sophie claire gardiner

4 weeks ago our little sophie girl decided to make her big debut. i'm still in shock that 4 entire weeks of life have already gone by with this sweet little angel. here's all of the juicy details of my labor and delivery. if you would like to read, pull up a seat:

monday night/early tuesday morning march 9th:

just like any other uncomfortable and restless night in my third trimester, i woke up at 12:30 a.m. to use the little girls' room and quickly found myself running to the bathroom because to my absolute surprise, my water had just broke. jeff even asked a couple times if i was sure that's what had happened. i think he was in just as much shock as i was. (note to reader: my due date was march 26, still 2 and 1/2 weeks away... but i now firmly believe my original due date, march 15, was right all along.)

from the second my water broke and even long after labor and delivery was over i had "the shakes". (is that what you even call them...?) i was violently shaking as if i was freezing cold - uncontrollably tense muscles, tight fists, teeth chattering, etc. i wish i would have known this was the first sign (other than my water breaking) that i was in labor. i also failed to recognize that i was indeed having contractions every few minutes... but alas, we took our sweet little time getting to the hospital since this was my first and we thought i had an average of 18 hours of labor ahead of me... funny. well i hadn't packed one single thing for the hospital, so we were throwing a suit case together as we were running out the door.

at 2:45 a.m. when we arrived at the hospital, contractions were already pretty painful and coming quickly. at 3:00 a.m. i was dilated to a 4. two hours later i was dilated to a 10. good grief. goodbye 18 hours of labor, where is my epidural?? somewhere in between those two hours i anxiously received my epidural. oh sweet relief. i was so grateful. so. so. grateful. we had to wait for blood work results to get the ok before giving it to me and the pain was so bad at that point that i was more than ready to have it.

the next hour and 1/2 was the best part of my whole labor experience since i couldn't feel my contractions. although i was dilated to a 10 and fully effaced, i had to labor down and wait for the baby to drop before we started pushing.

i had to take this picture of jeff... one of few times that he was freezing and i was not. they keep the birthing rooms fairly cool for women who are in labor.

by 7:45 a.m. she had descended and it was time to push. i pushed for about an hour and 1/2 and my dr. showed up for the last 20 minutes of pushing to deliver the baby. toward the end of the pushing my epidural had started to wear off making it very painful, but definitely neat to feel her coming out of me. i wanted her out so bad and was so exhausted from pushing for so long.


at 9:13 a.m. on tuesday march 9th, little miss sophie claire gardiner was born.

sophie claire

7 lbs 13 oz

20 inches

and at about 9:15 a.m. our families received a picture text message of sophie and no words. i let my crazy husband talk me into waiting to call any family members until after the entire experience. he thought it would be fun to surprise everybody. i still can't believe i let him talk me into that. my parents were extremely surprised and confused when they received that message. i think my mom about died.

finally talking to my mom!

i never got an official take home outfit, so we just brought what we had and it drowned her.

all ready to go home!

two days later our little family of 3 was able to go home.

it has been a whirlwind the last few weeks adjusting to life as a new mommy and it's taken me a while to get back to into the swing of things. i never knew how much i valued my sleep before now. no, but seriously. sleeping for longer than a couple of hours at a time is no longer part of my life, but i'm loving motherhood and every minute with my sweet girl and wouldn't trade any of it.

we've filled up the memory card on my camera i think twice now so i am predicting that posts will be coming more frequently. stay tuned. :)