Welcome to the world, Elise Marianna!

This will be a condensed version of my labor and delivery with little Elise. You must be asking how I can condense it when it was less than 2 hours to begin with? I'm leaving out the graphic details which coincidently is half the story.

11:21pm Just went to bed and the first contraction hits. At least I am pretty sure that's what that was.

11:31pm Second contraction. yep, that first one was definitely a contraction because this one is too.

Fast forward to 12:05am when the contractions have now coming about 5 minutes apart for a bit and I decided to wake Chris up.

I'm throwing last minute stuff together and they are coming closer and closer to together, so we call our babysitters, Kevin and Sara at 12:22am.

At this point, the contractions are like 1-2 minutes apart and I'm starting to wonder if we should have left long before now...but we have to wait for Kevin to arrive to stay with sleeping Kayla.

Not sure when he got here and we left, but it's SUPPOSED to take 10 minutes to get to the hospital. There were two factors that may have made the trip take a bit shorter. a) It was the middle of the night and the lights pretty much all changed to green for us b) Chris was driving pretty fast

We arrived at the hospital at 12:56am and I am still not completely sure how I actually walked from the car to the hospital door. I was wheeled into a room, changed into the hospital gown, and checked to see how far along I was. (obviously the contractions are still coming a minute or less apart at this point). The nurse says she feels nothing but bag and all of a sudden nurses are coming from everywhere, wheeling in the baby bassinet, and hooking up the iv and monitors. The doctor on-call comes in and the pushing begins.

Notes: the doctor told us later that my water bag was all that was holding our baby in, so we were lucky that didn't break at home or on the way to the hospital otherwise life could have gotten even more interesting. Also, I am choosing to make this sound light and fun. It was not. A two hour labor is what I can only describe as blissfully HORRIBLE, and painfully short.

3 pushes and we hear the glad tidings that we have another beautiful BIG baby girl! 9 lbs. 10oz. and 20 1/2 inches long. We still hadn't chosen between our two girl names so we took her in our arms and got a good look at her. She was Elise Marianna.

Here's the deal with her name. She is named after about a gazillion people...and also because we just liked the names Elise and Marianna (the first part rhymes with "star" the last part rhymes with "sauna").

We also figured that Elise is sort of like a French version of Alice. My grandma's name is Alice. Marianna has parts of both Marcella and Anny in it. Marcella and Anny are Chris' grandmother's names. Coincidently, Marianna also has parts of Maureen and Anne in it. Maureen is my Mom's name and Anne is Chris' mom's middle name. Mary Ann is the name of a wonderful woman who was like a second mother to me when I grew up in Spokane. She was my mom's good friend, and was like a mother, big sister, and friend all rolled into one. Marianna is also a combination of the names Mary and Anne who happen to be some really amazing, holy Saints! Little known facts: Marianna is also a Saint herself though a relatively unknown one. Marianna is also the name of my great-great grandmother on my mother's side.

Crazy huh? We picked the name before we realized any of the family name connections...wow!

Stay tuned for the next post about Kayla meeting her new little sis!

Elise's Stats:

Born on March 30, 2011 at 1:18am

Weight: 9 lbs. 10 oz.  

5 days late

Length: 20 1/2 inches

Total labor lasted just under 2 hours.