Baby Alice

First things first: Alice Rosalie is not named after Twilight characters.  My sister has never read the books and says she maybe saw the movie once, but can't remember.

Also, I was going to put the pictures all at the end of the story as a prize for finishing then I realized the text was quite long and needed breaking up.

On April 2nd everyone knew Alice was coming soon.  I kept telling Heather that she had to wait until April at least because Gabe's birthday is in March and we're really close to filling all the months.  So I was checking my phone any chance I got to see if there was any news.  When the kids were gone to specials I saw Mom had texted saying to call her.  Turns out Heather was in labor!  Apparently she had actually been in labor all night (though her contractions weren't regular) and was already dilated 6cm by the time she got to the hospital.

I got super excited and bounced all over the school building checking with the other third grade teachers to see if they'd let me late bus kids wait in their rooms so I could go check on Heather (and give Billy a chance to eat or whatever).  They all agreed easily and by 3:41 I was out the door and on the way to the hospital.

I grabbed some chicken for Billy from KFC then stress ate biscuits all the way there (I don't do well at traffic lights when I want to be somewhere).

Alice and me a few hours after she was born.

When I got to her room Heather was almost finished her IV antibiotics (she has group b strep or something so they tried to get those into her really quickly so the baby would be healthy -- I don't know much about this part except they were worried the baby would try to come before they could finish the meds).  Right after that they started the Pitocin.  We had been chatting nicely, but she got really tired and I just hung around grading papers and distracting her (Billy was in the corner reading).

At one point I left the room for a second so they could check her and break her water.  Then over the course of the next little while the nurse kept coming back in and moving the baby around and more and more water kept coming (the doctors already knew Heather had about 6 liters of fluid which is way too much).  Then Heather started getting weirdly glassy-eyed and exhausted and said she wanted the baby to hurry up and get out.

Alice all wrapped and ready to go home the next day.

The nurse brought the doctor in and before I even consciously really thought about it I was staying in there too (this shocked me, I don't even like to watch baby story, gross), though I relocated from a chair near the foot of the bed to hiding somewhat behind the IV screen thing up near Heather's head.  Billy was, of course, there too.  They had Heather push a little and then stop for a second (she was kind of pissed about that because apparently that's super uncomfortable).  Then they let her push all the way (meanwhile she kept talking about how big the baby felt -- ouch) and out came baby.  I peeked at one point and saw the baby's hand and honest to goodness thought, "Wow, they have tiny latex gloves on her.  I wonder how they did that."  Obviously that was just the whatever it's called that's stuck all over them and for a baby to wearing tiny latex gloves when it's only half born is weird.

Alice with a giant Utah baby flower (that I secretly like in this case, |
but I think it might just be because I like Alice so much). 

When Alice came out she was kind of...floppy and blue.  The doctor and nurses were talking about how the cord was really short and how right at the last part of labor (even though she'd been checked tons of times) the cord wrapped around her neck.  The nurses took Alice to the side and Billy went with her to the other side of the room.  I held Heather's hand because she was really upset that she didn't get to hold her yet.  She kept almost crying "Is she ok?" and they just kept saying yes, but obviously something was wrong because they didn't give her to her momma.  It was kind of tense, Heather was upset, and I was taking cell phone pictures of her from my place by Heather's bed because she couldn't see her.  After a few minutes she started really crying (she had only been occasionally making noise so far) and they brought her to Heather.  And then I cried a little bit (but not too much because I'm well medicated).  The pediatrician came and checked her out and declared her to be healthy.

Alice was Heather's biggest baby at 7* pounds 14 ounces and 19 inches long.  She was born at 6:23pm (I heard them call it which was kind of cool -- just like on TV) and she's beautiful.

When Gamma (my mom) swaddled Alice and she
 looked perfect and vaguely Middle Eastern 

There were some other gross parts I witnessed during the whole birthing thing that I'm not gonna talk about here (this has been a lesson in TMI already), but it was totally worth it.  Being there when Alice (partially named for me) was born was the coolest thing I've ever done.

All dressed up with nowhere to go for Easter
(she couldn't come to the party because germs).

*Originally I posted that Alice weighed 6 pounds 14 ounces at birth.  Please pardon this mistake.