Maren is here!

Thursday morning, July 1, at 3:09 am, Maren Ione Broadbent came bursting into our lives. Hooray, we are so excited!

FYI:
Maren (rhymes with Karen or Aaron)
Ione (eye-OH-knee)

She weighed 6 lbs 8 oz and was 19 3/4 inches. A nice small head.

The contractions leading up to her birth were almost exactly like it was with Noah. They started out barely noticeable around noon the day before. Everyone always told me, "oh, you'll know when you are having contractions," but even the second time around I was still unsure. By 8 or 9 that nine they were consistently 3-5 minutes apart but not painful. So I called the doc and he thought it was probably just passive labor or a false labor but to come in anyway. it was Wednesday night and since the plan was to come in Friday morning for induction if she hadn't come by then, that I should just come in and they wouldn't send me home but induce me thursday morning if I hadn't made any progress. Around 11:30 or 12 I was in as much pain as I wanted to experience. My doc said he'd be in in 2 minutes to check me. He finally came in 1 1/2 hours later--by then I was in more pain than I've ever felt before and crying to the point of hyperventilating. I wanted my epidural dangit! I finally got it around 2. I was comfy for maybe 30 minutes and then what the heck?!? I started feeling my contractions again! the pain was fairly dull but very uncomfortable and then at 2:45 I felt like I absolutely had to push this baby out. My nurse said no, wait for the doc. I said, sorry, I have to push. I yelled at Mark to wake up unless he wanted to miss this baby being born. My dr. got there just in time and 19 minutes later, Maren was laid on my chest in all her blue and gooey glory. Can I just say that those 20 minutes of pushing were the most excruciatingly painful minutes of my life? You're probably thinking, "wait, didn't she get an epidural??" Yeah, I'm pretty annoyed about that. I don't know what it would have been like without that epidural but I'm pretty sure there was some miscommunication between me and the anesthesiologist because that wasn't just "pressure" that I felt. I was in pain. burning burning pain. It's a good thing women have the ability to love their children so much to forget what it feels like to give birth. Otherwise I don't think people would have babies anymore. Why am I focusing on the pain so much? Well first of all because that's the reality. second, I have a couple guy friends (no, you guys are never going to live this down!) from high school who liked to get a rise out of us girls and say that child birth wasn't as bad as getting a root canal because everyone got epidurals these days and girls had no right to complain about it anymore because of the epidural. Noah's birth was comparatively "painless" and yet it was still the most difficult, tiring thing I had ever done up to that point because I was pushing for 2 hours straight. Anyway, just because some women opt for an epidural does not mean they are taking child birth the easy way out, I don't even think we are choosing to do something unnatural. I think it's pretty natural to want to ease self pain and suffering. There, I've said it. I'll get off my box now.

We all love this baby girl. She is totally sweet and cute and little. I'm already feeling weeks better than I did with Noah. We are weeks, if not months ahead with breastfeeding than where I was with Noah at this point. Now it's time to fatten her up!!

My friend did a little photo shoot for us while we were in the hospital, check it out!:

Laura Ebie Photography

Gooey Baby


Relieved Mama with baby


Family (minus Noah sleeping peacefully at home)


Time to go home (at a whopping 5 lbs 14 oz)