The Welfare Chronicles: Audrey Katherine

It's a Girl

Audrey Katherine Welfare

Born: December 26, 2010 3:37 pm

9 pounds 5 ounces

21 inches long

About Her Arrival (No Gory Details)
Our Baby Girl listened to her Mommy and waited until after Christmas to have her Birthday. I started contractions on Christmas Day early in the morning. They were consistent but still quite far apart 15-20 minutes. We opened Christmas presents together early and had Carol join us for Bubble Loaf (a family tradition). Garrett's Dad, Patti, Sean and Kenzie came over around 3:30 and we enjoyed a nice dinner with Greg, Patti, Sean and Kenzie before we headed to the hospital around 9pm. We didn't get admitted right away thanks to a false alarm earlier in the week. We spent several hours in a triage room before finally getting admitted around 2 am. I had only made 1 cm progress but I am so grateful to have had the nurse that I had. She lobbied for me to be admitted seeing the amount of pain and the frequency of my contractions. Around 1am they gave us the option of going home or staying there and we really didn't see a choice since I could barely move from the pain. Garrett tried very hard to get me to relax but I was not handling the pain well. Once I progressed the 1 cm they admitted me and my nurse/Godsend had told the Dr. that she believed that once I got an epidural I would progress the rest of the way because my body would be more relaxed and the contractions would do what they were supposed to do. Around 3:30 am I got the epidural and by 4am I had progressed another full cm. Life was good again. Garrett grabbed some sleep while I took 5 minute naps between Blood Pressure Checks. I did not need any Pitocin and was able to get to about 9cm by about 8 am. I'm having a hard time remembering to be honest. I stayed at 9cm FOREVER because my water wasn't breaking. They broke my water around 10am and didn't get to start pushing until about 1:15.

After pushing for about 2 hours they called the Dr into the office. I looked up at Garrett and started to speculate on the size of our Baby since our Dr had told us several times he or she would be big. I told Garrett I was hoping Baby was under 9 pounds and all the Drs and nurses looked at me like I was an alien. Based on the way my belly looked they thought I was crazy. When our little girl arrived they all said that's a good sized baby. They put her on my chest and all was right with the world. When they finally weighed her they all admitted they didn't think she'd be that big but everyone agreed she's very proportional and she's perfect to me and Garrett.

Here are a few of our favorite photos so far. I hope you're all ready for lots of pictures on her because we can't wait to use our new camera. Side note: we had planned on buying the camera on Sunday or Monday with our gift cards that we got for Christmas. Monday morning Garrett left to go buy the camera because we really wanted better pictures than what our cell phones would do. He came back around 10 am which seemed like forever!