she's arrived!

Right now i'm sitting in the hospital with my precious little blessing - Ariella Chloe. She's just perfect and i'm so glad she finally decided to join us. She was born last night, at 11.39pm on her due date :) which of course made me smile.

I thought i'd be home by now. I went thru the birth centre and you usually only stay there for 24hrs if all is well and then have midwives visit you at home for a while. This appealed to me so much more than the possibility of sharing a room in the hospital again. But of course you can only go home if there are no complications with mum or bub and it would seem i like to try various complications each time i have a baby so we're here again for the night :)

all is quiet, ella is feeding/sleeping well and i thought i'd get my thoughts down on 'paper' re:the birth, so that when i finally scrap about it i can just edit this for my journalling. (So basically that's my warning that this next bit is for me and well, possibly may not interest others :)

As usual i had a nice long pre-labour (nearly 2 days worth). The major difference this time was my attitude towards it. Instead of feeling hugely discouraged by it and ending up exhausted, i used it as a chance to practise trying to relax during contractions, and thinking to myself - not long now and i can hold my baby :)

So eventually, on sunday night at dinner time, prelabour became what felt more and more like the 'real thing'. Aaron's parents arrived at 9pm to spend the night with the boys since mum was at work and labour was still quite bearable at that stage (which is why I could quickly blog and ask for prayer lol). We arranged to meet my midwife at the birth centre at 10pm, thinking we still had quite a lot of work to do and I was fully expecting her to be born on the 29th.

After all the checks they do when you first arrive, things started to get a little more intense and we thought we'd try the bath for relief, since i was only 5-6cm dilated :(. My waters broke not long after that tho and then almost straight away I felt like pushing. I queried this with the midwife as I was certain there was no way I could be ready to push that soon. She wasn't concerned at all and said that sometimes happens with 3rd babies. Then basically, after a while of pushing (which of course felt like forever at the time), beautiful Ariella was born at 11:39pm on the 28th December. So from the time we arrived at the hospital it took 1hr and 39mins. I'd have thought you were crazy if you'd said that it would go that way!

After she was born of course I made sure she really was a 'she' and then we all settled in to get to know each other (that was when I realised she had really dark hair and got such a surprise!). My body went into a little bit of shock unfortunately since the birth was so fast - that wasn't pleasant at all, and was one of the reasons they transfered me upstairs to postnatal for the second night. Thankfully everything then went really well and we brought our princess home yesterday just after lunch.

I really can't thank everyone who prayed enough as this birth was such an answer to prayer and SUCH a blessing. The messages that people sent etc blessed us SO MUCH. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by it all at the moment actually :)

Yet again I have seen how God's timing is just perfect, and feel a little disappointed with myself for getting so impatient and not trusting more! He has been so good to us, and we are forever grateful.

(Entry started Monday 29th Dec and finished on Wednesday 31st December).