and David shows off his no-hands sippy cup skills.

Easter Egg Hunt 2011

"Good Crap!"

This morning as Steve was headed out the door to school (for his last day of classes this semester, yay!), he accidentally let in a spider. It was big enough that it made him jump backwards. Steve doesn't like spiders or any bugs for that matter, so I didn't think much of it, but he was seriously concerned about leaving us alone with that spider in the house.

He thought it went under the couch, so he lifted it up to see if I could see the spider. Nothing. But his carpool was here, so he had to go. I wasn't too worried. We get a lot of spiders here, and how big could it really be?

Well I went back to washing dishes (Erik was in his bedroom playing and David was in the family room), and not a minute goes by when David says "Mommy a brown spider. A brown spider by my Pooh car." And sure enough, there by his Pooh car was the spider. And it was GIANT!!! I kid you not, it was the size of David's hand.

So even though I was expecting it, I couldn't help but yell "good crap that's a big spider!" And naturally both boys start exclaiming "good crap! good crap! good crap!" Well I guess there are worse things I could have said. :)

Sorry. No picture. I just wanted that thing out of my house! I'm fairly certain it was a wolf spider. A wolf spider the size of a baby tarantula!

Sishy.

Erik has trouble with the "F" sound, he either substitutes "S" or "P" so at night we don't watch a nice game of Wheel of Fortune, we all sit on the couch enjoying Wheel of Portune. I had a similar problem when I was little that resulted in my being unable to say my own name, when I tried it came out "Meemon." One of my Dad's favorite stories about me is when someone imitated my pronunciation of my own name and I corrected them vehemently saying: "My name's not Meemon, my name's Meemon!!" In a similar vein Erik and I were discussing fish, which he pronounces "sish" or "sishy," and I imitated him. "Right, a sishy..." he cut me off and looked me in the eyes and said very earnestly: "Not sishy. Sish."

We watched conference this weekend and out here among the gentiles we had to go to our ward building to watch the satellite broadcast. When the broadcast started and the panorama inside the conference center came on the screen Erik saw the organ and declared, "It's a monster, it's scary!" Kristi told him: "It's not a monster, it's an organ." He immediately declared that "It's a organ, it's scary!" Erik is kind of awesome.