Little Abigail

She's here! And she's no longer nameless! Little Abigail Rachel was born on August 11th, two weeks and five days early and the day after Felicity's birthday (like Nicki says, now we can have 48 hours of PAR-TAY! Felicity was excited after we assured her that they would each get their own cake). It is also my mother and father in law's wedding anniversary, I think Gary sent her down early for it. It certainly surprised us! I'd been having contractions a few times a day for the last few days, but on Tuesday my doctor told me that she hadn't dropped and I had only dilated to a 3. With the last three pregnancies I'd been at a four for a couple weeks before they came. Then she said, "But you're about 90% effaced, so when this baby comes, she's coming quick!" Ummm, yeah. By Thursday I wasn't feeling very good, not terrible, just a little weird. I was still able to do my usual things, I took Felicity into swim class and ran a couple quick errands and got a start on laundry and I even told my mother in law that I thought the baby would be coming "in, oh, about a week." But at 3:00 I got a contraction that felt a little more intense than just a normal Braxton-Hicks, but still not bad at all. I wasn't worried, until about twenty minutes later I got another one. Then twenty minutes later I got another one. This time I called Farris and said maybe we should go towards the hospital, just in case. I also called my sister in law, Tarilynn, to come get the kids. By the time Farris got home twenty minutes later at 4:20 I'd had two more that I could tell were real contractions, no more fooling around, we needed to move fast! We had about a twenty-five minute drive normally to our hospital and it was getting close to rush hour time so I was a little nervous. Tarilynn was driving from her house about 30 minutes away but we didn't think we should wait so we herded the kids over to a neighbors house and took off. Luckily, traffic was only bad getting on the freeway (lovely construction) and it then it didn't slow down again until right before our exit, so we made it. But the last ten minutes or so I was having contractions every three minutes. When we saw the hospital it was a relief! The nurses jumped to it, my doctor came and in a little less than an hour, at 5:58, she was born. She weighed 7 lbs, 8 oz and the nurses loved her little bit of red hair. They were a little nervous because I had tested positive for Group B Strep. To stop the infection from spreading from mom to baby, they give the mother antibiotics during labor and delivery for at least four hours...but we weren't in labor for four hours. They tested her for it and it came back positive but she had no signs of an infection, so they retested her 24 hours later and this time the test came back negative. So glad! She's been very healthy, even scoring a 9.5 on her Apgar test, really great for being almost three weeks early. Tarilynn brought the kids down to the hospital to see their new sister and they loved her all over her. They also enjoyed all the buttons on the fancy hospital bed and when the nurse brought in snacks for them it just made their day even better. As for the name, we thought and thought and got opinions from everyone. Even the nurses wrote up a list of all the American Girl names they could think of, since they knew Felicity was the older sister. We finally decided to leave the hospital on Saturday without a name and call back when we had it figured out.
Tarilynn brought the kids back home a couple hours after we brought Abby home (and she thought we were in such a nice, quiet, calm house. And then ka-boom!) and we've been settling in our new family since then. Felicity and Joseph love on her as much as they can, except Joseph is a little more... ummmm...enthusiastic when he does it and Felicity is a doting big sister. Caleb loves her but is still a little bit nervous around her, he likes to hold her but spends more time looking at her than holding her. It took us awhile to convince Seth that this baby is the baby that was in Mommy's tummy, and he's still not too sure about that. He's been a little jealous and a little put out with all the time she has in my lap (he told me the other day to "put the baby on the table" so he could sit on my lap), but he's adorable when he snuggles up next to her and examines her face. I think in time he'll like having a little sister around to play with, especially with Joseph starting kindergarten this year.
Her first week went by with help from my mom and lots of wonderful people bringing meals and yummy treats and cute baby things, and we still didn't have a name. Felicity wanted Amy; Caleb wanted Lily; Joseph wanted Daisy; Nicki wanted Chester Nicole. Felicity vetoed Chester--but I do think it would be fun nickname. Farris thought Lydia was nice, and I liked it too, but we still couldn't quite decide. Then on Thursday the hospital called, they needed to turn in the paperwork for her birth certificate by Friday. Now our deadline was here, but instead thinking about it we went to the county fair. We (me mostly) were so tired by the time we got back it was mostly just fall on the bed asleep. The little bit of talk we had was deciding between Lydia and Abigail. I started leaning toward Abigail, I love how it means Father's Joy, I love that it's a classic name but it has a cute nickname and it's not too popular. It seemed to fit her a little better than Lydia. So Friday morning Farris woke me up right before he headed into work, and I said "How about Abigail?" and he agreed. The middle name is Rachel after Farris' grandma. My sisters and I and my mom all had no middle name, so Felicity didn't either. With Felicity's blessing (we didn't want her to feel bad that she was the only one without a middle name), we gave Abigail one to honor Great Grandma Larsen.
Now she's two weeks old, she's starting to sleep much better at night and have more awake time during the day, it's fun to see her little eyes peering out at the world! She doesn't like the sponge baths I've been giving her (no real baths yet because her belly button hasn't healed, Joseph is worried about that strange thing on her stomach), I'm remembering how to give them really fast. I'm also remembering how to do things (like type this post) one handed and how to nurse in the middle of the night without waking up all the way. I've had to change the sheets twice and wash the bedspread once--I forget how fast you need to change newborns diapers to prevent accidents. It's been fun (and a little crazy) getting used to having a newborn around again, but those wearing pjs all day, extra laundry, who's cooking dinner since I'm busy nursing, diapers and spit up everywhere times are worth it! And now it's nap time. =)