Baby Steps: Our Little Princess

Our sweet little princess, Catherine Louise, arrived on June 9, 2011 at 9:04am weighing 7lbs. 11oz. and 20.5 inches long. She's just perfect! And, she's a redhead, just like Matthew!! I can't even put into words how blessed I feel to have two healthy children. Thankfully, my delivery with Catherine was much easier and faster than my delivery with Matthew. I was a week early with Matthew, and a week and three days late with Catherine. I started having contractions the morning of June 8, and they continued very randomly throughout the day. I was able to spend the evening with some girlfriends, where the contractions started to get more intense and more consistent. By the time I got home at 10pm, I knew that my sweet baby girl was ready to make her arrival! I crawled into bed and tried to just relax as much as I could through the contractions, but when my water broke at 11pm, I woke Ryan up and we packed the last minute items into our suitcases to head to the Yokota base hospital here in Japan. Our dear friend, Kate Chapman, was kind enough to come spend the night with Matthew so that Ryan could be with me. It was so wonderful to know that Matthew was well taken care of and that we didn't need to worry about him so we could concentrate on welcoming Catherine Louise!

My labor progresses very quickly and I was able to get an epidural even though I was already dilated to 9 1/2cm by the time the anesthesiologist arrived. Boy, was I happy to see her!! Once the epidural was set and I was comfortable, Dr. George came in to asses my progress. I was fully ready to push, but our sweet little girl was still sitting too high, so Dr. George made the call to let me labor under the comfort of the epidural for a few hours and let the baby drop before I started to push (her reasoning was that by doing this I would have to push for a shorter amount of time once the baby was lower). They kept a close eye on me and on Catherine during those four hours (roughly from 3am to 7am) because the umbilical cord was loosely wrapped around Catherine's neck in the womb. Thankfully, she was handling the labor perfectly and wasn't showing any signs of being in distress. At 7am, Dr. George woke us up and did another progress check. Everything looked good, so she was going to get her team prepared and I would start pushing at 8am. Yippee!! I pushed for less than an hour, but the epidural made me extremely nauseous, so I had to stop a few times to throw up. Otherwise, the labor was beautiful and so much easier than my delivery with Matthew. Praise the Lord!

Ryan picked Matthew up later that evening to meet his new sister, and it brought tears of joy to my eyes just to watch him instantly love her! He was naturally a bit jealous of the time I spent with Catherine and that he wasn't the one sitting in my lap, but overall he has adjusted so nicely and is already such a loving big brother! Here are some photos we captured during our first few days as a family of four! There isn't a day that goes by that I don't thank God for our beautiful children!