Lauren Rene

Our baby girl has finally arrived!!! Praise God for a very healthy baby and a great delivery! I had an OB appointment Wednesday afternoon and at that appointment, my water broke! We were all just grateful to have made it this far in the pregnancy, but were more than ready to have the baby out. Luckily Bear was able to come to this appointment with me and the girls were staying with a friend of mine, so we just had to make the short walk to the labor and delivery ward next door and get admitted. After getting my first round of antibiotics (I'm a group B Strep carrier) we were able to get out and go walk around for a bit. That was a first for us, so we were excited to not have to stay stuck in our room. I was contracting pretty regularly right off the bat. They were coming every 3-5 minutes, but were tolerable. After getting the second round of antibiotics, the contractions started to dwindle down and talk was initiated about using pitocin. When that came up, I finally said that I was ready for an epidural because I know how pitocin intensifies things. After 2 somewhat painful tries, the epidural was in and we were ready to start pitocin. Shortly after they started the pitocin, they decided to up the dosage to get things going a little better. Then I started getting contractions piggy-backed...2 at a time, back to back, every 30 seconds! Even the epidural couldn't take the edge off those! They turned down the pitocin by half and when they checked me, we were ready to start pushing! After just 4 sets of pushes, she finally made her appearance! Lauren Rene was born at 2:57 AM on 08 May 2008. She weighed exactly 7 pounds and was 19 1/2 inches long. She has a little bit of hair which has sort of a reddish brown color to it, and blue eyes of course! This little turkey has the longest fingers and toes I have ever seen on a newborn! And boy was she hungry right away too! She is doing great with nursing which is a relief for me.



Caitlyn and Allison were more than excited to meet their baby sister! Allison insisted that it was her baby and didn't want to share with Caitlyn initially, but eventually decided that it was okay to share her. Bear's lap is rather full with all his girls to hold these days, but he wouldn't have it any other way!

Now that we are at home, we can all relax a little bit and enjoy Bear having a week off work to spend with all of us. And I was excited and surprised to be able to wear regular clothes...not maternity pants or sweats just 2 days after she was born! Yeah me!!! Our family has truly been blessed again, and we look forward to watching Lauren grow into her own person (with lots of help from her other 2 mothers, Caitlyn and Allison)! Thank you to everyone who kept us in your prayers through this journey!!!