The Princess Has Arrived!

Our little lady, Elise Hart Bastian arrived on March 14, 2012. She weighed 8 lbs, 7 oz and was 20 inches long born at 5:02 pm. She has already turned the house upside down. And here are a million pictures followed by the whole story :)

 

Who knew the hospital would stick cute little bows on her head?!  (Probably someone who has had a girl before.)

 Our first moments together

 Can you see it? He's already wrapped around her little finger :)

 Her first bath

  Oh she's so cute!

  Joey was the first to visit with dad, but he wasn't really all that into baby sister. He just jumped on my bed and laid down on me with the biggest smile on his face. Poor baby who is no longer the baby! :( He's having a bit of a hard time.

 Then Lance took Joey home for a nap and brought the other two back after school. They were much more excited about baby sister.

 

   Getting ready to go home

 First ride in the car seat

 And Elise arrives at home

 Joey was much more excited to see her when she first arrived. Now he's kind of hit and miss with Elise. Sometimes he loves her and sometimes he's had enough of her.

 Mikey never gets enough of her :)

 

We sure love her!

And now a little birthing story. You can take this or leave this. It's for my own personal record.

It wasn't too exciting as I was induced, but it sure lasted way longer than we thought since each labor has gotten shorter and shorter. But this little lady sure took her time getting here!  We went in at about 7:45 am. The doctor broke my water at around 8:30 and I got the epidural at around 9:30 or 10:00. The epidural is my least favorite part of all of pregnancy and delivery (though still worth it once those contractions really kick in.) This epidural, however, really took horrible to the next level. At this point, though, all I knew was that it seemed to take a little bit longer than usual.

So my progress was slow. I sat at 4 cm for hours. Then made it to a 5 1/2...and then sat for another few hours. Finally at about 4:15, I made it to 7 cm. 10 minutes later I was a 9 1/2! The epidural was not really working from about my pelvic bone down which was really horribly painful at that point. Finally we got that working a little better and waited for the doctor. At about 5:00 I started pushing. I pushed 2 1/2 times during one contraction and out she came at 5:02! The best part? No stitches! Yay! She was beautiful and perfect and off we went to our new room.

Well as the night progressed I realized that I was getting the worst headache ever!  The last two nights I had slept absolutely horribly so I chalked it up to lack of sleep and a rough day. Well I woke up the next morning with the headache going strong. Like seriously the worst headache I have ever had. It was pulsing down my neck and shoulders and sitting up was absolutely torture. That was when the anesthesiologist came in and told me about the "complication" during the epidural. He punctured the spinal fluid which was now leaking and causing my brain to "sink" in my head. A complication not unheard of, but still my nightmare. It was my nightmare because the fastest fix was to do a blood patch which involved the same process as an actual epidural.

And in fact it was worse. So I had to get a second epidural that morning except the anesthesiologist had to get into my back and then wait there while the nurse dug around with an IV needle to get blood to give to the anesthesiologist to force into the little spot in my back. That resulted in the worst pressure in my back and a horrible back ache for the next few days while the headache slowly subsided. That was the worst morning in all of my pregnancies and births ever! *sigh*  But we made it through. Of course she was worth it :)