Well, I am obviously not in the blogging game anymore, but I wanted to take a minute and document baby number 3! With two kids, I know all too well how quickly the memories fade, and there are plenty of things that I do not want to forget!
This pregnancy was WAY different than my other two. In many ways it was the easiest. I had the least amount of medical complications. Quincy always grew right on track. I NEVER measured small (lol). We never even had to see a specialist! So different than my last two. I drove 10 minutes to each appt. instead of 45 minutes multiple times a week. However, in other ways it was the hardest. I truly think that 30 (years of age) took its toll on this pregnancy. I learned first hand that there is a big difference in 25 and pregnant and 30 and pregnant. Along with chasing after my other two kiddos, my body just was more...tired. Things hurt a little more, got a little bigger than before, and I managed to have pretty much every possible negative pregnancy symptom there is. Heartburn, swelling, sleeplessness, leg cramps, shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, etc. Not to mention about halfway through I developed a hernia. I also was not eager for this pregnancy to be over like I was the other ones. Despite being pretty miserable the whole second half, as the reality of having THREE children sank in I sortof went into panic mode and at times (all the time) thought maybe we'd made a big mistake. Stephen ASSURED me the entire time that this was (obviously) God's plan for our lives and that we were going to have a baby (whether I wanted to or not). It wasn't until my last few weeks of misery that I was even excited about having a baby. Is that terrible or what?! But in all seriousness, I got uncomfortable enough that I decided that having a baby was less terrifying than continuing to be pregnant.
Back in March, when I was a mere 2 months pregnant, I thought it would be a GREAT idea to rent our house out. I figured being the fairly laid back person that I am, I was flexible enough to swing it. After all, what were the chances of me actually HAVING the baby on one of the weekends we had the house rented? Well, I am a laid back person EXCEPT WHEN I AM 39 WEEKS PREGNANT AND RENTING MY HOUSE OUT. woopsies. I definitely caused myself a lot of stress with that one. It was time to schedule my induction, which was going to be during the time we had our house rented for 4 days. Thankfully we have family that lives nearby and was kind enough to let my entire family stay with them before we had Quincy.
Oh yeah, and the poor girl did not have a name until a few days before we had her, and even then we were not totally sure. We went through a ton of names, and just never LOVED any of them. With Blakely and Henry, as soon as we knew the gender, within a week or maybe even days we had their names picked out and we never looked back. With this one, we would like a name and then after a week or two we would cool off on it. We also had a really hard time agreeing. Stephen would love a name (Clara) and I would just not be quite as on board. And vice versa- I loved Ella, and Charlotte. The name we were closest to giving her was Charley. I still really love this name for a girl. Scoff if you want, but I think its great. After we had Henry we said our next child would be Charley- boy or girl. The only reason we cooled on it was because it seemed to be a rising trend, and we weren't really going for trendy. As it came down to the wire, it was between Ella and Clara. For some reason I just couldn't commit to either. A few days before we had her I mentioned Quincy, and stephen loved it and then we stuck with it. Given our flakiness before, I was unsure we'd actually keep it, but on the day I delivered her we just went for it, and now it feels like it was meant to be her name.
On to the actual birth story. I was scheduled to be induced at 5am Friday September 25th. My birthday. At first I was not excited about sharing a birthday, but Friday just happened to be the most convenient day for us to have a baby since I HAD to rent my house out. I know many people might frown on someone being induced on a day because it is "convenient" and to those people I say "yep, my bad." But it was between Thursday and Friday so I didn't feel too bad about it. We were at my aunt and uncle's with the kids. I took a benadryl the night before so I had at least a shot at sleeping (great decision) and I woke up at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep. I half expected myself to go into labor the night before since that's what happened with Henry. I was having contractions, but nothing regular. I was already dilated to 4cm, so I could get the epi as soon as I wanted, but I was very afraid of getting it without considerable pain. With my other two, it was complicated, hurt and ended up not working until a couple of tries. The only thing that made it better was that I was in enough pain that it was worth the pain of the epi to EVENTUALLY get relief. This time, I knew I probably wanted it eventually, but I was scared to get it before I was in a lot of pain. As with all my labors, as soon as I walked into the hospital my blood pressure went up. I never have high bp at any other time during my pregnancies. I think its called white coat syndrome or something. This time it was much higher than with my other labors (185/125). So after a couple of hours I decided to go ahead with the epi in hopes that my bp would go down. It did go down a little, but was still high for the rest of the time I was in the hospital. This epi guy was AWESOME and I literally barely felt a thing and it worked right away. PTL. Then it was pretty smooth sailing for a while. Me and stephen just got to chat and hang out all morning. I cherrished it a little more this time because I knew that our little chats were about to come to and end once we added a third. It really was a fun morning. My doc was busy with lots of deliveries and surgeries so he actually didn't get around to breaking my water until sometime after noon. Around that time, sadly, my epi was not working on my belly area. So I couldnt feel my legs, but I sure could feel the contractions. I think at the time I might have thought it was terrible, but two weeks later and I literally can't really remember it. Up until he broke my water I had only progressed to a 5, and then around 2:45 he decided to check me because my contractions were milder but close together and sure enough there she was! (like, I think he could see her head! yikes!) So everyone casually started getting things ready for me to push, and I thought I should mention that I only pushed once for Henry...so they said they were going to go ahead and get the pediatric nurses in there. I still didn't actually think it would go that fast, and obviously neither did they, because I pushed once, heard a baby crying, and my doc saying "Call the ped nurses!" I of course started crying right away. There was a little slippery baby on my chest crying, and I did not know who she was. People were asking us what her name was (cause we hadn't even told anyone that Quincy was a possibility) and I think we were both afraid to say it outloud. Stephen told me to tell them (which I'm still kinda mad that he did that, cause I was blubbering crying cause there was a BABY on my chest, but whatever). And through tears and sobs I said "Her name is Quincy Mae." I then heard my dad from the door say "Her name is WHAT?!" lol. I don't really know what anyone thought/thinks of her name since we didn't get ANYONES opinion on it, but I don't care, and I'm so glad that we got to pick a name without input from anyone else.
She was 6lbs 11oz. 20 inches long. I got to hold her for a little while before they had to take her to the warmer cause her temp was a little low. My parents were there when I delivered her, so they went to get the kids right after. They were funny, and not how I would have expected. Blakely saw Quincy, but was SO worried about me being "alone" on my birthday. I guess stephen doesn't count. So she showered me with gifts- little trinkets she had found and drawings and little pages with stickers on them. It was super sweet. Henry was VERY interested in Quincy. He mainly wanted to hear her cry. Little stinker. They were there for the whole post birth process of them putting the antibiotics on her eyes, clamping her cord, and bathing her. It was pretty fun for them to watch, and I was confined to my bed, so they had a much better seat than me! Henry was VERY handsy with her. I had to tell him multiple times not to touch her face cause he was definitely about to poke her eyes out. A little while later my parents left with the kids and headed to OK for the week. It felt like forever, but was definitely much needed for us! We ended up staying in the hospital two nights because of my blood pressure, and got to go home Sunday morning. Which was perfect timing since our RENTERS checked out sunday morning. We had a girl come and clean for us before we got there.
The last two weeks have been crazy. Quincy was tongue tied- anterior and posterior, as well as lip tied. We had the anterior one fixed, but didn't learn about the posterior and lip until a few days ago, so we will be getting those corrected this week. Stephen got sick (of course) about a week after Q was born, and he is still fighting it off. I got it too, but not quite as bad. The kids came back after a week, and have been adjusting pretty well. They are playing together better than they every have- I guess because they know they only have each other right now. haha! I don't know if I'll update this again, but I did want to make sure and have her birth story documented as best as I could!
