we welcomed our precious girl, waverly quinn, on monday, march 4th at 1:05 am. she was a tiny 5 pounds 14 ounces, 18.2 inches long. as petite as she was, she had the most perfectly chubby cheeks that were so kissably soft. i say this in the past tense, thinking back to the day of her birth, but it should be noted that 4 months later, she still is petite with the most perfectly chubby cheeks that are so kissably soft!
i went about my day on sunday, march 3rd, doing my usual sunday chores of picking up the house, vacuuming, changing the bed sheets & washing our duvet. jeremy had put the crib together in waverly's room a couple days earlier & just had some touch-ups to finish on the dresser. i was anxious to see the bedding on the crib, so i put the crib skirt & sheet on while jeremy was out. rivers and i played with his animals up in the playroom & i felt good and productive all day.
that evening, one of my old friends, courtney, came over to drop off some baby gear, along with her husband & two boys. they visited for maybe an hour before they went on to dinner. i started to notice some tightening of my belly while they were over, but it felt like braxton hicks so i didn't pay it much mind. shortly after they left (about 6:00 pm), jeremy & rivers came home from my dad's house. at that point i started timing the contractions & realized they were pretty consistently 5 minutes apart. they weren't painful, but they were consistent. i had dinner cooking in the crock pot all day & asked jeremy to get the sides prepared for us to eat. i decided it might be good to lay down to see if the contractions would stop. they didn't. so the boys ate their dinner & i continued to rest. i let my parents know what was going on, so that they could be prepared, if in fact this was real labor. we went about our evening as usual. rivers got ready for bed and i told him that his sister might be coming that night and assured him that gigi would be here if mommy & daddy went to the hospital. within a couple hours i knew it was active labor. contractions were getting stronger & more painful, so we called the on-call doctor to see if we should come in. he agreed that it was time, so my mom came over to stay with rivers. we took our time getting ready. i took a shower, finished up packing my bag as well as waverly's. jeremy took his dear sweet time - i swear he was moving in slow motion - packing his bag as slowly as he could. (he really wanted one more day at the office to wrap things up! he was in denial it was actually happening!)
but nevertheless, we got to the hospital around 11:00 and labor had become very painful. soon enough i was checked by the doctor and i was 4-5 cm dilated. because we had planned on a c-section, they took me right away to a room to get prepped with an iv and monitor me & baby while they waited on blood work results. about an hour or so went by before i was in excruciating pain. my labor with rivers never felt that intense. to the point that i was squeezing jeremy's hand as hard as i possibly could & couldn't help but curse with each contraction. it was the only thing that brought any relief. i told jeremy he needed to get someone in the room as i felt pressure to push & couldn't bear the pain any longer. the doctor & nurses came rushing in & immediately moved me to the operating room. from there everything happened in a flash of what felt like 3 minutes, although i'm sure it was probably closer to 30. i had to move from the hospital bed to the operating table and i can clearly remember my body trying to push. i had no control over it. even sitting on the operating table, while they gave me the spinal, my body was trying to push. i'm certain if they had waited any longer to take me back, i would have had waverly naturally. (and if i had known how tiny she was, i probably would have gone for it.) the spinal kicked in almost instantly & gave me a welcome relief! and then just as quickly, the doctor started opening me up. jeremy wasn't even in the room yet & i was panicked he was going to miss it, but they whisked him in with just enough time to get his exposure on the camera. shortly there after, waverly was born! she gave a loud, mad screaming cry.
such a wonderfully reassuring thing to hear! my first thought was thank you god, she's ok! and the next thought was, wow - what a set of pipes! she's loud!! jeremy went over to cut the cord & take a few photos while they checked her out.
i was able to see her for just a few minutes while jeremy held her and they finished my surgery. waverly was taken to the nursery to be weighed, measured, cleaned up, etc. i was wheeled into a recovery room for monitoring. after a little while a nurse brought her back and that's when i was able to hold my beautiful girl for the first time.
it was so wonderful to have that time in the recovery room with her & it made me less anxious to have my baby there with me. i didn't get that with rivers, which was such a shame. i was awe struck with her tiny features. she was so small & light. easy to hold, beautiful & perfect. i was in baby bliss heaven. this is also when they gave me her stats. the nurse told me she was 5 lbs 14 oz and i was in complete disbelief! my doctor had been telling me that she was measuring 2 weeks behind, but wasn't concerned. just figured she'd be petite like her mama. and turns out, she is. but even still, i felt certain she would be about the same size as her brother. i'm not sure why, i just never expected her to be that tiny. in hindsight, i will say, i never felt as heavy & uncomfortable as i did with my pregnancy with rivers. but it was also july & hot. so i guess i figured the cool temps were helping me stay comfortable. turns out, waverly is just petite and i love her more for it. the nurse humored me with a scale photo because jeremy wasn't allowed to go to the nursery for photos like when rivers was born. she taped the correct weight to the front because waverly was already dressed & diapered, which was adding to her weight on the scale. it's not an authentic scale shot, but it was so sweet of the nurse to recreate this for me.
waverly was sleepy & content in my arms. eventually we were wheeled into our room for the remainder of our hospital stay. she was perfectly content to sleep those first couple days and i was perfectly content to hold her.
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