Introducing sweet baby Lexie Claire Norby

We had our sweet little baby girl, Lexie Claire, on March 13, 2011 at 9:55 am. We were scheduled for an induction for March 12 but I had a feeling it wasn't going to work out. We got to the hospital at 7:30 and were informed they were slammed and had no room for us. They decided to monitor me for a little bit but while I was being monitored two more women came in that were in labor, so I was bumped. It wasn't looking good for us to have a baby that day. Luckily my doctor was on call that night and they said they'd do their best to get me in so he could deliver my baby. We tried to keep busy all day and by 5:30 they had called and told us to come on in. When we got there it was pretty quiet and we think they felt bad for sending us away because they gave us their best room with the best view (like I even cared).

We got settled in and I started getting some medicine that I needed. I needed to get one whole dose before we could start anything, just in case my labor was super fast. But at 10 pm my contractions started by themselves and were pretty consistent and painful. An hour and a half later they started me on pitocin because the doctor had ordered it for my induction, but because I went into labor on my own, my nurse was very stingy with how much she gave me. By 1:30 am my doctor came in to break my water. Apparently Lexie's bag of waters were "bullet proof" (doctor's words not mine), he couldn't get them to break. He left me to do my thing. Because it was daylight savings time starting that morning, I lost one hour of having my doctor there to help. At 7:30 he came in to break my water again, and finally got it to break by using a small needle. Things progressed pretty quick by this point. At 9:55, after 7 minutes of pushing, Lexie Claire was born. The on-call midwife delivered her and man is there a world of difference between how a midwife delivers a baby and a doctor. I am all for my doctor but it was pretty interesting what Joe and I noticed about how different this delivery was. I am quite obsessed with this picture. Seriously, love pouty faces! I had an ultrasound at 36 weeks that told me she was already 7 lbs and 19.5 inches long. I was told she was in the 85%, so we knew the likelihood of her being big was a good chance. Joe guessed she would be 8 lbs. 3 oz and he was so close! But she was only 19 inches, so the ultrasound was wrong on that. She is our shortest and fastest baby so far. Recovery has been really different with this one, mostly because I had an emergency after I had her that I'm not going to go into here. But she really is a sweet baby (everyone says that and I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as a non-sweet baby). Blake is really in love with her and Kalli couldn't really care less. One of the things that was really cool about this birth was the food at the hospital. They don't do meals at certain times, it's all room service. The nurses give you a menu and you order whenever you want all day. It was so fun! Because I knew I wouldn't be there for long, I made sure I ordered all the little extras I could, like strawberry shortcake and cookies and milk. I told my nurse that I was being quite gluttonous and she told me I deserved to be and I agreed with her and ordered another cookie.

It feels good to be home amongst my crazy children and sleepless nights.