♥♥♥ Baby Callie's Arrival! ♥♥♥

On July 6 at 12:23 pm, we welcomed Callie Olivia Smith to the world! 
She weighed 7 lbs 15 oz, and was 19.5 inches long.  It was love at first sight.  Such a sweet and beautiful little cutie!  I would love to relive those first few hours with my babies over and over and over again.  After all the waiting and anticipating and day dreaming about what baby will be like, finally being able to snuggle her/him and look into her/his little eyes is incredible.    Every time.
Here are some of Callie's first pictures  :)

 

 

 

I was surprised at how dark and how much hair she had!  She liked getting her hair washed :)

 Luke and Ella were soo excited to meet her.  I guess they were looking out the windows and asking when Jake would be there to bring them all to the hospital.  Ella was excited to see her little feet for some reason.  Cutie. 

 

Cute big brother.  Outnumbered by girls now!

And the big sister! 

Cute dad.

 

Meet Grandma Pam!

And Grandpa Paul!  I was so glad she came before he had to go back to Arizona.  He left super early the following Tuesday morning, so they got to hang out for a couple of days together.

First family picture :)

Callie's birth story.

After walking so many miles sightseeing for over a week with mom and dad, I thought I'd go into labor on my own. Not the case! Despite having a lot of contractions, this little girl just wasn't coming. Needless to say, I was anxious to get her here!! On the 5th I had a Dr. appt and after a sob story she agreed to put us on the books to be induced the next morning. They don't do that often around here. I was so excited that I'd get to hold my baby the next day (if she didn't decide to come on her own before then of course!).

Later that evening (the 5th) we got a phone call from another doctor telling us NOT to come in the next morning for the induction, but that they would call us if a bed opened up. Seriously!? So annoying. Supposedly it was looking like a busy day and with so many beds "full" they didn't want to deal with my induction. I was so bummed!! Determined to go into labor on my own, I walked and walked and walked around the neighborhood that night trying to keep the contractions going. They'd come and were coming pretty strong but would stop shortly after I'd stop moving. I couldn't sleep at all that night. At around 5 in the morning, we decided to call Labor and Delivery like the doc at my appointment told us to do. The nurse Jake talked to over the phone told us to come on in! (Great thing and sometimes not-so-great thing about military medicine... nurses often outrank docs and are the ones in charge) I threw some stuff in my bag and we drove the whopping five minutes to RAF Lakenheath hospital. Mom and dad stayed at home with Luke and Ella. I was nervous that the hospital would be sending us back home shortly after arriving... we didn't really mention that phone call from the other doctor telling us not to come in. Luckily that doc wouldn't be showing up for work for a while. (Hehe...)  We never saw her although she was working on the floor that day.  

They put us in a room and gave me a gown around 6:00, hooked me up to a monitor around 6:30, and then we sat around for a while during shift change, etc. Around 7:30 they came in to set up my IV and to draw blood for labs. The girl who started my IV was either having a bad day or needed some serious pointers. I was afraid to watch since she seemed so nervous and I could see blood squirting out of my arm out the corner of my eye. What the ?? I thought IVs were supposed to be a cinch. Finally around 8:30, a lady came in and introduced herself as the one who would be delivering baby and they started the pitocin. Dr. Mcdonnel. (Apparently she's the wife of one of the commanders on base and just volunteers at the hospital to keep up her doctor credentials while living here. I'd never seen her before.)

They had asked me if I wanted my epidural as soon as I could get it or if I wanted to wait a while. Why would I want to wait?? Pain? No thank you. I wanted it as soon as I could have it! Dr Mcdonnel came in at 10:30 to break my water and they called the nurse anaesthetist for my epidural. Epidural lady came in at 11:15. While she was doing her thing she kept saying things like "oh no, this hasn't happened to me before..." and was asking the nurse for more bandages and scissors, etc. Guess it wasn't in right and instead of redoing it, she tried to 'fix' whatever went wrong. To make the story short, the epidural didn't work. At all.  For some reason it made my arms all tingly though. Weird!   I guess the nurse anaesthetist gave up on the situation and was nowhere to be found when the contractions started to get bad and I knew it wasn't working. Dr. Mcdonnel seemed really old school and pretty much told me to suck it up and have the baby. Why some women choose to go au naturel when birth can be such a different experience is beyond me. Ugh!! Jake was more annoyed with the pain control situation than I was though.  Cutie.  Luckily baby came pretty fast! At 12:23 she was here!