One Young, Two Youngs, Three Youngs, Four: Fiery

After naming the new baby Reese, I thought it would be interesting to look up the meaning of the name: enthusiastic, eager, ardent, fiery. FIERY. I could have told you that based on how bad I felt during a lot of the pregnancy and based on how active she was.

WAS. She WAS active.

On Wednesday, March 19, 2014, I had a regular old ob visit with Dr. Moore (the man who delivered Emma). At 4:30, he and I both agreed that there was no real need to check if I was dilated, etc. I then proceeded to go to church and arrived at home around 7:45. After a couple of visits to the restroom, things didn't seem quite right, and then around 8:10, I felt quite certain that my water was breaking. NOT IN THE PLANS! No bags packed, nothing. We basically threw an iPad at Emma and waited for my mom to watch her while we hurriedly packed only the basics just to get us through one night.

Russell and I left for the hospital around 9:00. I was still able to have a c-section performed by who else but Dr. Moore. He and I just looked at each other and kinda laughed...5 hours after we both felt that I wasn't even close to labor, and there he was, laughing because it was absolutely unnecessary to question whether I was in labor: my water had been breaking for about 2 hours at that point (see, this is why we can't have nice things - one of my all-time favorite jokes). Russell's parents came to Greenville to watch Emma so that my mom could come to the hospital - sometimes ya gotta have your mom. Mom arrived in time to wait with us in pre-op.

I only had to experience about 10 contractions that were strong enough to feel before I went into the OR. Everything went pretty routinely after that, and we ended up with this darling jewel born at 11:43 pm, weighing 6 lb, 9 oz and measuring 19 inches long:

So fiery Reese came on her own time. Sounds like she fits her name, right? Well that sweet little darling was as quiet as a mouse for about 30 or 45 minutes after she was born. She never cried at all. Then all that activity I felt in my stomach for all those months showed up again in a squirmy, hungry little girl...but again, not a peep of crying, fussing, or complaining - just showing the typical baby signs of hunger.

Once we finally got in our room, Reese got a bath and a bottle, and she guzzled an ounce of formula in really good time. Since then (we're almost at 24 hours), she hasn't been all that interested in eating much, but those first couple of days are kind of hard to force them to eat. In the first 24 hours, she has lost 3 ounces of her 6 lb, 9 oz, and I'm not one bit worried. We have faced so much with Emma that Reese's eating patterns seem so trivial. I may eat those words later (no pun intended), but for now, we are just basking in the joy of this wonderful new treasure in our lives. Reese hasn't cried all day, and she has slept like a champ. She makes these darling little peeping noises, both awake and asleep, and she has a talent for making quite an array of faces - some of them not so cute, actually!

I have been in a lot of pain from the c-section, and the nurses have had a hard time figuring out what's good for me. I'm coming up on only sleeping for 1 hour out of the last 40 hours because the pain was so bad last night that I laid here in the bed, listening to Reese and Russell sleep and wondering if/when my pain would fade enough for me to actually fall asleep. FINALLY, late in the day today, my pain was manageable, and we took a walk to try to exercise out some of my soreness and to get the gas in my body moving around - when they open you up like that, gas gets trapped in your body. Weird, huh? So here she is on our walk, in her hospital-issue bassinet: