Leina girl is still working on settling into a routine. I spend most of my time huddled over her crying form asking, “what do you want baby?” Since she doesn’t appear to be able to converse yet, I guess I’m just going to have to get better at reading baby cry language.

Artie, however, appears to be mildly disgusted with this turn of events. I swear I saw him shoot me a look this morning that said, “what were you thinking bringing that home and did you keep the receipt?” He has proven himself above and beyond though. With all the relatives marching in and out of the house, Artie as been a true gentleman and shared the sofa. He hasn’t eaten a single guest yet. What a good boy.

However, he hates baby crying. This is a problem since there’s quite a bit of that going on night and day now. Whenever Leina kicks in, his ears go back and he slinks upstairs away from the noise. He’s definately not impressed.

I, however, am developing a real tolerance for crying. I look at it more as a form of excersize. She gets to work out her lungs, legs and arms all in one shot. Not bad really.

Right now, Leina girl is curled up in Granny Tutu’s arms getting extra snuggling. Later this morning we have our first outing as we head for her first doctor appointment. Wish us luck!

As our good friend Shanda put in the last blog’s comment Leina is looking less and less like me everyday. Most people think this is a good thing since Chrissie is prettier than me but I already miss my little girl. When she first arrived all the nurses and grandparents exclaimed with surprise that she had my lips, my nose, my chin, even my chubby cheeks. But slowly, over the course of hours, as Leina blossomed into the little snuggle-buggle she is today (at day 4) everyone now says she looks like Chrissie. She now has HER eyebrows, HER nose, and I’m sure she’s going to get Chrissie’s hair. She was my beautiful baby girl at first, but now I have to share her. Oh well, she’ll always have my dimple 🙂

It’s only pictures from the first day for now, but take a look…

More wonderful baby updates later, for now I have to thank Elmo for fixing the digital camera:

Without him nobody would be getting any precious baby info!

Thanks Elmo!

Yesterday afternoon, Grandpa Elmo and my auntie Bev pulled into town. Elmo had two insightful comments upon seeing his granddaughter for the first time.

His first thought….. “Wow, she’s much cuter than I thought she’d be.”

His second thought….. “Look at that dark black hair. It looks just like yours Chrissie. I wonder where she got that from?”

Ok, in his defense, he was tired from driving all day but I still think it was pretty funny none the less.

Leina continues to amaze. I think my favorite thing she does right now is her pooping face. She looks like she’s trying to move heaven and earth which is pretty funny since the results are much smaller. Who knew something as simple as a poop could be so entertaining?

Yes, I can finally report that my sweet baby girl is finally here. After yearning and dreaming for the last nine months, all my wishes came true, and I held her in my arms for the first time on August 7th at 2:20am. Unbelievable.

The action actually began early Wed morning when we checked into the hospital a litttle after 12am for an induction. The drugs began and the race was off! Most of Wed was pretty easy. Kevin and I were just waiting for my body to warm up and get the labor started. We watched tv and even read! Contractions were mild and every 5 minutes apart so they were easy to handle. Unfortunately, “easy” labor does not equal a baby so they brought in the pitocin to speed things up. And boy did it! By 7pm the contractions had gone from mild/annoying to painful so I called in the big gun and got my first epidural around 8:30pm.

Yup, that’s right, my first epi. That one only lasted about an hour and wasn’t very effective. I kept waiting for the elusive numbing but it never came. Instead, everything got stronger. Now, once you get an epidural you are bed bound because at that point you can’t feel your legs which makes walking a little hard. For me, I found my labor getting harder and harder, and I couldn’t get up and move around to try and easy the pain. Instead, all I could do was stay in the bed and try to cope. Thankfully, we had a wonderful nurse who saw my distress and said, “honey, if you’re going to get an epidural, get the Cadillac version.” And with that she left to find the anesthesialogist. He fiddled with the equipment and up’d my dose but it wasn’t working so around 10:30 pm he took it out and decided to try again.

Now, when that epi was removed, whoa baby! I got a taste of what some real labor pain was like and it was unreal. Thankfully, the epi man moved quickly and this time he hit the nerve right on the head. By 1am, I was a happy happy girl with absolutely no sensation below my belly button. Since I looked so good, the nurse decided to take her break and Kevin decided to take a nap.

You can see this coming, right?

No sooner had the nurse closed the door and Kevin closed his eyes when something really strange happened. Mini-Me did what felt like a crazy dance in my belly and I suddenly felt the need to push. Bad. So at 1:10am after everyone had settled into a break, baby decided to make her move. Our temp nurse checked me and flew into action. I had gone from 5cm to fully dilated and effaced in about two hours. In fact, baby was at +2 station which meant she had fully decended and her head was ready to pop. Only problem was, dad was asleep, nurse was on break, and doctor was at home.

This kid had us moving fast which turned out to be a good thing! We roused Kevin, recalled the nurse, and paged the doctor. Within minutes, everyone was ready and it was time to push. Now, after watching Maternity Ward for the last 9 months, I was ready for the worst. But baby was ready and there was no holding back. Under an hour later, out she came. My 8 lb 8 oz bundle of joy was here! Leina Jane McLaughlin.

So 26 hours, 2 epis, and a ton of pitocin later, our daughter is here.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.