I went to see my midwife for a regular visit the week before my due date (which was January 7). She sprung a surprise on me: we needed to set a date to induce the baby if she was going to be too late. I hadn’t expected that! We had actually timed this baby so that she would appear before my 40th birthday, which I’d understood to mean I wouldn’t have to induce. And yet here we were, having the conversation. I was sad, but I agreed to set a date of January 12. Then I spent the next week hoping that she would somehow emerge on her own, and that it wouldn’t be necessary to encourage her. This little lady has wonderful timing, it turns out. Very late in the evening of the 10th (around 11:30pm), things started happening, and it soon became clear that she would make her appearance just one day before the deadline. And so she did, at 9:28am on January 11.
I mentioned to some of you that we could actually see her hair in the ultrasound. Just look at how much she has! It’s rather matted down because this is a photo of her just minutes old. But it’s all there!
When they wrapped her up, they added a very silly hat to mark her as a girl at a glance. She makes it work!
Her birth was quite messy (as if any birth isn’t…), so a bath was in order later that day. Here you can see that the nurse soaked her hair with shampoo quite a while in order to wade through that mess!
Ah, that’s better! Now those locks are flowing free!
In case you’re curious, she was just a quarter inch longer than Linus when he was born, but she was a little more than 2 pounds heavier! She’s a solid little thing with terrific cheeks.
Here she is all dressed and primped from the salon. You can see a little here that she came out so quickly (in the end) that the left side of her face was actually bruised. It’s mostly cleared up now, though.
Here she is sleeping in my hospital bed while I try a few shaky steps. I had heard people talk about babies that have to be awakened to be fed, but I never believed they were real. This little girl would sleep 8 hours straight if we let her! I know it’s a funny thing to complain about, but I’m trying to keep my milk production up. So at night, I have to come along and undress her every four hours so she’ll pop up enough to snack, and then again ever two hours during the day. And it’s hard to keep her awake for the full feeding! I’m sure this won’t last forever, so I’m catching up on sleep while I can.
Here’s Yen holding our little lady. You can imagine how very proud he is.
The little label on her bed. She’s not a James, of course – they just record it that way so the baby matches the mama.
Awake for just a moment! Hello, big eyes!
soooo cute, hope Linus enjoys his little sister 🙂