Party of Five: Brooke's Birthday!

Today is eviction day for our precious little girl! Praise the Lord!! My check-in time was 5am- - wow, that's an early wake up call!! Anyway, here is a pic of me getting settled in for the induction! I Loved, Loved, Loved my nurse - Monica. She was absolutely amazing and helped me tremendously at the very end. I'm so thankful she was my labor/delivery nurse! You would think I would learn my lesson from Ben's labor and delivery and get an epidural early on...oh no, that was not the case this time around either! I was sitting at 4-5 cm when Dr. Russell came by around 12:45pm. She new my history with going to 10 cm fast, and so told me that if I wanted to get an epidural, that now was probably the best time to do it. I agreed with her, but still wanted to "labor" a bit more. Well, by 1pm things were picking up and I asked for an epidural. The anesthesiologist was doing a c-section and wasn't able to get to me for 20 minutes. At that point it didn't bother me, although I was getting to the point of labor being really painful. He finally arrived ~1:25pm (notice that I had my eyes fixated on the clock for when the 20 min. were up?!) Anyway, it took him a bit to get situated and put the epidural in. Not sure if he struggled, but he sure took his merry time and inserted the needle 2-3 times. Laboring hunched over is definitely not a fun experience...especially hearing "stay still - - don't move". While I was hunched over I started to feel some pressure - - hmmm....could it be? I do remember him saying, let me clean up your back and then get the medicine in ya...and I (hopefully!) politely said, you can clean up my back after you put the medicine in! Right after that exchange, I had an overwhelming erge to push. Yes, that's right. I was going to be delivering naturally (epidurals take ~20-30min. to take effect). And with that, Dr. Russell ran into the room and caught Brooke after just 2 pushes! The anesthesiologist was still in the room while I pushed and remember hearing him say, wow...that sure went fast! It sure did go fast...but so very thankful for a beautiful baby girl!! Welcome, Brooke Ann! We chose the name Brooke because, well we liked that name and as for for her middle name, Ann, she is named after my mom whose middle name was also Ann as well as Marcus' mom - Mary Ann.

Moments after Brooke was born!

Proud Mommy & Daddy

Beautiful - even with the vernix all over her body!

Her stats: 8 lbs 3 oz and 20 inches long
My smallest kiddo!! Yay!! She dropped to 7 lbs 13 oz when we left the hospital - - not bad either!

Proud Daddy!

The kids meeting Brooke for the first time. Jaelyn brought Brooke her blankie and Benjamin brought her a stuffed monkey. Ben was super adorable - at one point Brooke started to cry a bit and he ran over to get the monkey to help soothe her. He does have such a tender heart!