It's a Girl!

Around 3:00 am last Friday morning I woke up with contractions. They weren't very strong yet, but strong enough that I couldn't sleep. So I got up and walked around the house for a while, waiting to see if the contractions would come at regular intervals. After they were coming every 4-5 minutes for a while, I woke up Ernie and told him I thought we should head to the hospital in the next few hours. I didn't want to go right that second because I was worried they would check me out, say I wasn't far enough along, and send me back home.

We called Barbara and Bob to come over and take care of Samuel, and we left for the hospital around 5:45 am. Before we left, I woke up Samuel and told him where we were going. We had been prepping him for this for a long time. When I told him, though, he started crying and saying he didn't want us to go. That is, until I told him that he could go have a special breakfast of poptarts with his grandmother downstairs. Then he was all smiles since he very rarely gets those.

We got to the hospital at 6:00 and they took us to a labor and delivery room to get checked out. By this point my contractions were a lot stronger, and coming closer to every 2-3 minutes. They checked me and said I was already 6 cm dilated! I had a pretty quick labor with Samuel (he was born 4 hours after we got to the hospital) and with this being the second baby, the nurses said things would probably happen quicker. They were right. They put a call in to my doctor, who arrived just in time to deliver the baby. She seriously got there just as I was about to start pushing. At 8:26 am, we welcomed:

Rebecca (Becca) Elizabeth Norwood
October 9, 2009
7 pounds 13 ounces
20 inches

She was about 6 days early. I love that we waited to find out that she was a girl. It was such a nice surprise to hear the doctor say "It's a little girl!"

Here are some pictures of us in the hospital:







We came home Sunday afternoon, and everyone is doing fine. Samuel seems to really like being a big brother and loves to enthusiastically hug Becca. We have to stress being gentle a lot. For some odd reason he told everyone at school that we named her Olivia. The only reason I can think of for this is that sometimes he likes to watch this show on Noggin called Olivia about a family of pigs. One day last week he asked me if the baby would like to watch Olivia, too. I said probably. Who knew that to a 4-year-old, that meant we would be naming the new baby after a cartoon pig?

Yesterday when he came home from school he ran in and the first thing he said was "Is the baby here?"

This morning he said to me "I really like that cute little baby. Can we keep her?"

So, I think things are going as smoothly as possible in that area.

Here are a few pictures from the past few days at home:

Becca, so far, is a great sleeper. I hope that continues. It seems like Samuel never slept, not even as a newborn. Becca wakes up to eat, looks around a little bit, and goes right back to sleep. She seems very content and laid back. We are loving that!