Welcome to the Real World, Cora Mei.

Austin and I are so pleased to announce the very speedy arrival of our new daughter, Cora Mei. At 7lbs 4oz, she arrived a happy, healthy, beautiful little girl.

She was actually not due until January 13th, but because Carson came a week and a half early, we had been bracing ourselves for another early arrival. I spent much of the holidays with a little edge of fear that she might decide to come just a little too early and end up with an in-the-middle-of-the-holidays birthday. I hoped she could just make it past the new year.

So here we are, 3 weeks after her birth, and I'm ready to sit myself down and write about it. Sadly, the night before she was born, I took the card out of our camera (I had had everything ready to go!!! Then I took it out the night before!), and we didn't discover that our camera wasn't keeping any of the pictures we took until AFTER it was all over. But fortunately, Austin took a couple pictures with his phone.


The night of January 5th, I finally decided that I could relax. The holidays were past, my mom was coming in 2 days, and I my body didn't feel like labor seemed imminent. I had had an extremely productive day, and decided that Saturday would be the day my baby would come. But our bodies don't always listen to our brains, do they?


At 4:20am, January 6th, I had that "did I just wet the bed or did my water just break?" feeling. I hopped out of bed and called to Austin that it might be time to go. Further investigation led me to believe that perhaps my water had not in fact broken. I sheepishly went back to bed. Austin lay down and was asleep again within moments. But as I myself lay there, I started noticing some minor cramping...at fairly regular intervals...hmmm....


I got out of bed again, started timing the cramps and realised that they really must be contractions, and that they were occurring 5 minutes apart. I sat thru about 3 of them, then decided to finish packing my hospital bag, and then got Austin up out of bed again. Around 4:50, I called my midwife to let her know I was headed to the hospital.

Around 5:15 we were finally in the car and on the way to the hospital. The neighbors upstairs said they would watch Carson when we had to go to the hospital, so we just left him in his bed and sent them a message to wake him up later.


At the hospital, they checked me in and put me in an exam room. I was only dialated to 4cm, so no one was in any kind of hurry--including me. When I showed up at the hospital for Carson's birth, I was dialated to 8cm, and still had 3 hours before he was born. So Austin and I both assumed we'd be there for the better part of the day. When they finally moved me into my labor and delivery room, it was probably about 6:30.


I walked myself down the hall to the new room, but when I got there, I could tell that my contractions were starting to get closer together. Somehow, the nurse never managed to hook the monitors back up to her computer, so no one could tell how my contractions were advancing. Plus, since I was focused on relaxing and breathing thru all the contractions instead of panicking or complaining, no one could tell that I was even having them. In fact, the nurses kept trying to talk to me and get me to do things in the middle of contractions. (I chose to go natural for this birth using the Hypnobirthing relaxation technique. I highly recommend it--just make sure your nurses know what's up so they don't bug you at the wrong moment!)


Again, none of us were in a hurry. I had to really insist that I did not want to wear an IV, even though the nurse said it was mandatory. She went out to get authorization to just put a "hep-lock" in my arm instead of a full IV, and took her sweet time with that. Just before 7 she came back in and started trying to find a vein. My contractions were starting to feel different at this point, and I can only assume this is what people call "transition". Around this time, my midwife showed up and asked if I wanted her to check my dialation progress again. I figured, "What's the point? It's only been 2 hours since I was at 4cm...how much further could I be?" But the next contraction TOTALLY caught me off guard. I let out a huge "WOAH!" and threw myself to the side of the bed trying desperately to find a comfortable position.


The midwife said, "Did you feel like you needed to push?"


"YES!" I exclaimed. And when she checked, she found that I was fully dialated and ready with the baby's head in view--I had completely the remaining 6cm of dialation in under 2 hours! She shouted back to the nurse, "This baby's coming on the next contraction! Get everyone in here!"


And so, within about the next 5 minutes, with Austin and a nurse each holding a leg up, the midwife hauling the bottom section of the delivery bed off, and several other nurses and a respiratory therapist scrambling into the room, I pushed 2 or 3 times and that little tiny baby just popped right out of me! It was so amazing! And fast!


With Carson, I had had time to reach down and touch his head as he crowned--that was what encouraged me to keep pushing when I was feeling panicked and overwhelmed. But with this kid, it was all I could do to breathe, keep focused on staying calm, and push! It was such an incredible experience. Since I had given birth before and had a little better idea of what to expect, I could pay attention to the different sensations and didn't feel quite as frightened by the intensity. I remember distinctly feeling the baby's head start to come out, then the relief as it finally cleared the birth canal, and then the funny "bloop!" as the rest of her body slid out after. Such a ridiculously surreal experience--despite being a totally normal thing that our bodies are designed to do.

Anyway, ou daughter was born at 7:20am, and the entire birth took just 3 hours from start to finish. I managed the whole thing without any kind of medication or painkillers, and I was up and walking around the hallways with Carson by that evening.

Just like with Carson, we didn't have a name picked out when we showed up at the hospital. But fortunately, we had at least made a list this time. By that night when Austin took Carson back home to sleep, I was pretty sure I knew what to name her. And by the time we left the hospital the next afternoon, we had chosen the name Cora Mei. This little baby is so precious and delicate looking--so very much a girl--I felt I needed a delicate and precious name, and Cora seemed to fit the bill. Plus, I like to think of it as being a shortening of corazon, which is Spanish for heart. Mei is Chinese for beautiful, so in a way, her name means "beautiful heart."

The pictures below are a few we took in the hospital before we left. The next two postings will have better pictures of the little lady herself.

Daddy and his little girl. :)

Carson loves his mei-mei, and is proud to be a ge-ge.

Our first family photo.