Hi everyone
Many of you know already from FB but our darling daughter, Eliza Grace, was born at 6.20am on Sunday 3rd June. She was by far our biggest baby (though she still looks tiny to me!) at 8lb 11oz, though she was also by far our latest baby at 11 days past her due date!
There's not a great deal to say about her birth as it was thankfully uneventful. I woke at around 2am as DS1 had fallen out of his bed and I was having some contractions. A short time later I told DH I thought we should take the boys to my mum's. Honestly, that man is useless when he first wakes up - first of all he mumbled something about how he didn't think we needed to do that and he went back to sleep! I went and finished packing our bags and then woke him up again - he asked if he had time for a shower, whether he should have breakfast and then went and put some washing in the tumble dryer. It was quite funny! The boy were SO excited when we woke them - and unfortunately they didn't go back to sleep for the rest of the night. My poor mum and dad!
Once we'd dropped the boys off I was in two minds whether to drive back home or go straight to the hospital. I called the hospital and explained that my contractions were still pretty erratic - anywhere between around 5 and 10 minutes apart - but that some were quite powerful (others weren't!). They were happy for me to go in and I'm glad we did! On arrival I was still very 'with it' and the midwife left us to settle in. DH got toast and coffee! The midwife was fab and really didn't impose on us at all. I was never examined - I thought probably because I didn't look like I was very far advanced at the time, but I was glad not to know if that was the case. My contractions got closer together and stronger quite suddenly and I started using gas and air. I sat on the birthing ball for one or two but found that way too much so I got on all fours on the floor and lent over the ball and that's where she was born :D Very soon after getting in that position I found myself pushing and before long she was out! We arrived at hospital at 4.50am and she was born at 6.20am - I pushed for 5 minutes and delivered the placenta naturally 20 minutes after that. No stitches :D I was pretty pleased with myself :D We left hospital just 6 hours later and it would have been earlier but Eliza had passed meconium before she was born so they wanted to monitor her a short while.
She was incredibly alert and did nothing but feed for a good 3 hours after her birth! So far she seems more demanding than my others as newborns! Last night she woke at 1am and it was 5am before she went back to sleep - she was feeding some of the time but mainly didn't want me to put her down :D The boys adore her but she's quite the novelty at the moment so hopefully they'll be just a little less attentive once they're used to her.
We are overjoyed with our little princess and our family really is complete now. What a wonderful feeling :D
I'll post some photos in a moment - please don't quote them as I'll likely delete after a while.
xx
