Ava Nicole is here!

Today our little Ava is 2 weeks old! I'm finally getting around to blogging about her arrival - I feel like I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and do this, and my tailbone is just finally letting me sit down for a few minutes.

If you're a guy or you just don't care, you can skip the birth story:

I woke up at 2:30 am on Nov 8 and had a few contractions 15 minutes apart, and then they started coming every 9-10 minutes. I went downstairs and turned the TV on and spent the night trying to sleep and breathing through them. By morning I told Clark I thought she'd be coming that day sometime so to keep his phone on. By early afternoon they'd been coming every 5 minutes for a couple of hours so Clark came home and we drove in to Lethbridge. He was actually in Lethbridge to pick up some files for work so he had to turn around to come get me. By the time he got home the contractions were closer together but not quite as strong, which I was fine with. But, by the time we got to the hospital and they hooked up the monitor, they had stopped. I had a few on my way up to labor and delivery, but in half an hour on the monitor they didn't detect a single one. So, Dr Davey told me I wasn't in labor and to go home. I just stared at him, I think, because I really didn't want to go home. He had stripped my membranes and by the time I walked out the door I was having a contraction. Ugh. By the time I got to the exit doors of the hospital, I'd had a few more, and Clark and my mom were wondering if I should just go back upstairs, but I didn't want to look like an idiot, and I didn't want them to tell me to go home again so I slowly made my way to the parking garage with contractions coming almost on top of each other. We got in the car and I cried. I was tired, I was a week overdue, I was hormonal, and I'd been having contractions for 12 hours already. Those things kind of hurt. I just wanted to hurry up and have this baby already.

Clark and I drove to the mall thinking I could walk around or something to stay in town, but that definitely wasn't happening. By this point I was having some pretty good contractions every 7 minutes, and we decided to just go home. At home I sat on Clark's exercise ball with a barf bowl. Every contraction made me more nauseous. They sped up to every 5 minutes and I was not a happy camper so Clark told me he was taking me back in. This was at about 5:30, so we got to the hospital at about 6:00, and we just walked in the front, because we figured we had already checked in once, and I didn't want to walk all the way through the hospital again. So, we're walking up the walkway to the main entrance and who do we run into? Mike Holt, Clark's cousin. If you don't know who he is, I can't really explain him, but he's married with kids, and he didn't say much to me except to tell me it was going to end. I didn't even know who Clark was talking to at first because I was bent over trying to breath, but he walked with us into the hospital. What a small little world we live in!

Anyway, we made it upstairs, Clark got in trouble for not checking in, and then we went into the little room again. My mom got there a few minutes later. This time I couldn't even get on the bed so they sat me on a ball to monitor things. I was feeling so nauseous, when I finally tried to get up on the bed I puked. There are not many things in the world I hate more than puking. Sick. They checked me and I was only at 3 cm, so Dr Davey broke my water. They gave me some morphine, which started helping a little, and then I sat in the shower until 9:30 pm when the anesthesiologist finally got out of the OR and gave me an epidural. They checked me again and I was only 5 cm. After another couple of hours I was 6-7 cm. The nurses called Dr Davey and he told them to put me on the drip. The epidural had finally kicked in and I just wanted to go to sleep. It took until after 2:30 am to get to 10 cm, and at 3:42 am on November 9 Ava was finally born!

We named her Ava Nicole (Nicole is my middle name) and we couldn't be more excited to have our baby girl! We're pretty in love with our little Ava!

And some pictures:


 8 lbs 10 oz. That's what I get for marrying a giant! ;) I still can't believe she somehow fit inside me.

She was so happy to see us :)

Wow. 

Proud daddy:

FINALLY, some food!! :)

Ava's first bath:

She liked getting her hair washed (it was pretty crusty, poor kid):

My grandma and grandpa:

My dad:

We had more visitors but I didn't get pictures of all of them.

Getting ready to go home:

Grandpa Doug:

Grandma Nancy:

Ava's first bath at home:

My sisters, Megan & Kelsey came to help out:

I love her eyelashes! And, pretty much everything about her. 

I did a shoot with her when she was a week old and have only edited a couple so far:

One of these days I'll get more done. Hopefully. :)