A New Bush in the Yard

On Tuesday, November 18th at 6:52am, Sophie Suzanne Bush joined our little family! She came about 2.5 weeks early so we were surely surprised! She weighed 7lbs, 9oz and was 20in long. She is healthy and strong and beautiful! We're so excited to have her here.

For those of you that want the whole labor story, here it is. If you don't really care, you have my permission to just scroll on down and see the pictures!

At midnight on Monday night my water broke. I wasn't sure if it was indeed my "water" breaking so we decided that we'd go to bed and wait to see what happened since I wasn't having any contractions and it wasn't quite as obvious as when my water broke with Jonah. So about an hour and a half after going to bed, I woke up and it was clearly my water that had broken. I still wasn't having contractions but we decided that we'd better get to the hospital since I needed to have antibiotics in my system for 4 hours before she arrived (Group B Strep).

We got the hospital at about 3am and they said they'd let my labor progress on its own for a while to see if it would pick up. By that time I was having contractions about 7 minutes apart. The doctor came in about an hour later and said it was looking good and he'd let me keep going to see if it would continue to get stronger. About 5 minutes after that, he sent a nurse in with pitocin...I guess he really wanted the baby to be born before his shift was up. We were pretty mad that he didn't give us a chance to continue on our own but we went ahead with their plan.

My contractions immediately got stronger and faster and within about an hour (around 5:30am) I was 5 and 1/2cm dilated (from a 3 when we got there). At around 6:30 my contractions were almost unbearable and at one point I told Jon that I needed to push during the contraction. He called the nurse in to check me and I was at an 8. She started setting the room up for the baby's arrival as I feverishly worked through each contraction. Jon helped me breathe and the nurse helped apply counter pressure (which helped and killed at the same time). After about 15 more minutes I was at a 10 (and screaming during contractions...hehehe) and they said I could go ahead and push. After 1 and ONLY 1 push, our little girl arrived!

I successfully delivered her naturally and feel that the recovery was different (easier) from with Jonah's birth. People have asked me to give a comparison of the two births and for now, suffice it to say THEY WERE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I can't say which I'd prefer at this point.....give me a few months to forget how much it hurt!

My mom has been here the last few days to help out and it has been wonderful. She's such an amazing mom!!! Jon has also been absolutely wonderful and has been my rock and support through the transition. Jonah is fairing well and has only bonked Sophie once so far. I'm going to start keeping her high and away from him so as to completely eliminate temptation. He knows her name and sometimes tries to share toys with her so I'm sure he'll come around eventually.

Here are the promised pictures! We'll be taking lots more in the next few days so I promise to keep posting them. We also have some video I'll be posting in a few days.

Here I am, braving the hospital food. If you can't tell, this is meatloaf...mmmmm!

Sophie had jaundice and we ended up having her under some "bili-lights" for two nights to lower her biliruben levels. Good news, though! Today after having her foot pricked, yet again, her levels were such that we no longer have to have her under the lights and we no longer have to take her to get tested! We didn't get her picture under the lights but just so you can all see what they're like, I've included a picture of Jonah when he was under them. The contraption is a suitcase with UV lights in it. It really is the most annoying thing because you have to cover their eyes and try to get them to calm down without being bundled up or covered with anything but a diaper.





You can see the two different methods for covering their eyes...neither is really that effective. Quite a pain in the butt, actually.