Introducing Romelie Ann Dancer

She's here :)

She's here.

This will be a short blog because, well, she's downstairs and I'm upstairs and that's just too much distance between us right now. But I'll update you all with stats and some details.

Romelie Ann was born on Friday, November 16 at 9:45 pm. She weighed 8 lbs 8 oz and was 23 inches long. She scored a 9 on the Apgar scale and seems very healthy. Her only thing is that her hips click a bit when you move them around, so we're bringing to to see the orthopedist on Friday to check it out. Otherwise, baby is very healthy and so far not too fussy. Very gassy, though. We got ourselves a bit of a stinker. Takes after her parents :)

As for the parents, we checked into the hospital at 9:30 Friday morning and they started inducing at 10:30. Everything progressed really quickly from there. I was at 1 cm when I came in, and by 2:30 I was at 3 cm and my contractions were every two minutes and extremely intense. They gave me some sort of drug, and that (plus a bath and some vomiting) got me through to about 4:30 and 4 cm...and then I just couldn't take it anymore. Very intense contractions, no break from them. I had the epidural in by 5:15 or so, and was much much better for the next few hours...water broke around 7:00 or so...and by about 8:45 they said it was time to push. That was tough, lasted about an hour, and suddenly - there she was.

We had a few worries - baby's heart started dipping pretty low on contractions once the epidural was in, and dipped VERY low during the pushing stage - but the doctors and nurses were great and were very impressed (and surprised) by how quickly everything progressed. And they told me that they'd never seen a first-time mom push so hard before, which is why they think her heart rate was dropping so much, because it was so intense. I did have some tearing, but we avoided the episiotomy and the c-section which were both goals, so even though I'm pretty sore and swollen - it could be worse. And then Grandma Carol and Grandpa Dan and Uncle Paul and honorary Auntie Crystal got to come in around 11:00 pm and see baby.

We checked out yesterday around 12:30 or 1:00 pm and are much happier now that we're at home. Baby is doing great, the parents finally managed to get some sleep thanks to help from grandmommies (I needed it - I'd slept maybe 8 hours total since Thursday), and now we're just relaxing at home.

And with that (more details than perhaps some folks were looking for, but hey...), I must get back to my darling girl. I haven't taken the time yet to get pictures online, but we did have her picture taken at the hospital, so you can check them out here at http://www.our365.com/webnursery/webnursery/Baby/BabyPageDirect.aspx?CID=0017921270 to see what she looks like. I'll try to get some of our own pictures up soon.

Much love and appreciation to all, and let the baby blogging begin!