Lily and I got home yesterday, and we are adjusting to life as a family of five. Thank you for all of your kind comments on Mike’s post, they were very fun to read through!
Emma and Johnny love their baby sister, but Johnny especially had a hard time having me gone. It didn’t help that he and Emma were both pretty sick the entire time we were in the hospital – thankfully both are doing much better today. They are enjoying one final outing with Grandma and Grandpa to a local farm this morning before Grandpa flies back to Europe this afternoon. I’m very happy that Grandpa got to meet baby Lily, and that he was here to help with the kids while we were in the hospital. We get to keep Grandma until the 15th.
Lily reminds us a lot of Emma as a baby – she has more hair, but Emma was born with dark hair too so we’ll see if Lily stays brunette or goes blonde. I love having a baby with hair! She’s pretty mellow most of the time, but when she is upset you definitely hear about it! Her pouch sling is her favorite place to be – attached to me of course. We also tried out her cloth diaper cover yesterday and it worked great, so I’ll be making some more of those. Mostly, though, we’ll be resting and adjusting to life as a family of five.
Now for birth details (stop reading here if you don’t like birth stories). Lily’s birth was definitely the most exhausting experience of my life: 26.5 hours of labor, including 7 hours of pushing. No comparison to Emma’s birth (3.5 hours of labor, about one hour of pushing) or Johnny’s (12 hours of labor, 15 minutes of pushing). No-one could figure out what my problem was until Lily was born, posterior (sunny side up). They knew she was posterior at one point but thought she had flipped around; turns out her umbilical cord was too short to allow much movement at all. We are both doing well and happy to have avoided a vacuum, forceps, pitocin, or cesarean delivery. I will say that I have discovered one very good reason to get an epidural after 10cm. I’m grateful that Lily tolerated such an exhausting labor as well as she did – we escaped being attached to the (much hated by me) baby monitor for all but the last couple of hours when they hooked up the epidural, and thanks to the Jacuzzi tub labor was quite bearable up until the hours of pushing. Both Emma and Johnny’s deliveries had to be monitored non-stop from start to finish, so I was really happy to get a break from that. Lily is 21 inches long (like her brother Johnny) and weighs 8lbs 14oz (to Johnny’s 8lbs 14.3oz). Emma was a only 6lbs 1.5oz and 19.5 inches long. Recovery post-Emma was easy. With Johnny I wound up with a broken tailbone that took months to heal, something I’ve thankfully escaped this time round. I’ve appreciated the days of forced rest while stuck in the hospital, and feel like overall recovery won’t be too bad this time around.
