A New Baby!

I can't believe I haven't logged into this blog since November! But it makes sense, because I pretty much stopped doing everything in November. The last months of my pregnancy were very difficult due to Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction which causes severe pelvic pain. Mine was so bad that couldn't tolerate standing or walking for much longer than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. It is already becoming a bit of a vague memory, which is amazing, because it was extremely painful.

Our miracle baby, Elinor Joie Douglas, arrived on January 22, 2010. She was 8 lbs, 5 oz. She was born on the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. What a testimony to the power of God! He truly does set the days and dates, as well as open and close the womb.

Her name means: God has given us light and joy! The verse we chose for her is Psalm 30:5b: "Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning."

Here is her birth story.

On the evening of Thursday January 23 Brian and I were watching television together (The Office, I think) and Iain was safely tucked in bed when... pop! Gush. I said that I thought my water might have broken. Brian said he didn't think so. I called the doctor. I read the internet. We decided to wait and see. After about 30 minutes it became apparent that we needed to go to the hospital because my water had definitely broken. I was excited and scared and there was a lot to do. We called our friends, the Goodwins, who had kindly agreed to watch Iain when The Time Came. We got Iain out of bed and explained to his groggy little self that we were going to the hospital to get his little sister. I don't think that sank in. After Stormy came to take Iain, it was off to L&D Triage for us. They confirmed my water had broken and we were off to our own room.

The only problem was that my contractions weren't coming regularly or with any strength. So we waited through the night at the hospital. I walked the halls, I tried to sleep. At 6am our wonderful friend and doctor, Dirk Carlson, came in to check on us. We started a low dose of pitocin and waited some more. Now I was having some contractions!



After 6 hours of induced contractions, I still had not dilated at all. I was probably hitting a 7 or 8 on the pain scale. We tried an epidural as a last ditch effort to see if it help me to dilate. No dice. At 1pm we decided to go with the c-section. I'm considerably more relaxed in this picture as I'm enjoying the effects of the epidural.


At shortly after 2, Elinor was here! Papa got to hold her right away, much quicker than with Iain.

And of course, Mama got to have some snuggle time too.



When I got to recovery, Elinor was already there, screaming her little heart out. This is a sound that has become oh-so-familiar around here! After they finished checking her out, I got to hold her for the first time.

They put a sweet little bow in her hair at the hospital and everyone told us what a beautiful baby she was! She has pretty blue eyes that I just love:


After several days in the hospital recovering (which went great-- I think I'm pretty much to 100% now) we brought our little girl home.


We are so thankful for this baby, completely unexpected, nearly inexplicable. We look at her and are in awe of God.