Alivia Mae Hammond

Alivia Mae was born at 3:24 pm on 1-11-11. Hey, if you are going to pick an induction date, may as well pick a cool one. She weighed in at 7 pounds 15 ounces and fulfilled my goal of having one under 8 pounds (though she isn't an over achiever by any means).

Everything went so smooth that it almost seemed boring. We checked in at 6:30, got the pitocin going by 7:30, and then just waited. I was hoping for a 11:11 or 1:11 delivery time, but we had to get at least 4 hours of penicillin through me first since I had the Group B Strep, so they took things nice and slow. I decided it was time for the epidural about an hour after they broke my water when I was falling asleep between contractions only to be woken up with a vengeance as they got more and more intense. Then I took a quick little cat nap until the nurse kept moving me around because Alivia's heart rate kept dropping. They were about to do an internal monitor and try to somehow increase my fluid levels (not sure how you do that) when they realized she was just ready to come. It went so quick and easy, and I was able to feel everything without any pain, loved that. Honestly, if pregnancy weren't so hard, and adjusting weren't so hard, and kids weren't so hard, and expensive, I would do this more often. As of right now, we're just enjoying this little thing and loving every ounce of her.

A couple funny highlights of the labor are of course where Shawn was involved. I think he was really worried about how fast I would go after our experience with Jack. Once they broke my water (it was about at noon), Shawn and the doctors thought I would go really fast, so Shawn decided to run down and get something to eat. I was impressed with how quick he got down there and back, it was no more than five minutes. The second he opened the door to my room, he heard a baby cry and it scared him half to death. We were laughing pretty hard about that. The other funny thing is that we told our nurse that Shawn made the mistake of watching the epidural with Lucy, and almost passed out. After that the nurses and doctors babied Shawn the whole time, and even thought that he wouldn't want to watch the actual birth. It was kind of funny.

Lucy and Jack were melted immediately when they saw her, and apparently Lucy had big old crocodile tears in her eyes the whole drive home last night when she realized that her little sister wasn't coming home yet. I'm anxious to see those two little buggers again today, and I know they can't wait to hold their little sister again. I don't have a ton of pictures yet, but don't worry, more will come. We have some on the camera right now that will pull some heart strings.