Presenting our little Gwen Harper

So bringing Gwen into this world was a completely different (and way crazier) experience than having Cara. Warning, this one is going to be long as well so be prepared for all the fun details!



First family photo together!

Let me start with my second to last midwife appointment. It was on the 12th with Mandi. I went into it wanting to officially see if we could schedule an induction. Even though I REALLY wanted to wait until I went into labor naturally, I decided it would be best if we had a date for our work and Marie (who was watching Cara for us) again and at the ultrasound the week before "minion" was measuring a full 40 weeks and already a whopping 8 lbs! I was told by the ultrasound tech that if I said I was done that they might do something for me. I felt like I was in enough pain that I had earned the right to at least see if I could be induced.

So right as Mandi walked in and asked how I was doing I told her I was achy, sore, and feeling pretty much done. I swear to you, it was like magic when she responded with "yeah...how do you feel with being done next Monday, the 19th?" That was the exact date I was thinking because that way Larry could start his 2 week leave on a Monday (rather than middle of the week) and we would have a last weekend to get things done. I left that appointment feeling so giddy and excited. I was feeling a little nervous having an exact date, but I was mostly giddy and excited. We made our last minute plans, got the week starting out right, everything was going great! Then I get a call on Thursday night from Mandi saying that Monday was actually really full and I was put on the list for Tuesday (we'd get a call Monday saying when we needed to go in). I was bummed it got moved back, but it gave us another day to get things done so it was okay in the long run. The only thing I kind of stressed out about is if we'd be in the hospital on Thursday (Thanksgiving Day) or be out in time to have our feast(which we were planning on ordering from Harmon's since we had NO intentions of going out with a newborn). I decided to plan to pick it up on Friday instead of Thursday to avoid any stress when dealing with a newborn. My big goal was to keep a positive attitude and see what we could do to help us (but mostly me because of hormones and all) calm and stress free during the 100 days of hell you have with a newborn so that meal was a big one to help with that.

So Monday (the 19th) I had an appointment with Stevie, who was on call for Tuesday so she'd be the one at least starting our labor with us. Her and I talked about keeping the baby head down and making sure everything was looking good for delivery. She checked my measurements, the heartbeat, and did a mini ultrasound to confirm baby was definitely head down. I left the appointment feeling good about going into the hospital the next day. Fast forward like 10 minutes later when I got a call from the midwife on call (Erika - this was Monday still, remember that) saying they actually had an opening that day at 2 and wanted to know if I wanted to come in. I was FREAKING out! I wasn't ready - we had some cleaning to do, some packing to do, a movie to watch, we were planning on going out to get dessert once Cara got up from her nap. Then I started thinking Cara naps until 2:30. If we went in at 2 I wouldn't get to say good bye to her one last time and it made me tear up thinking she'd go down for a nap and wake up without us. I just felt this wasn't right and was planning on calling them back to say no, but then decided I really needed to talk to Larry first.

When I got home to tell him, he was pretty excited. He really wanted to get it started and kept telling me to ignore everything telling me it wasn't right and let's just go in (he was almost bouncy about it). So I called the midwife and told her we'd take it at 2 and to let's plan with that. Here's where the REALLY stressful part came in: Larry had to contact his mom about coming to watch Cara and suddenly her phone didn't work at all! She wasn't getting texts, calls were going straight to voicemail, and we had no way of getting a hold of her. She told Larry to call Jim's (her husband) phone, but we didn't have his number. We tried contacting Larry's brother's to see if they had the number, but neither of them were answering. I was FREAKING out trying to get a whole day's worth of stuff done in an hour with NO plans on what was going on with Cara. We finally decided she was going to need to come to the hospital with us while we continued to try and get a hold of Marie. Luckily, Larry's older brother finally answered and his mom was able to call us from his phone. I realized it was kind of lucky we got the 2 o'clock slot since the hospital had called me earlier that day (back when we were supposed to be induced on Tuesday) saying they'd call us Tuesday sometime (could be as early as 5 AM could be later than that and if we didn't hear by noon we should call in) to let us know when they had an opening and obviously at 5 AM this would have been a worst situation.

So we go into the hospital, get set up, get Larry's mom to meet us there and take Cara and get this show on the road. Larry gave his phone to his mom so that we had a way to keep in touch with her so we at least had that solution. It was a really rough start that I wish we could've prevented, but it worked out. We even found out we were at the bottom of the list for Tuesday so if there were enough random labors that day we could've possibly been moved to Wednesday (which would have been even more annoying since we were both wasting valuable maternity/paternity leave on these days) so it worked out well we went in early.

So Erika and the nurses come in and tell me they want to start the Pitocin, let the labor start, and check on me. Once she was in a good position they'd break my water and REALLY get the show on the road. Every time she checked me she kept saying the head wasn't quite low enough so she wasn't comfortable breaking my water and they'd continue on with the Pitocin to get her into the birth canal more. Well then we waited a little too long and she started to move more transverse. So now the midwives were stressing that we may need to turn her and put on a belly girdle to keep her in place, but she wasn't turned enough to really say that was necessary just yet and that hopefully the Pitocin would help get her in a good position. After two hours of the contractions I had decided I wanted my epidural (I was trying to go as long as possible but after a couple hours Erika made me think that we could be breaking my water soon and things would be going REALLY quickly after that so we shouldn't wait much longer). So after the epidural they check me (this was 4 1/2 hours into labor now) and I'm only 4 cm dilated, 80% effaced, and she's still a tiny bit to the side (she was trying to come down shoulder first for some reason). This was frustrating, but they were determined that once she got more into the birth canal she'd be in the right position and we'd be okay.

This was taken right after Larry left and about 45 minutes
Before my water broke. Just watching Hallmark and chillin'

So at this point it's almost 7 o'clock at night. We were talking about how Larry should run home to help put Cara down to bed, maybe eat some dinner, get a shower, etc. etc. He had quite a few things on his list that he'd like to do and since I wasn't dilating very far we figured it was as good a time as any to get going. I had been watching Hallmark Christmas movies this whole time on the TV so he was happy to get going (we figured he'd text me from his phone - that his mom still had - when he left the house to come back to the hospital so we weren't totally in the dark about it), but left saying "don't have a baby without me!" I joked that there's no way I'd progress that quickly so he was good to go. So there I am, watching Christmas movies, relaxing through my contractions when at 7:30 I hear the absolute weirdest popping sound and then felt water immediately gushing all in the bed. It HAD to have been my water breaking (or maybe my catheter falling out?). I call the nurses and tell them that they may need to check because I think my water just broke. I'm tempted to text Larry's phone to let him know, but decided not to since I wasn't fully sure what was going on. At this point I had a new midwife that was on call - Catherine - who was still coming to check on me, but the nurses decided to check my cervix and found out I was measuring a 7 in dilation - SEVEN! Like what? I was a 4 for hours and now I'm a seven? They asked where dad was and when I told them he left they told me to text him to say he might want to turn around soon because this was happening. This labor started out slow going and I wondered if it would be as long as it was with Cara, but then this happened and we were only 5 1/2 hours into it so I was pretty shocked. Ten minutes later Catherine shows up and checks me and says I'm now measuring at a 9. WHAT??? So I text Larry's phone to say "hey if Larry's there, tell him to turn around now! This is happening!"

Just like with Cara I got SO exhausted, I'm not sure what it is, but even with an epidural the contractions just seem to take it out of me to the point that keeping my eyes open just doesn't happen. So I'm exhausted, feeling short on air, my body just ran through the ringer and they tell me that this poor baby isn't fully in the birth canal yet so they want me to try and push to get her in it. I do what I feel is pushing (even though it really felt like nothing) and they tell me that pushed her down, but still not far enough. I go to push a second time and they are just worried that she's not coming down the right way still. Then all of a sudden her heartrate plummets. Like going from 130 to 60 plummet and they do NOT like that. They tell me they want to take me to an operating room and see if the heartrate won't go back up. They don't say we're doing a c-section, just that they want to watch it in an operating room "just in case". So they tell Larry to stay in the room and they'd come back for him as they wheel me all around the hospital (later Larry told me he had this dream one of the nights before this where something went wrong with me and he was stuck with two babies on his own and he didn't want to tell me because he didn't want to put that out there and so when they left him in the room he didn't like how it felt like he was in there for so long and was a tiny bit worried his dream might have possibly been happening). All I remember at this point is looking around and seeing everyone moving very quickly to clean themselves, get scrubs on, get me on some other bed, get a spinal put in my epidural line, and they are just rushing around. I was trying to look around for Larry, but I wasn't really sure what was going on so I just looked all around at so many new faces everywhere. Finally I asked them if my husband was coming and they said he would be there shortly and I heard him click his tongue and looked over and saw him dressed in white and was just so glad he was there. I was waiting to hear if I was actually going to have a C-section or not, but it seemed like they were just going to do that rather than tell me what was happening (guess that's what happens when it's more of an emergency situation rather than scheduled). They put this sheet up that was like RIGHT in my face and I could see things being thrown at/on that sheet, but I had no idea what was happening. So Larry comes to my head and looks over the sheet and I ask him what they are doing. He tells me that they are cutting me open. I thought he was being a smart ass so I was about to say that I knew I was getting a C-section at that point, but like what were they doing at that second and then I realized they could very well be cutting me open so all I said was "like right now? They are cutting me right this second?" and he said yeah - it was SO weird how I felt absolutely none of it. I had heard you normally feel pressure or movement, but I felt nothing. I was worried because I didn't tell him to grab my phone to take pictures or anything and his mom had his phone so I was sad thinking we were going to miss having pictures of all these moments. After maybe 5 minutes I could hear a tiny little cry and realized that was my baby. It was the craziest thing to hear it, but not see her (and to be honest I was SO loopy once I got into this room so all of it felt like a really weird experience. Almost unreal to the fullest extent). Larry walked away from me (to go see her and help them with whatever) and finally came back and I saw he had my phone in his hand. I was SO happy he got pictures of her first moments that I could've cried...but, again, I was really loopy and couldn't really even keep my eyes open let alone ask questions.

After what felt like so long they finally brought her over to me so I could see her face. When I spoke she looked right at me. She totally knew I was her mom. She had this cute little round face and big eyes and looked almost nothing like Cara to me. I expected her to look a little like her, but I felt like this was a whole different person entirely (yeah, I know she is, but it felt weird to really see that and feel it). My arms were SO shaky from the spinal (they shook the entire time I was on the table) so I was scared to touch her and accidentally scratch her or anything so I just stared at her staring at me...when my eyes would actually open that is haha. The nurse lady took a few pics of the 3 of us as I tried my best to smile AND open my eyes at the same time haha.

They finally sewed me up, moved me to a new bed, and wheeled me to my labor room (I had to stay there for an hour and a half before they could move me to my recovery room). I felt so bad because they put Gwen in my arms as they wheeled me to the room, but I was shaking SO much I kept asking if I was shaking her too much. They kept assuring me they'd take her away if that was the case, but it literally felt like I was an earthquake to her.

So at this point it was past 9:30, I wanted to sleep and focus on getting ourselves (and this new baby) on a good routine, but they kept asking me questions and going over things until they could move me over. Finally they moved me to the recovery room and it was too late to order food so we just passed out. They left Gwen in the room with us (which we normally send her to the nursery, but we were so tired it just didn't matter) and that's when we learned that she has the loudest voice and some seriously powerful lungs on her! There were a lot of crying moments from her that Larry (the best husband ever) would check on and make sure she was okay. I am also determined to figure out the whole breast feeding thing so we tried that a couple times. We were more successful this time than we were with Cara so I was feeling pretty good about that.

Today has been a lot of resting, recovering, and watching Hallmark Christmas movies haha. Larry went home in the morning to get Cara up and bring her in to meet her sister (we didn't want to burden Marie too much with her or have Cara go through a huge change in routine right before a bigger change of having a new baby in the house) so Gwen and I got some good bonding time. Still working on figuring out the breastfeeding thing and how often to do it and how to get her to wake up to eat, but it was mostly cuddle sessions (skin-to-skin is just my absolute favorite thing to do with a newborn). We made sure when Larry came in with Cara that Gwen was in her hospital "bassinet" and I got to say hi to Cara before anything else happened. She was so excited to see me and seeing her smile made my morning! We hung out with her and Marie for a bit and then when it was time for her lunch and nap time Larry took her home and we sent Gwen to the nursery so I could get a good nap (I barely got any sleep during the night because I have these stupid compression things on my leg to avoid getting blood clots, but it makes a noise every couple of minutes and then the machine my IV is hooked up to started making noise so I probably only got like 2 hours last night). That little 2 hour nap I got was so amazing and perked me right up. It also has kept me energized enough to make it to bedtime tonight. Unfortunately, Gwen gets some spit ups that are scary and since Larry will be taking Cara home tonight (we let Marie go home, back to her bed, after they came in with Cara this morning so Larry is on Cara duty while I'm here) and I can't really get up very quickly at all we're going to have Gwen sleep in the nursery and have them bring her to me when she's hungry so that I can get some good sleep between feedings and she'll be watched closely enough.

I absolutely love doing Skin to Skin with new babies!

Cara meeting her sister!

I missed my little girl!

Love the tiny hands!

Such a cute, peaceful little girl!

So overall, the birthing experience this time was SO much more different and way crazier! I can tell recovery is going to be really rough, I'm not super happy to have all these stitches and new pains to get through, but honestly - I'd go through it all over again in an instant for this little girl! I'm absolutely smitten with her and I'm so excited to see how we function as a new family of 4. Luckily I should be getting out of here tomorrow so we can get started right away :)