announcing

Our sweet Emmy. We just adore this precious girl and her smiling face. :) I'm not sure that she was ready to meet us on Wednesday, October 24 but we were so glad that she was healthy and here. We went to my doctor's appoint that afternoon for my final prenatal check-up and since I was two days "over due" they did an ultrasound to see how Emmy (Baby Girl, at the time) was doing. Unfortunately it showed that her amniotic fluid was low so the doctor sent us across the "street" to Labor & Delivery for a c-section. Not my idea of the way to have a baby. I had been planning for weeks on a VBAC. I'd taken Hypnobirthing classes to prepare for my natural delivery and was so excited to be able to experience labor pains, my water breaking, etc. since I didn't really have that with Lyda. But alas, my body had different plans. It refuses to go into labor...at all. So thank goodness I live in 2012 and not 1812. :) So off we went to Labor and Delivery; me (& baby girl), Nathan and Lyda. Needless to say, since I was planning a natural birth and had scheduled a c-section for Nov. 2 (should it come to that), I was NOT prepared, emotionally, for this AT ALL. I was disappointed about losing my chance of ever experiencing what the majority of women have the opportunity to experience. Although I know it's painful, I wanted that experience for myself. I had not prepared Lyda for this day yet either. I still had a week or so left to get her ready...or so I thought. And I hadn't prepared myself for leaving Lyda, especially like it was happening. In my mind, labor would start at home and I would be able to send her off with a close friend or Grandma and it would be fine. It wasn't fine. I was borderline hysterical which made her very uneasy. Happy as I was to meet my sweet Emmy, I could not control my disappoint of losing a natural birth experience and fear of what Lyda was going through. After a couple of hours alone (Nathan had to take Lyda back home, get her bag ready and Grandma Laurie met them there to take Lyda to her house for the next few days), I regained my composure and prepared to meet my little Emmy. At around 9:00 pm, the hospital staff starting preparing me for surgery. I have to say, although I wasn't able to use my Hypnobirthing training for a natural birth, it helped calm my nerves for a surgical one. At 9:40 pm Emmy was born. And she was NOT happy about it. :) Since Nathan and I wait to name our kids after we've seen them, we didn't have a name for Miss Emmy. One of the names on the list we'd made over the previous weeks was Piper. After hearing her scream for what seemed like forEVER, I decided Piper may be fitting. :) But it (obviously) didn't stick. It did take us three full days to name her. We were literally filling out the paperwork for her birth certificate as we were walking out the door. Quite the emotional journey for me (and possibly Emmy) but we made it! And we have another beautiful daughter that has captured our hearts!