Welcome to This World Baby. . .

The plan was to be induced on Friday.  I was to be there at 7 in the morning.  It's not that I wanted to be induced, but it certainly did make things easier since my mom would be here to watch the kids.

Thursday night, Dave and I stayed up a little later than I wanted to, but we wanted to get everything finalized on this end.  Around 1:30, we headed to bed.  I had a little trouble sleeping due, I'm sure, to pre-delivery jitters, but I probably dozed off for maybe a good twenty minutes when, at 2:30, I heard Soleil crying.  I got her out of bed and went into the living room to rock her for a while.  When I sat down, a contraction started that gave me a slight pain in my back.  We rocked for a while, but then Lily started fussing, so I put Soleil back in bed and went and got Lily.  When I sat in the rocking chair with her, I got another contraction.  After rocking her for a little while, I put her back in bed and went back to bed.

But I had trouble sleeping.  These contractions were different from the ones I'd been having.  I pulled up the contraction tracker app on my phone and set it into motion each time I had a contraction.  They weren't regular, and they were pretty far apart, so I felt no need to worry or wake Dave.  With these contractions, though, sleeping was out of the question. 

Around 3:30, Soleil woke again.  Again, I was out of bed in the rocking chair, having a contraction.  This time, the tracker was going.  And again, Lily woke up.  When I got her out of bed, I noticed her oxygen making a wet sound, so I turned on the light and saw that snot was pooling around her cannula and out of her nose.  I cleaned her up, took her oxygen off, and cuddled her.  My mom was awake by that time, and she was helping me with Lily.  And by that time, the contractions were roughly 3 to 5 minutes apart.  I suctioned out Lily's nose and decided to wake up Dave.  (Let me add here that I was doing a lot of walking through the house, and it seemed like every time I got up to walk around, I would have a contraction.)

By 4:30, we were headed to the hospital.  (I found out yesterday that Dave was saying a prayer, hoping that we would make it because the car we took was acting funny.  So funny, that it broke down the next day.)  Nevermind the induction.

When we got to the hospital, I was 8 cm dilated and begging for an epidural.  (I am the biggest baby when it comes to pain.)  Luckily, I was able to get one, and once things settled down, I was able to relax and rest a bit, which I needed since I hadn't had much sleep since 8:30 Thursday morning.

At 8:19, we welcomed Aria Hope into this world, quite the surprise because we were thinking she was going to be a boy (not due to an ultrasound but more because of what others were saying and our own "gut" feeling).  Weighing at 8 pounds, 1 ounce, she is my biggest baby yet, but she is such a tiny little thing.  She carries on the nature name I have chosen for all of my girls for "Aria" is Italian for "air."  But there is a musical component in her name, too, for nature is a symphony, and I love that.

We are home, and she is well, and she is loved.