Ashlyn Elise O'Brien

Okay so it has been 9 days...but as you can imagine things have been pretty nuts!

The good news: Ashlyn is here and she is absolutely perfect.

She weighed in at 8lbs. 8oz and she was 22 inches long.

The labor and delivery was pretty much textbook and i feel so lucky that everything went as smoothly as it did. Basically, I started having contractions last friday at 10:30 while i was vacuuming the house. They were only like 7-10 minutes apart, but weren't that awful so i hesitated to call anyone and let them know - i totally thought that it might have just been some cramping because i was sort of over doing it for being 39 weeks and 6days pregnant :). I did call Pat at work to let him know, but i was sure that they would stop as soon as he got home and warned him many times not to be disappointed if that was the case. Right around noon they were getting much stronger and only 5 minutes apart - so it was officially go time. We ate lunch, i took a shower, changed into some comfy clothes and headed out the door. Lets just say five minute contractions hurt much more than 7 minute contractions.....and guess what? Contractions every 2 minutes hurt WAYYYY worse than both of those combined

I got to the hospital and the nicest old man wheeled me in the door while Pat parked the car. He kept his hand on my shoulder the whole ride back to labor and delivery and seemed so excited for us that we were about to have a baby. I got checked out in triage by a nice little resident that had a "pocket guide to obstetrics" in his pocket filled with post-it notes and earmarked pages. Luckily it looked like he had read it a lot, but soooo funny to see an instruction manual in the "doctors" pocket.

Ummm just as we suspected before going into triage i was actually in labor....so they moved me to the Labor and delivery area. I was in between contractions and feeling okay so i actually walked to my room. Up until that point everything seemed so manageable. I could deal with the pain and the anxiety hadn't really set in. It kind of felt like an out of body experience - like i still wasn't "really" having a baby. Once we got into Labor and Delivery things changed. I think that walk to the room really kicked my butt. The nurse talked me into trying "the ball" (umm eww) I swore afterwatching way too many episodes of a baby story that i would never use the exercise ball thing but i was in a lot of pain at that point so any option sounded like a good one. 2 contractions later i was fahhhhhreaking over it and opted for the epidural ( sidenote: I truly couldn't care less if you want to judge me for this...cough cough..... Emily).

Let me tell you - Epidurals are magical!!!!

I got my epidural and within a couple of hours i was fully dilated and ready to go. I simply watched the monitor so that i could tell when i was having a contraction but i had enough control to where i could still move my legs. pat and i just hung out and he would tell me when it looked ike my contractions were getting huge. i just chilled. Things moved along extremely quickly and i felt like i had a ton of energy saved up for when it actually came time to deliver. that was a great feeling and i dont think it would have been that way had i been in agonizing pain for hours beforehand.

That is just my experience though - if you go without - that is great for you. Everyone has there own reasons for making the decisions that they do....and i respect everyone for having a baby no matter how they go about it.

So anyways, Ashlyn was born after about an hour of pushing. The full Labor and delivery time was 7 hours total. She was alert and happy from the moment she was born and totally healthy.

Now that we are home, she loves to sleep...even at night...and she just gets sweeter every day.

I have loved nothing more than to see Pat with his little girl too. We are so lucky and feel so blessed to have had the experience we did. Two minutes after having her I said "wow that was easy...i could have 10 kids...lets do this again"

So anyways...stay tuned. I will have many more updates on this little peanut.

We love her so much :)