Camryn Elise!!!

So all this blogging and facebooking takes ALOT longer now days! Slowly but surely I will get everything up and written about Camryn's birth!

Matt and I welcomed Camryn Elise into the world Monday August 11th at 6:27 pm! She was a VERY healthy and unexpected 9 lbs 1 oz and 22 inches long! The doctor, nurse, and Matt and I were absolutely shocked at how big she was when she came out, but she is absolutely perfect in every way. She has lots of dark hair and is such a sweet little angel. She has been such a good baby, though her days and nights are still mixed up, of course :) We feel so blessed to have had such a good experience bringing this precious little girl into the world, and to have her as part of our family.

If you want to read all the details about the birth, read below all the pictures! But warning..it's pretty detailed!

















My water broke Monday morning at 9, but I was not having any contractions right away so Matt and I walked around Costco and Best Buy, then went to Mimi's Cafe for breakfast to waste some time and get the contractions going. Nothing was happening by 11, so we went ahead and checked into the hospital and got all settled in. Matt did paper work while the nurse got me hooked up to the hep lock...just in case...and monitored the baby's heart rate for awhile. I was dialated to a 4 and 90% effaced by this point, and everything looked good so we just hung out, walked around the hospital, (Matt played on the wheelchairs!), and Matt read while we waited for the contractions to start. The doctor came down about 1 pm to check on us and said if things don't get going soon we would have to consider the pitocin, which I really did not want. Luckily, right around 2 pm they started coming and just kept getting stronger and stronger. At 3 pm the nurse checked me again and I was at a 5 and about 95%, so we were progressing slowly but surely. I started my hypno birthing stuff, just listening to some scripts and relaxing music and trying to stay calm and breathe deeply, and moving from the birthing ball to the bed, but from 3 pm-5 pm the contractions got really intense and close together. I was feeling really nauseaus and kept running back and forth to the bathroom, so the nurse gave me a bag of fluids. I felt so sick at this point, I was really considering asking for the epidural. I was feeling so tired and was so relaxed that I would almost fall asleep, and then came another strong contraction! I just kept thinking how nice it would be to sleep and be comfortable right then. Once I was finished with the fluids the nurse left and I ran straight to the bathroom and up came lots of fluid! I felt a lot better after that, just really cold, so I went and sat by Matt on the couch and he wrapped me up in his blanket. I told him I wanted to get in the bathtub to warm up, so he suggested I have the nurse give me some anti-nausea stuff and get checked again to see where we were at. For some reason I felt like I had just been checked so I didn't want to, but it had been 2 hours so we went ahead with it. The nurse looked at me surprised and said "you're not going to believe what you're at! A 9!" That gave me the extra boost I needed to keep on going. I finally felt like I could do this, and like we're almost there! I got in the bathtub, and Matt just sat by me and talked to me through contractions while we tried to guess what time she would be born. Matt was so close guessing 6:15! The nurse had told me to just let her know if I started feeling like I needed to push, so when I started feeling it, she got me out of the tub, dried off and back onto the bed. The baby's heart rate had dropped a little bit, so she had to put an oxygen mask on me for awhile, which made me feel so claustophobic..I hated it. Somewhere between getting in and out of the tub, baby turned around to posterior so I wouldn't quite dialte all the way to a 10. The nurse suggested I get on my hands and knees to try and get her to turn, so that's what I did. I was still having urges to push, which I think is what got her to turn after 5 or 10 minutes. I turned back around and laid on my side and started actually pushing at 6:08. Matt was right there keeping me relaxed and encouraging me every step of the way, telling me I was doing such a good job and to keep pushing! After a short, but what seemed like a long 19 minutes, out she came at 6:27! Matt was able to cut the umbilical cord, then I got to hold our baby for the first time ever! What an amazing experience...hard but amazing and worth every second of it!

We've had lots of visitors and phone calls, and I just want to say thank you to everyone! It's been so nice to hear from and see close friends and family, and we love you all so much! We love visitors, so don't be shy :)