edith grace.

(photo credit: I'mKristen)

After many long weeks of waiting, wondering, and praying, our little Edith Grace entered the world on March 31st, 2012 weighing in at 7lbs, 6oz. and 20inches. She is a little bundle who has yet again filled our hearts with overwhelming joy.

For all the girls who like a good birth story, her arrival was memorable and to a certain extent puts fear in our hearts at the prospect of what our future babies births will be like. Early stages of labor dragged on for two plus weeks and it seemed like my body was never going to kick in to active labor. Even on the day she was born I had doubts if we would actually have a baby in our arms that night. We had some play time with friends that morning and although I was showing tell tale signs of my body going into labor, contractions weren't that intense and were generally sporadic. After walking the neighborhood, doing the stairs, and trying everything I could think to get things going I gave in and went to bed around 9pm at the advice of my midwife. I am SO glad I did. Contractions woke me up around 11:45pm but I tried to ignore them until 12:15am when I realized it didn't seem like they were going away. I told Seth and called the midwife back and she suggested that I just give it an hour and track them so I don't just head in to the hospital for nothing. Shortly after we hung up I had two contractions back to back, not even that painful, but closer together and Seth decided he didn't care what she said and we were going. He left to put bags in the car, two more contractions came and then my water broke. This was pretty much our worst case scenario because when I had Audrey, she was born within 30 min of my water breaking and we knew this baby would probably come faster. I called down to Seth and told him and this sent him running and me following. A great sense of relief came over both of us when we made it to the hospital. Phew. No baby born at home or in the car. They checked me in, got me in a room, and on the monitors around 1am. The midwife let me know I was 5cm and in my mind I was preparing for several more hours of labor. At 1:35am I was free to get off the monitors and move about which was such a relief and all the while answering the nurses intake questions, letting her take my blood, and trying to breathe through increasingly intensifying contractions. 15 min later I was pretty certain things had changed and already felt the urge to push. The midwife checked me and I was ready to go and within 10 minutes, Edith was in my arms at 2:09am. Whew. Just over an hour after getting there we were a family of four.

It took me 24 hours almost to realize wow, did that really just happen? It was surreal. Being in active labor for only two hours and not having that much pain accompany the contractions until the very end was a mixture of peaceful and confusing. All that to say, I was not complaining that it was over and we were so glad to finally see her face and kiss her cheeks.

Edith, so far, has been a totally different baby from her big sister. She has been a dream and completely made me fall in love with the newborn stage. Having my Mom here to help has been huge and has made Audrey's transition into her role as big sister so much easier. It has been one of the happiest times as a family and we are incredibly grateful for how God has blessed our family in such specific ways.

Little Edith, we love you, and we are so glad that God has given you to us. You are a delight to your Daddy, Mommy, and Big Sister. You have been the perfect addition to our family and we can't wait to see all you do in your days ahead.

To see more of our girl, head over to Kristen's blog to get the pictures of Audrey and Edith meeting for the first time.

(Her name is really a separate post in and of itself, so more to come on that later.)