More pictures of Mitty Moo and a description of my experience with natural childbirth:

This girl sleeps constantly!!!




But I sneaked a couple of shots with her eyes open.





This doesn't happen very often.





This is what she usually looks like. Feeding her is VERY hard cuz she falls asleep constantly!




Russell the Muscle holding Calamity Amity. What a pair!!




And here we go again!

Sooo...Amity is the sweetest little thing. She is such a great eater...except for the whole falling asleep during feeding time thing.

We love her so much. She looks so much like Russell, although she was quite a bit bigger than him! He was only 6 pounds 8 ounces and she was 7 pounds 12.8 ounces. So she is definitely filled out a lot more.


As for me, I am doing well. I HAD HER NATURALLY WITH NO EPIDERAL OR PAIN KILLERS. (Well, they did give me an IV with something in it when I first got to the hospital, but it only made me sleepy but didn't do anything for the pain and so we let it wear off, which only took an hour.)

I was in labor for 26 hours and let me just say...OUCH!!! But the WORST was at the end when I had to push. OUCH OUCH OUCH!!!!

Now, many people have asked me the WHY question. Why did I want to do it naturally?

Reasons:

- My doctor was pretty adament that it is better for the baby, although I'm not sure that the difference is super significant. ????
- I wanted to prove to myself that I was tough enough.
- I wanted to prove to my whole family that I was tough enough.
- I wanted to have bragging rights about it for the rest of my life.
- I wanted to put Travis through a lot of extra stress and pressure. (hee hee)
- I wanted to feel a kinship with all of my foremothers from generations past and know what they went through.

But I have to tell you...I almost lost it. It is just soooo easy to say, "Okay! That's it! Just take the pain away!!!" In fact, just ask Travis. I was begging for pain killers, but my doctor kept pep talking me into waiting it out and kept saying that I was over the worst of it. Pretty soon I was pushing and it was definitely too late.

So there was a lot of screaming and yelling. And I was definitely making snappy and rude comments to the doctor. And I also took one hard swing in Travis's general direction, but hit the control panel on my bed instead. (That spooked the nurses a little.)

I NEVER would have made it without the encouragment of my doctor and Travis AND all of the massages they gave me.

So in the end, I am really glad that I made it...but I'm really not sure that I would ever do it again. Maybe if my future labors are a LOT shorter cuz half the problem at the end was that I was just sooooo tired from such a long day without sleep that I thought I would never get that girl out!!

So anyway...that was my el naturel experience. And my family, I'm sure, will be hearing a lot of bragging about it for the rest of our lives! HA!