Beatrice Rae DeMarr

Finally! :) We finally had the baby, and I am finally blogging about it! I've just been hanging out and taking it easy, not doing much. I know everyone is anxious for more pictures, and I have taken tons!! Now it's just deciding which ones to post... Here's a small sampling of Beatrice's first week :)





We've been home a week and a day now, and are finally starting to get into the groove of feeding/sleeping schedules... Everyone is adjusting very well. Amazingly Beatrice is only waking up once or twice a night! Maria is really enjoying helping out with Duncan, and she's doing a great job - he's enjoying it too. And they are both quite sweet on the baby :) Duncan is thrilled with her little piggies and will come up saying "mmmm," which means he wants to give the baby a kiss :) it's too cute.

Well, she really took her time getting here - She was 3 days overdue. I had a Dr's apt that day, and she stripped my membranes for the 3rd time and said that she wouldn't let me go more than a week overdue... I had a few contractions after the dr's apt, but they felt like the Braxton Hicks ones still... when I went to sleep that night I was having contractions, but I wasn't convinced they were the real thing... they were waking me up for quite a while, but I thought that I better wait until they were pretty painful.... so around 4am I had a pretty painful one that woke me up, I thought I'd better start timing them - they were 5 mins apart, so I thought I would hurry up and take a shower, which then they were coming about every 3 mins... I think we got to the hospital around 5am and they finally got around to checking me after about 45 mins and I was a little over 4cm dilated. It wasn't too long after that when it got to the point where I just couldn't handle the pain any longer - I needed pain medication right away. Strangely, they said that they could only give me the epidural and they were flying someone in - I'm guessing they were flying them in from Duluth, and I just thought there's no way I can wait that long! I knew from last time that they have shots they can give you... and I asked if there was anything they could give me temporarily, and the nurses said there wasn't... before that they had said that I needed to be dilated at least to a 5 before they could give me anything... so I was just praying that I was at least a 5. When the Dr got there she told them to go ahead and give me the shot - thank god! ;) They were just being stingy with it... Anyway, then she checked me a little after 7am and said that I was 9cm dilated! I think everyone was shocked! It was too late for a epidural, which after finding out how close I was, I wasn't upset about it at all. Too funny that Beatrice drug her feet all along and then all of a sudden decided she was in a big hurry! :) A few minutes later I said I had to push and the Dr said go right ahead because you're ready! That was at 7:20am - and she was born at 7:30! It amazed everyone that it was so quick. Before the Dr checked and said I was at a 9, I was telling Mike to remind me that I didn't want to do this again :) and I was really expecting it to drag on for hours and hours... but after the Dr checked and I was so close I told him I would definitely do it again! When I reached my pain tolerance limit with Duncan, I was still at least 10 hours away from delivery... I expected that this time it would go faster, but I never expected it to go that fast... I feel so lucky and blessed! For both the short labor and delivery and for the beautiful baby girl that we produced :)