She's Here...

Evey's here!!!! As of this writing she is six days old and she is absolutely perfect. Before we get to the good stuff, like her pics, here's her lovely birth story:

Wow, so a week ago I went into labor, somewhat unknowingly, just feeling cramps in my abdomen around 10 am. I went to work and had about 5 more and on the way home they kept coming more frequently...so around 5 pm they were 7 minutes apart. Oh contractions! The midwife said to chill and stop timing them, and see if they go away. So me, Chris and Drew had a lovely Taco Bell dinner and Drew and I later watched Persuasion, all with me sitting on my exercise ball or walking around in pain for short spurts of time. Then I kicked my nice friend out, took a bath and started timing the contractions again, and they were 3 minutes apart! Another call to the midwife and we decided to head to the hospital because I was rather uncomfortable. So in between contractions, Chris and I finished packing the hospital bag and other essentials and called Jen, who so graciously came from Gardnerville to be with us, and brought tons of food! We got to the hospital around 12:30am and I was already dilated to 6 cm! Yay! At least, I thought...it took forever for me to dilate to 8 cm at which point we decided to break my water and I soon jumped to 9 1/2 cm. Now this was around 6 am, I think, so we'd been at this awhile. But Lynn, our fabulous midwife, Beth, our fabulous nurse who had to leave at 7, unfortunately, and Chris and Jen were so wonderful throughout the whole thing in helping me. Lynn has some amazing natural childbirth tricks up her sleeve and busted them out. I had horrid back pain, however, and it definitely wore on me, especially when it came time to pushing, which I did, for three and a half hours!! No fun at all, and I went drug free, which I am still super happy about, but we decided that due to my exhaustion, the length of time I was pushing, and the fact that her head was in a funky position, we would suction her out. The doc who did this, Dr. Garcia, was amazing, as were the slew of people who came in with him in case of complications. But things went great and soon we had Evey! What an amazing feeling, I was so down after not making much progress and so tired that I worried about not being excited when I met her, but all of those negative thoughts went away when she came out and was quickly placed on my chest, crying like a banshee, but doing wonderfully. She was born 05/05/14 at 10:12 am, weighed 6 lbs 15 oz and was 19 in long.

Jen was like my doula, it was pretty fantastic! I highly recommend wearing a Pretty Pusher during labor, bu the way, lame name but super comfy!

I told you Lynn was creative with the contraction magic! Couldn't resist posting this...

She's here!!!

I'm pretty sure that when this photo was snapped Lynn was working her magic on my internal laceration, painful magic...

Proud Daddy, Chris had some tears when she came out

Aunt Jen with her new niece

On the way to postpartum, it was a strange parade

Her first bath

All clean and with fabulous hair

Aunt Pepper came to visit and brought flowers and balloons

Looking a bit tired, but it was all worth it for that sweet face

And the whole McLaughlin clan! I look cracked out in each of these group photos, but I feel I have good reason. 

Anyway, that's her wonderful birth story with some fabulous pics. I'll post pics of her at home soon, but now I'm going to enjoy my first Mother's Day with my family:)