Tax Day Surprise...Hazel's here!!!

Hazel was born on Wednesday night at 8lb 14oz & 22 inches long at 10:12pm...labor started at 1am...!!

It all started at about 1am...I'd gone to bed about 2-3 hours before and woke up feeling contractions that hurt, and were coming about every seven minutes...I waited about 20 minutes before waking up Geoff to tell him that I was pretty sure labor was starting. He scooted over and told me to lay down with him and we counted a few more contractions..they stayed about 6-7 minutes apart except whenever I got up to go to the bathroom, (which was after almost every contraction), I had to go to the bathroom, which always caused another contraction that came 'between' contractions if that makes any sense.

Around 2:52am we paged Midwife (Mel) to let her know what was going on...she was already at another delivery and said to call again when I couldn't talk through the contractions, we also paged the tub people who promptly came and set up a birthing tub in our living room which was a VERY cool thing to watch...it's like watching someone make a soft ball out of legos in that the pieces that came together to create something that looks like a hot tub looked NOTHING like a hot tub.

The details are a bit fuzzier after that, I walked around a lot through the house with contractions...our doula came over and eventually I was able to rest a bit from about 9-11:30 or so when Geoff and Kenzie went for a bike ride, for about 2 hours listening to one of Geoff's meditation CD's. Once I wasn't able to rest through them anymore we thought about taking a walk outside, but the pain was bad enough, and my reactions to it strong enough I changed my mind once I got dressed because I was convinced I'd scare people outside. Pretty soon after that I actually got into the tub, and we called Mel with an update and she let us know that Cindie was on her way.

Even more fuzzy now...(at some point I'll get the 'real' times from our wonderful doula Jenna) Mel was still at another birth and so Cindie came over to help with the birth I believe around 6pm. I was just starting what they call 'transition' at that point which is VERY painful, it lasted at least a couple hours...at one point Cindie checked and we knew that pushing time was about to start and we THOUGHT it would be fast considering Hazel is my second baby, we didn't know what we were in for though.

Pushing started at that point and it lasted a long long time, my mom showed up around 8:30-9pm and , after we were about 3-4 hours into it I got out of the tub, and got some 'positioning' assistance, and pushed Hazel out, it turned out that she had been what they call 'sunny-side-up' which is also called 'back labor' when they talk about the Mom's side of it. It means that the back of her head was against my tailbone, which makes it MUCH more difficult to get her head through the pelvic area. She definitely came out with a cone on her head, but she was pretty much rounded out by the time we woke up the next day. The quiet room soon was full of gasps, smiles and lots of stories. I just kind of laid there with Geoff and Hazel for a while...couldn't really do much more. Kenzie woke up pretty soon after this and got to meet her new little sister.

She latched on that night pretty quickly the first night and both of us are getting more and more alert each day, (we're on our second one now), I even left the house for a little while today to run a few errands with my mom while Hazel stayed with her daddy.

It's been amazing to watch how Geoff loves his role as father, saying the sweetest things to her, running off to go buy a cloth 'Moby Wrap' the day after she was born so he could wear her through the day, and also watching and listening to Kenzie learning about babies and being a big sister, so far her biggest complaint is that we won't let her carry Hazel around the house yet, or that Hazel isn't walking yet. I love my family, starting with Geoff and Kenzie and watching Hazel join the family and the beautiful changes I see in the both of them while watching Hazel get more aware is just amazing...I feel really really happy, lucky, and oh so grateful to have these three wonderful people in my life.