Brigette's Here!!

We're proud to announce the arrival of:
Brigette Joely Greer
July 20, 2012... 6:59pm
6lbs, 0oz... 19inches

Brigette has finally joined our family! **Quick insert, Brigette shares a birthday with her cousin Liam now!!** I'll give you a quick rundown of our day. First of all, of course it was hard to sleep the night before; too much anticipation! This is about 6:40am on D-day! All prettied up and ready for induction! (I LOVE being induced, if for no other reason, than I get to be prettied up before I go in!)

The night before I'd decided that McDonalds sounded delicious for breakfast, so after a quick swing through the drive-through, we were on our way to the hospital!

All checked in, IV'd, and pitocin finally started at 10:30am. When I got admitted I was 2cm, 70%. Gotta start somewhere I guess...

And because labor is pretty boring in the sense of pictures, we didn't really take any! So here's some text only info on how my labor progressed.

At 12:45pm, I got my epidural to hopefully help me relax because although I was contracting pretty good, I was still only a 2, and Brigette was still pretty high.

By 2:15 when they checked me again, I was a 4, woohoo! But... Brigette had her hand up by her head... No good for delivery. Also no good for breaking my water. So we waited and hoped she would move it out of the way soon!

By 4:30, I was still only a 4-5, but Brigette had moved her hand out of the way (hallelujah!) and moved down enough that the doctor broke my water! And in the instant that she did that, I went to 5-6cm!

Finally around 6:50, I was feeling "the pressure" and when the nurse checked me, I was a 9-9 1/2! Since the nurse (who was fabulous, btw) had been with me all day, she was very excited to meet Brigette! But her shift ended at 7:00, so she "helped out" a little, stretched me to a 10 and said, "Let's call the doctor!"

When she found out I'd only pushed for 9 minutes with my last baby, she said, "We won't have you do any practice pushes then, we'll just wait for the doctor" And it was a GOOD THING too!! Once the doctor came and got her little table set up, I pushed for literally 40 seconds.... One contraction, 4 pushes! And Brigette was here! Just in time for our nurse to meet her; 6:59pm!!

I got to have her up on my belly, which was AWESOME. We didn't get to do that with Brigham! Justin was able to cut her cord too. (Which, by the way, had a TRUE KNOT... Just like Carrie! No wonder our kids are IUGR! They're tying knots in their cords!!) To hear her cry was like heaven.... We were all bawling!

She weighed in at 6lbs even and measured 19 inches. Our smallest yet :)

Once we turned down all the bright lights she was wide awake and looking around with those beautiful eyes!

Daddy carrying her back from getting weighed to come eat with Mommy

Daddy, Brigette, and Mommy

Mommy and Brigette with Mommy's awesome nurse, Maggie! She was fantastic! I'm so glad Brigette made her debut just in time to meet her before her shift ended!

Teeny baby footprint-inked feet

Getting her bath, and NOT liking it!

All cleaned up and relaxed. And drowning in a shirt whose tag says 6 months.... Really? Did someone confuse 6 months and 6 lbs? ;)

Ahhh, finally cuddling our sweet girlie

"That was a lot of hard work! I'm going to take a nap!"

Daddy snuggle time in our post-partum room

In the middle of the night, I caught her sleeping with her hand in her face. Anyone surprised? ;)

Not the best picture, but if you look closely, that's the Gilbert Temple! We can see it from our window :)

Cuddled and cozy

And of course, we had to put her bow in!

She was a great eater the first few times last night, and then after she ate at 12:30, she did NOT want to eat again for a while! I tried from 4-4:30.... She would wake up, but not eat. The nurse said I could give her another hour and try again since she wasn't acting low-blood-sugary yet. So 5:30 came around... Nothing again... We checked her blood sugar, and it was 49. Apparently, it's still OK until it's down to 35. So I pumped a few milliliters of colostrum and around 7, we were finally able to SLOWLY coax her to swallow it from a syringe.

It seems that's all she need though! By 8:30, she was wide awake and STARVING! She ate for 17 minutes and I thought for sure she'd be full and take a nap for a while. Nope! 10 minutes after she "finished", she was chomping down and slurping on her fist, so she went back for seconds! Another 12 minutes and she was finally content! Now she's been sleeping peacefully for 2 1/2 hours :) Hopefully, she'll keep up the trend of being a good eater!

We're so excited to finally have her here with us! Carrie will be coming in for a visit later this afternoon and I'm sure I'll have tons of new pictures to post after that!