long and has a head that is 14.75 inches in circumference.
She is, of course, beautiful. What, do you think we're biased?
She was alert directly after her birth, looking around the room with wide eyes. When she first arrived, we were surprised at how fat she was; covered in white vernix, with her chunky thighs and round cheeks, she looked like a package of powdered donuts. I was pleased to find out that one reason my belly had been so big was that she was indeed big. In fact, she was labeled "Large for Gestational Age" (her gestational age was 41wks 3days) which meant that her blood sugar had to be tested after every feeding for the first 12 hours. Basically, her body was producing insulin at a high level in the womb to keep up with the nutrients I was giving her and the docs wanted to make sure that this adjusted after birth to account for the relatively small amount of sugars she would get from the first few days of colostrum.
We had no problem getting her to feed and, unlike the typical newborn, she was alert and awake most of the first day of her life. She calmly looked around the room, appearing to want to take it all in, although she did cry when her diaper was changed and when they poked her heel for the blood sugar tests. As night fell, she wanted to be held more but, unfortunately, showed little interest in actually sleeping. In fact, Dave concluded that she preferred the lights on so she could keep looking around. By midnight, I hadn't slept in about 36 hours so we took the nurse up on her offer to watch her for a few hours. This continued all night (luckily, the nurses' generosity did as well) and by morning I was worried that giving her a name that means 'lively' was a mistake! But she settled down the next day, took several good naps and slept well the second night of her life.
In fact, everything was going so well that we talked the docs into letting us leave the hospital a day early (Friday). Dave had the brilliant idea to leave Adi and Mae at their grandparents for the night so we got some time to remember how to deal with a baby in the house before the sisters descended.
Today, Saturday, was the first day when we were all together and the big girls did remarkably well (especially considering they've been at their grandparents for 5 nights). They are upset that she sleeps so much and told me tonight that "she cried a lot today." Considering that she barely cried at all, I think they might be in for a shock!
Birth story is below the pictures, if you're interested.
Hello Daddy
Big sisters
Family of Five
The birth story:
After the c-section which was required when Mae was breech, I wanted to have a natural birth this time. But when Vivian's due date, Nov 13, came and went, the midwives had me schedule a c-section; they didn't want to induce me because the drugs increase the chance of rupturing a scarred uterus. We settled on Tues Nov 22 because of the doctor who was on duty. I got out of bed at 6:30 am on that day, fully prepared to drive to the hospital for the surgery-- and my water broke.
This changed the plan because, if I went into labor, I could avoid the c-section. It was pretty convenient because Mae & Adi had gone to their grandparents' the night before and Dave had obviously planned to take work off. So we hung around the house, went on a walk, watched movies and did everything possible to increase the strength of my contractions. I had strong Braxton-Hicks, or 'practice', contractions throughout the pregnancy and these slowly became stronger and stronger (although not convincingly enough that I would have cancelled the c-section if my water hadn't broken). But they were irregular and never closer together than 5 minutes.
At 6:30 pm, the midwives had me come to the hospital where we were reassured that Flopsy seemed stable and there were no signs of infection. Because of the risk of infection after the membranes are ruptured, they want the baby out within 24 hours so we were given the night to see if labor would progress.
And, although the strength of the contractions increased to the point where I couldn't lie in bed during them (and therefore didn't sleep all night) they remained irregular and even more infrequent than they had all day. When the midwife checked me at 6 am, I was only 1 cm dilated (the same as when we'd checked in). This made the decision to go ahead with a c-section easy-- if I had been progressing more rapidly at this point, they could have given me a small amount of Pitocin and would have been willing to push the 24-hour deadline. At this point I was glad to not have further delays!
After we found out how big she was and especially that her head was almost 15" in circumference (above 99th %ile), I am quite glad about how things went. If my water hadn't broken and I had continued to labor, it seems it would have been a long time (multiple days) only to conclude with a difficult delivery. Not only would that have increased my chances of having a c-section anyway but the research I did on VBACs indicated that a long, difficult labor is more likely to cause a rupture.
In the end, I got what I wanted-- to experience labor: to know what it felt like to have my water break, to have real contractions, and to use some of the coping techniques that I had studied as well as get some help from our great doula (who made the last few hours much more pleasant than they otherwise would have been). After my first c-section, I couldn't understand why it had seemed so important to me to deliver naturally and, again, once I had Vivian in my arms I was so glad things had gone as they did simply because she was healthy this way. And really, all I wanted was to know what labor was like; it seems like, having 3 children, I should have some idea! Everyone is healthy and I'm still astonished to realize that this pregnancy, which seemed interminable, is finally over.
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