Suzannah Mae

Suzannah Mae was born April 21, 2010 weighing 6lbs 3oz and 19 1/2 inches long. Mom and baby are doing great!


Josephine and Elizabeth right before it was time to push.


Nathan and Elizabeth before time to push.


Suzannah Mae in the warmer.


Josephine holding Suzannah. Josephine and Nathan (and half of the hospital staff it seemed) were there for Suzannah's birth. I was so proud of Jo. She had a smile on her face the whole time. Such a proud big sister.


Ada giving Suzannah kisses while Josephine holds her and Naomi watches.


Naomi's turn to hold Suzannah.


Papaw and Ada looking at Suzannah. Ada definitely looks like a Moore.


My favorite picture from Suzannah's birthday. Suzannah's temperature was a little cold so they put her under the warmer for a few minutes. Josephine stood with her to make sure she was okay.


Suzannah sleeping the next morning all bundled up.

For those of you who like to hear the birth stories, here's the rundown of her birthday. We decided to induce at 39 weeks because of my gestational diabetes issues. They finally started the pitocin at 10am. I was hoping they could just break my water and start from there, but she was still too high for them to do that. So they kept upping the pitocin every half hour. It started regular contractions but they weren't very strong. At 5:30pm the doctor checked me again and I was only 3 centimeters dilated, but she had dropped just enough so that the doctor could break my water. That immediately started strong contractions. It didn't take me too long to decide to get an epidural since I still had so far to dilate and the combination of pitocin and breaking my water was really hard to take. I got the epidural around 6:45pm. I didn't realize how bad I felt aside from the contractions until I felt better with the epidural, if that makes sense. The doctor checked me at 7:30 and I was 4 centimeters dilated. We were hoping for at least 1 cm an hour dilation after that point. I figured we had a long night ahead of us, but I was happy that I had the epidural. About 20 minutes later I started feeling painful contractions even with the epidural. Nathan went to get the nurse so I could ask her about it, and she said that usually meant you were fully dilated. When she checked me at 8:00pm, I was fully dilated. I went from 4 cm to 10 cm in less than 30 minutes! I was so glad I had the epidural. I cannot imagine going through that without medication. It took about 10 minutes to get everything in place and ready in the room. Nathan and Josephine were there with me in addition to the doctor and four nurses. (Surely they realize that that's at least 3 more people than you need, but what do I know?) They had me do a "practice" push to make sure that my body was ready, which I was. On the next contraction I pushed her head out easily. I didn't even need to push again, the doctor just turned her or pulled a little and she came right out. Josephine had a smile on her face the whole time. She's such a good big sister. I wasn't thrilled with how little time I got to spend with Suzannah before they insisted on checking her out, but it worked out okay. I used midwives the previous two times. There's a huge difference between having a doctor and a midwife even if you're at the hospital. But Suzannah and I were treated well. She had no problem breastfeeding and took to it right away. Josephine sprinted down the hallway to tell everyone that Suzannah had been born. The entire family on both sides came in to meet her, which was okay with me because I finally got to eat after 20 hours. Suzannah's blood sugar was a little low an hour after she was born, but it went up after she ate a little. She and I would have slept great the first night if the nurses hadn't kept coming in to check on us. We laid around the next day, Suzannah slept, waiting on the required 24 hours stay to be up, and left as soon as we could. Suzannah slept the entire 2nd night. Not so much on the 3rd or 4th nights, but she just woke up to eat then.

I will try to keep this updated (and hopefully backdated for the posts that I meant to put up before she was born) over the next couple months!