introducing

Bitsy joined our family February 7th at 3:57 pm. She was 8 pounds and 20 inches long and came fast and fierce. Labor started with me heading out the door with my mom to run some errands. I was convinced that labor would take a while and the movement would help things progress.  My increasingly frequent contractions in the store quickly escalated my mom into a state of panic, convinced that I was not going to make it to the hospital in time. I wasn't feeling the same urgency, but by the time we got to the hospital, I was yelling at Andrew to just pick a parking spot already! I must have looked pretty bad because on the walk up to the maternity ward I was offered a wheel chair 3 times by 3 different people. The hospital was busy and when we arrived at the nurses desk they they made some joke about there being no room at the inn. (I did not find this funny at the time.) At that moment I had a contraction and the head nurse found me a room right away. We made it to the hospital!

At admission I was dilated to a 9, but Bitsy was transverse. If she hadn't been, I probably would have delivered within an hour of arrival.  Instead they wanted to wait to see if she would go head down. The nurse also discovered Bitsy had meconium aspiration syndrome and had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Fortunately, nothing serious came from these two issues.  After two hours Bitsy finally accommodated us by going head down and she was delivered 20 minutes later. We are so glad she is here!

When the kids came by for a visit, we ordered ice cream, chips and chocolate milk from the hospital cafeteria and had ourselves a party! Tank was totally on board with this idea.

The most memorable thing from this pregnancy will be that Bitsy's gender was a surprise. We were really shocked to find out it was a girl that I had carried all those months!