I would like to finally share Holly’s birth story and how she made her grand entrance into the world. (warning this is a long post) Our second little miracle Holly Noelle, was born Monday, March 12th at 1:25pm. 8lbs and 20″. After much uncertainty about HOW she would arrive, I’m thrilled to say we were able to have a natural birth and she made her debut fairly fast and furious!
After our version procedure had been successful they had me into the office the following week to make sure she had stayed head down, and as far as they could tell she was. They thought I had a lot of amniotic fluid and that the baby was on the smaller side, so we changed the scheduled c-section on March 13th to an induction. Baby girl decided however that she didn’t want to wait and one day after her Dad’s birthday she decided to surprise us.
Around 4am I woke up to what felt like my water breaking, so I went to the bathroom and sure enough it was a VERY slow leak. So I put some towels on my bed and went back to sleep. How I did that I’ll never know. Around 5am I got up again to check and it was about the same, so I went back to bed again. At 6am Dan’s alarm went off as he was planning to go running with his buddy and I said “You can still go for a run, but I think we might have a baby today”! After I explained what was going on he of course freaked out that I hadn’t called the doctor yet, so finally around 6:30am I called and they told me to head in and get checked out. Dan’s mom arrived around 7am just a few minutes after Ada woke up. We told her what was going on and she was so excited and so happy she got to spend the day with Grandma.
We checked into the hospital at 7:30 and all the scheduled inductions and c-sections were also arriving around then so I spent some time just hanging around waiting. I hadn’t had any contractions yet, so we weren’t even sure we were going to stay. When they finally did come in to check me, she said I was already 5 cm and when she did the check she fully broke my water, and they weren’t kidding when they thought I had a lot, it continued to leak almost all morning.
It was a slow uneventful morning and around 10am they decided we might need to start some pitocin to get my contractions to start up a little more frequently. They started that and the first few contractions I had that really hurt the baby didn’t handle well and her heart rate jumped, so I had to labor on my side figuring she had a pinched cord, that was no fun. We wanted to hold off on the epidural until I couldn’t take the pain since we knew it would slow things down and I was good for about an hour or so suffering through contractions every 5-7 minutes on my side.
They finally got so bad so quickly that I was begging Dan to get someone in the room to give me an epidural. They got me one right away and before that doctor had even left the room, my OB came in to check me and said we were at 10 cm and should start pushing. I panicked a lot because I wasn’t even num yet from the epidural and she said to just relax and give it a few more minutes and then we’ll start pushing.
I don’t remember pushing so hard with Ada. I mean I remember pushing and it was about 25 minutes with her, but I don’t remember it being SOO HARD. I pushed again for about a half hour, but it felt like hours and hours! Each time, it took me the entire time between contractions to catch my breath and relax before we had to go at it again. It was exhausting but at 1:25pm Holly appeared screaming and making a fuss, they laid her on my chest and I stared at my little beauty while they cleaned her up.
She is 8 pounds of the most perfect little being! Ada was able to come up and see us around 3:30-4ish and she did not want to leave us, but we explained that the doctors needed to take Holly and make sure she was nice and healthy and promised she could come back first thing in the morning again.
Here are a bunch of pictures of everyone meeting her for the first time. I don’t know if its possible, but I think Ada loves Holly more then anyone else combined. I cannot get over the love this little girl has for her baby sister. And for me as their mommy I cannot even explain how much my heart explodes to see them together.
I could not have made up a better birth story for our little Holly and I am so thankful and blessed that she was able to come into the world the way she did. Holly is almost 3 months old now and today she experienced her first day at daycare with her big sister. Ada has been waiting for the day her sister could come to school with her, I can’t believe how fast the time is going and that I’m already back to work.
Holly has been a bit more challenging then Ada during the day but she has been an amazing sleeper at night and that’s all I can ask for! She has been sleeping through the night since she was about 5-6 weeks old and right out of the gate she was giving me 4+ hour stretches. I had to wake her up to feed a lot because she took awhile to get back up to her birth weight. We had a few stretches where all she would do was eat, sleep or cry and that was a bit challenging, but we noticed it was mostly during growth spurts and other then that she’s great!
She is such a smiley little girl, if you make eye contact and talk she will babble on and on and on, she sounds like a cat! She is super strong! She’s been standing on her little twig legs for months, she’ll kick my phone right out of my hand (maybe her way of trying to get my attention) and she’ll squeeze your finger until its white. She was also already trying to roll over from her back to her belly, she’s so close, but her big head is to heavy for her.
More then anything though I have loved watching Ada be her sister. She reads to Holly alllll the time and Holly will just lay there and listen, she’s gotten a bit too brave a few times trying to carry her or maneuver her in her arms like I do, but best of all she hasn’t shown a bit a jealousy. She loves her sister and always wants to match her (even though I am having the hardest time finding clothes in girls sizes and baby), she never once has complained about us giving Holly too much attention, she has understood that I cannot help her when I’m breastfeeding and goes to daddy, and she has even attempted to change some diapers with me (backs out halfway through). She is already planning our next baby, she said that one has to be a boy so daddy isn’t outnumbered. (Too soon, but my two amazing girls have made it much easier to want another one).
Here is a photo overload of our last three months together! And I’ll try to get better about staying up to date with these posts again.
Stay tuned for more fun family adventures as a new family of four!!
All Kinds of Happy 