The Day Before

What an exciting week this has been. On Tuesday I went to the doctor where we made the decision to induce labor! There were a couple different reasons for going down this path...

1. I was ready...both physically and mentally. My body was just shutting down from getting through daily activities...or at least I thought it was. Mentally, I was drained from all the stress at work. Though there is still a week of "busy season" left...I was starting to get useless.
2. My doctor was going to be out of town over the weekend.
3. I was really hoping to avoid a c-section. Knowing that the baby was about a half pound bigger than the average, I felt the earlier the better.

So Ben and I finished packing and went out to dinner. Biaggi's bought us a "birthday dessert" to help us celebrate and we enjoyed our last meal as a family of two! Then we checked into St. Joseph's at 12:09 am on 9-9-09. I was admitted, hooked up to the monitors and then they started the fluids and pitocin. The next morning the doctor came in at 10 am to break my water and things starting moving along. From this point the pain levels increased...which was delightful. Around 1 in the afternoon I got an epidural and I felt like a new woman. Things continue to progress...S L O W L Y!!! It took until midnight to be fully "complete"...which means you can then begin the fun part...PUSHING. By this point, I was emotionally and physically exhausted, but I just couldn't wait to meet the little one and find out if we were going to have a son or daughter. (As a side note...if you are the type of person that doubts you can push a baby out, just keep the element of sex a surprise...this was an incredible motivation for me!)

To leave out some of the gory details, I began pushing with all the love and support of my wonderful husband and my own momma at my sides. I would never have made it without these two. Plus I had some wonderful nurses alongside me as well.

Needless to say, two hours later, our little miracle was born. The doctor didn't say "it's a girl" or "it's a boy"...he just held up the baby's bottom and said, "look what we have here"...and we could see our little baby GIRL!

I have far too many pictures from this 26 hour period to share, but here are a couple of my favorites from my camera (another post to follow with pictures from the one and only Katie Zeller)!

You can see my emotions on my chin...it makes me so happy to see only this little bit of me in this picture. Baby Girl Funk (at this point) was equally as thrilled you can see. She was very animated during the first 5 minutes that I got to hold her. She really quieted down and kept opening her eyes and looking at me!

This is one of the best feelings in the entire world!

Ben was convinced that we were having a boy...but you can see his smile in this picture! Izzy is already going to be Daddy's Little Girl!

Ben thought that her cry was THE most adorable whale in the world. The nurse hollered back at him to let her know if it is still as cute in a month!