our perfect christmas gift

madeleine arrived on christmas day at 1:15 pm and was 21 inches long, 8 pounds, 2 ounces. i'll tell a little bit about the birth (don't worry, no gory details), but for those of you who would rather not hear it in that much detail, you can skip to the part below where we become proud first time parents and post a bunch of pictures of her.

on christmas morning, around 10:45, i was doing dishes in my parent's kitchen (fortunately we had already had a great christmas breakfast) and my water broke. because i was already dilated, we decided to head into the hospital right away. about five minutes later, i started having contractions. fortunately, we were going to be leaving to go down to a family christmas brunch, so randy was already in the middle of shoveling the snow out from around our car when my water broke.

we are poor planners and had to stop for gas before going to the hospital, and by the time we got gas, my contractions were about 3 or 4 minutes apart. randy raced like a skilled driver to the hospital, and by the time we arrived, my contractions were 2 minutes apart and i was getting pretty uncomfortable.

with it being christmas day, labor and delivery was really slow, so they put us straight into a room and got me all hooked up onto machines and got my i.v. going. they checked me right away and i was already at a 5. i wanted an epidural right away, but they were having a hard time getting a hold of the anesthesiologist (something about it being christmas). when he did finally arrive, i was already pushing, and they told me that it was kind of pointless to give me an epidural at that point, because by the time it kicked in, she would be out (oh, i was completely dilated within half an hour of being at a 5). having heard stories about women pushing for a long time before the baby came, and not wanting to remain in the pain that i was currently in (as comforting and sweet as randy was being, it wasn't enough) any longer, i was very glad when they suggested doing a spinal. within a minute, i was MUCH happier.

to make a short labor story even shorter, madeleine was born at 1:15pm. so, within 2 and a half hours of my water breaking, she was out. i really can't complain. short labor, no complications, and i still got my drugs. we were the last birth of the day (they had a couple others early in the morning), so we got plenty of attention and care.

she is absolutely adorable (no bias here) and we are so glad to have her as part of our family. some people may think that christmas is a rotten day to have a birthday, but we actually think that it's pretty fun and now have two wonderful births to celebrate. we look forward to the many adventures that she will bring into our lives.

now onto the pictures:

a handsome father and daughter duo
a less handsome picture (see, i am already making sacrifices for my child) of a worn out and puffy mom right after delivery.

madeleine in her gnome hat.
holding her dad's hand
getting cleaned up
she got a red and green bow to celebrate the holiday