She's Here!

And so it seems that the system starts to break down when the third child is ready to arrive.  The nurses basically leave you alone for your entire hospital stay, and not even the doctor seems to really take it seriously.  "I was in the shower when the nurse said you were ready," my own doctor said, strolling into my delivery room with wet hair. "Let's get this baby out before my conditioner needs to be rinsed."

Chris was unfazed by the entire ordeal as well.  At one point, the nurse had her whole arm up my birth canal while Chris stood less than three feet away casually mixing cream and sugar into his coffee.  When Dr. Straight-From-The-Shower showed up, he stood off to the side eating a granola bar and silently doing the math on how soon we could check out of the hospital if the baby was born in the next ten minutes.  Jackie could be home in time to cook us dinner tomorrow, I heard him think.

I had my elective induction.  I made it!  However, when we got to the hospital, it was discovered that I was actually already having contractions one minute apart.  One minute!  I wasn't even registering these contractions.  If I'd been home, I'd have gone grocery shopping.  This is just further evidence of the constant level of the stress in my life.  I'm basically always in some state of tensing and untensing, just trying to survive.

The boys and Baby Sister

Emily was born quickly.  She popped out into the world and then cried inconsolably for 90 minutes. She was so loud and screamy that I began to wonder if maybe I'd made a grave mistake.  Of course, as the day wore on and my rating on the pain scale shifted from three to four to three to four, I decided that no mistakes were made.  Emily is the most beautiful girl baby I have ever laid eyes on. Everything about her is fine and delicate, from her long little fingers to the gentleness of her dark eyes. She is sweet, loves to cuddle, and is exceptionally accepting of her clumsy, bear paw handed older brothers.  She is absolutely perfect, and I am in baby heaven for the third time.

Andy can't stop professing his love for her, and Alex has his own ways of showing that he cares, namely commanding that I sing "Rock a Bye Baby" to her every time she cries.  Alex calls her Baby Sister, Andy calls her Emily, Chris experimented with Em-n-Em, and I just call her The Perfect, No Longer Missing, Piece.  Also Emmy, Stinkface, and Buddy.  Sorry about the Buddy thing, I'm used to boys.  I will not apologize for Stinkface.