We had a baby!

Our beautiful baby girl was finally forced into this world on June 26th! I was almost two weeks past my due date, so they decided to induce me. After 28 hours of labor, she was finally born! And let me tell you... about 15 of those hours were probably the worst of my life... but I'll get there.

This story is a little gross, but really not so bad. Read on if you dare...

My mom flew in the night of the 24th to help us out because Daniel's paternity leave was supposed to be over by then. Well... it hadn't even started! My doctor had scheduled me to be induced on the 25th, so at least she got to be here for the birth. We checked into the hospital around 1 pm and they hooked me up to some pitocin. For the first few hours I was like, "this isn't so bad, maybe I don't need an epidural!" We were having a good time watching the world cup and hanging out with all the doctors (because we were the only L&D room watching the world cup...).

After a few hours of soccer and a nice nap I was starting to feel it a little more... and then a little more, and more and more and more until I told Daniel that I just couldn't do it and we should just go home (maybe around midnight). Because that made sense. They checked me and I was dilated enough for an epidural, but Abby's heart rate was dropping with each contraction, so they wanted to wait a while before putting more drugs in my system. And I hated them all. The hours stretched on and her heart rate was still dropping with every contraction... I was NOT having fun and I'm pretty sure I said mean things to everyone who came into the room.

Sometime around 7 am, Daniel went to get breakfast and he missed all the fun! My contractions were seconds apart and I had mentally checked out from all the pain. The doctor came in and told me they might need to do a C-section because of how she was reacting to the contractions, they prepped me for it and had me sign some consent forms. Then I started throwing up and that caused my water to break and they lost their read on Abby's heart rate so every doctor in the world showed up right then and so did Daniel. Afterwards he told me he was never worried, but I was in so much pain and throwing up so much that I was pretty sure I was dying. And I kept saying I couldn't do it and I wanted to go home. It's a good thing one of us was rational right then! They had to put some internal monitors on her head and THAT was super fun... but they found her heart rate again.

After a couple more hours like this, someone (I still don't know who... and why it took so long to think of...) had the brilliant idea of turning the pitocin down. And guess what? It WORKED! Her heart rate leveled out and I got my epidural just in time for the US to play Germany! We watched the game, they came in and checked me again and it was time to push, I pushed, and she was born at 3:44, just in time for us to watch the 4 o'clock game! So she's obviously going to be a soccer star.

It was a very painful day, but worth it for this little cutie!

She's cuter now, I promise. Here, I'll show you:

This is her model pose. She's pretty good at it :)