Kathryn Emily

There are some other things to get caught up on, but I thought I'd better put this on our blog before she gets any older...

My blood pressure was up and down during the last week, and at my Wednesday appointment they stripped my membranes and sent me home on bedrest. That lasted about a day and a half, and I don't know how people that are on it for weeks and months do it... The next day (Thursday)  my BP was a little higher, so they sent me to triage for monitoring, and after about an hour decided the best thing was to go ahead with an induction. I was almost at a 4 already and 80% effaced.

They broke my water at 3:30 pm, and before long I was breathing pretty hard through the contractions. (I hadn't really been having many in the last few days up tp this point)  I did avoid any pitocin (or any other drugs) but it was hardly the controlled, rewarding natural birth we had hoped for. Because my blood pressure was only decent when lying on my side, I wasn't allowed to get up much or try many different positions. My labor went even faster than my previous one (5 hours) but it was super intense and I am still trying not to think about it in detail.  I am still a little traumatized, and if it was the only way babies could get here, I don't know if I could contemplate having another one...
Everything went well though, and our little Kathryn Emily (we've been calling her Katy a lot) was born at 7:01 PM, weighing 8 lbs 7 oz, 19 1/2 inches long. That's over a pound and a half bigger than her older sister, and a lot faster, which probably explains why I'm feeling recovery so much more this time. I had a second-degree tear, and just much more sore in general this time. My blood pressure has stayed up where it was, but thankfully they let me go home today anyway, with a prescription. With the last two I've ended up on medication for about 6 weeks before it stabilized. We really like the hospital we delivered at, and had an even calmer, positive experience this time around than we did there with Jaina. This little girl came out wanting to eat, and I think we scored about 2-3 hours of sleep the first night. Thankfully she allowed us to send her to the nursery between feedings the second night, and we both did a little better. Not really looking forward to the next 6 weeks sleep-wise, but hopefully she'll be a little easier than our other two were... Jaina and Reilly love their little sister. Hopefully we'll get more/better pictures up soon.
We are excited and hoping we can transition smoothly from being in the preschool/toddler stage back to the newborn one!