Ava Lyn

On April 21, 2009 at 2:18pm, Ava Lyn joined our family. It is so exciting that she is finally here and I have a beautiful baby girl to hold in my arms. She weighed 8 lbs 11 oz and was 21 3/4 inches long. She has a little bit of brown hair, an adorable round face and long fingers and toes. She's just perfect and seems to be even more beautiful each day.

She was born on my birthday, too, which was really exciting. Since I actually went in to be induced, I had somewhat mixed feelings about choosing her birthday to be the same as mine. However, my birthday was her due date, so it made more sense to choose that day rather than another arbitrary one. And I think it will be fun over the years to celebrate the day together.

Steve was with me for the labor and delivery and was the most amazing coach ever. He is such a wonderful husband and my best friend. I feel so blessed to share my life with him.

Nash has taken this all very well so far. He was really excited to see his new sister the first time he came to the hospital and although he has been pretty hyper for the past couple days, he seems to be taking in these big changes pretty well. He likes to hold her and be by her, but, of course, he also has little understanding of how to be extra careful and gentle around her yet. But he'll be a great big brother.

We gave Nash a present for Ava's coming home day--a new trike! He loves it. It was awesome to see his face when he first saw it.

If anyone is interested in hearing more about Ava's birth, read on for more details:

We were scheduled to go into the hospital at 7:30am on April 21 to have my water broken to get things rolling (I was already dilated to a 4 and 70% effaced, but no consistent labor contractions were happening). We arrived on time, but didn't see the doctor until 9:30. Luckily, breaking my water was enough to get the labor going and I didn't have to take pitocin.

By 12:00 I was dilated to a 5 and working through some tough contractions. Then it really picked up. By 1:00 I was starting to feel like I was close because it was getting especially hard and I had little to no space between contractions. However, I was only at a 6-7, so I assumed I had much more time to go and opted for an epidural. The anesthesiologist was busy, so the epidural wasn't actually put in until 1:40. Right when he finished putting it in, I knew I needed to push. The anesthesiologist asked, "when did someone last check her?" and although they had checked me about 45 minutes prior to that, they soon discovered that I was already dilated to a 9 and five minutes later was at a 10.

Unfortunately, the doctor was busy delivering another baby so I had to breath through 20 minutes of contractions with an enormous urge to push--all the while trying not to push. I think this was possibly the hardest part of the labor--the epidural hadn't had time to kick in and I had to refrain from pushing when my body certainly felt otherwise. When the doctor came at 2:15, we did one "trial push" and the baby crowned. On the next contraction, I pushed three times and out came baby Ava! So total labor time was less than five hours!

She's healthy and beautiful--a welcome addition to our family.