It's a Girl!!

On Thanksgiving night, when we got home from our family gathering, I got a bad headache.  I also noticed my rings were very hard to get off for the first time in my pregnancy and I thought my face looked puffy.  I took Tylenol and tried to sleep, but it wasn't getting any better.  Finally at about midnight I decided to call the doctor.  They said they were concerned about preeclampsia (I was too!) and that we should head to the hospital.  We called Aunt Cyndi to come sit with our sleeping boys (so grateful they live so close!!).  We spent the next 6 or so hours at Mercy Hospital under evaluation.  They took my blood pressure right away and it was a little high, but not alarmingly so.  They did a urine test, blood tests, an ultrasound and took my blood pressure about every 30 minutes the whole time we were there.  Finally my headache got a little better and they sent us home.  Phew!

Because I had two previous C-sections, this time I didn't have a choice: we were scheduling a C-section.  My due date was December 11, and they schedule C-sections up to one week early, so we were scheduled for Friday, December 4.  We had to be at the hospital bright and early to get prepped for my 8:30 surgery.  We were very anxious!  I didn't feel nervous until they came to put in my epidural - I think that's when it started to get real that I was having surgery.  I am not a fan of pain medicine, so my anxiety started kicking in.

We had the sweetest nurse all morning and throughout the surgery, Chaney, and of all the people in the operating room (there were about 12 including Jason and me), only Chaney and the anesthesiologist predicted the baby would be a girl.  [Jason admitted to me later that he thought it was a girl, but he didn't want to jinx it by saying it out loud.]  :)  As the surgery started, my left arm went numb and my eyelids started getting really heavy, both of which made me nervous (even though they assured me both were normal).

Heavy eyelids when we were getting started!!

I was so relieved when Chaney popped her head around the sheet and said "your baby is going to be born to Adele," as her song Hello had just come on the radio.  I was thinking "OK, songs are only 3 minutes long or something, so we're getting close!"  Next thing you know, someone said "look at all that hair!!" and then at 8:48 am both Chaney and the anesthesiologist started cheering.  I just remember saying (in disbelief), "It's a girl?"  and someone said yes and I said again "It's A GIRL??"  Of course both Jason and I were crying.  My doctor said "those are happy tears, right?" because I guess my body was shaking.  I assured him they were.  I was completely shocked, I was sure she was going to be a boy.  And at that moment I realized that I really did want a girl more than I let myself believe.

The rest of the surgery seemed to take forever, and I watched from the table as they got Baby Girl all cleaned up, weighed and evaluated and Jason took a million pictures.  Chaney even made two extra sets of footprints for the boys to take to school, which was really sweet.

We named our sweet daughter Nora Anne.  Nora is just a name we love and of course Anne is my given name.  She weighed in a 7 lbs, 8 oz, which was also a shocker given that her brothers were 8 lbs, 7 oz (Jack) and 9 lbs, 4 oz (Charlie).  She was 19 3/4" long (Jack was 21" and Charlie was 21.5").

Right away we thought she looked like Jack as a newborn - she has his exact mouth!  And of course, we were smitten right from the start with our precious daughter.

Jason was a stinker when it came to announcing Nora's birth to our family and friends.  Here was the text message exchange he had with our families:

• Jason: All good.
• Grandma Clayton: Boy or Girl??????
• Jason: Yes
• Jason: 7 lbs.....
• Jason: 8 oz.....
• Grandma Lang: I'm going to have to smack you
• Jason: Baby.....
• Jason: Nora Anne!

And then with our neighbors/friends, he did this (I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the texts):

Jason wrote "Baby is here!" (with this picture attached:)

I think a few of the girls wrote back things like "haha" and "LOL" and then Chrissy (I think?) said "Should we assume it's a boy because this baby is wearing blue?"  Jason finally replied by sending the picture of the three of us and said "There's only one boy in this picture."