photos from my fourth labor

Our sweet daughter number four is five months old. I'm thinking today about how it's almost Valentine's Day, and that last Valentine's Day we announced that I was pregnant. Five years ago on Valentine's Day we had a newborn who was hospitalized for a few days with bronchiolitis (she's been through some tough experiences including a broken femur last year). Twenty-two years ago on Valentine's Day my husband and I met! . . .

I'd forgotten about these photos from the days before Fourth Girl was born. I had used the camera on D's old phone that we also had the contraction-timing app on. Then I was happy to find the photos during a road trip last weekend. I fell in love with the ones of my belly with the baby lower (I don't like the word "dropped" very much) as she was working on coming out. 

We almost had a home birth and it was wonderful. I just wouldn't use that word to describe the c-section, but they wouldn't let us take pictures until the baby was born anyway. My doula sent me the last photo, showing D and me soon after we arrived at the hospital. This baby is a perfect baby. And my recovery was good -- yay placenta encapsulation!

38 weeks (compare to below):

A little past 39 weeks and in labor, less than two days before the birth:

About 12 and a 1/2 hours before the birth:

In triage. I love him for the way he supported me that week.

my third birth story

When does this story begin? The way a birthing time begins and the point at which a woman says, "that's when it started" seems to vary. With our third baby my birthing time felt both longer and shorter than the approximately thirty hours I experienced with each of our other children before their Cesarean births. This time it was longer because of prodromal labor. One evening I felt mildly uncomfortable pressure waves (contractions) that required my attention, instead of Braxton Hicks. They started ten days before Third Girl was born and seemed to be more noticeable each day from about 5 PM on. Sometimes they were ten minutes apart or closer; then they would space out in the morning. There was no reason to tell anyone that anything was happening, because it was not consistent, I have a history of slow dilation, and we planned to not go to the hospital until pressure waves were three minutes apart. After a couple of days my husband or I did tell a few people that I was having a lot more contractions, but we also told them not to get excited yet. We had plans for the Christmas weekend. As it got closer I hoped I would not still be pregnant then, partly because my sleep was getting interrupted so much.

My mom came to take care of our older girls while we went to our last Hypnobabies class. This was nine days after the pressure waves had become more serious and at least five days after I felt that the baby had dropped lower into my pelvis. I didn't lose my mucus plug or anything, but I was pretty sure that she would be born before the due date. We spent class time pretending that each wife was having pressure waves and she and her husband practiced various techniques and positions to help her through them. The difference was that I really was having pressure waves.

The next morning I took a long shower before the kids woke up, and our four-person family went to my scheduled midwife appointment at 11:20. I hadn't met this midwife before. She was really good. I told her I thought I was in labor because the contractions forced me to stop was I was doing, and for almost the last hour they had been coming every eight minutes. I was able to relax well as she gently checked my cervix. She asked me to guess how far dilated I was, and I said, "Oh, two?" She said, "You're at five, no, I'll say six centimeters." I said, almost crying, "That makes me really happy."

I was also fully effaced and the baby was at a 0 or +1 station! I felt even more confident about having a vaginal birth. We were definitely surprised to hear her say six cm, since I had never been dilated that far before. (With our other two babies I was at two or three cm when we arrived at the hospital, and eventually progressed to four or five. This time, we don't know how long my body took to get six cm dilated, because I chose not to have my cervix checked at previous appointments. That's why this birthing time felt shorter; I didn't have anybody checking on my progress during the first part of it.)

We got ready to leave the clinic and the midwife congratulated me. "I think you're going to have your VBAC. You're going to have your baby today!" She said it was up to us whether to go right to the hospital or to go home first. She thought things could happen fast and recommended that if we go home to get our bags we shouldn't "dilly dally." She called the hospital to tell them we would be coming.

We headed for home since we knew it would be more peaceful and pleasant there. (Plus it takes less than half an hour to drive from our home to the hospital.) In the car I called our doula -- the same one who helped us with our first baby's birth. She was excited to hear the news, and she agreed that we should go home.

My mother-in-law came and got our other children. Without them at home my husband and I felt like we were on a date, even though we weren't always together. At first I didn't need him during pressure waves. He spent a lot of the day watching the news and using his computer. I ate whatever I wanted and made sure to drink a lot of water as well as some Powerade. Throughout the day I listened to several Hypnobabies tracks on my iPod. I put more things in our suitcase to take to the hospital, did some housework, and walked on the treadmill for half an hour. I also took a nap. It was so nice and quiet.

I timed most of the pressure waves, using an app on my husband's phone. They weren't real close together -- usually six to eight minutes apart, I think. During pressure waves I used deep relaxation and other Hypnobabies tools I had practiced each day for five weeks. I'm really glad we took the course because it made a difference. I felt best being vertical and leaning forward. (Lying down was more painful.) Depending on where I was I either straddled the birth ball and rested my arms and head on a stack of pillows on top of our bed, or leaned on a piece of furniture or a wall.

As the pressure waves started to get harder for me I liked to have my husband come over so I could put my arms around his neck and feel his arms around me. We had decided ahead of time that I would just say "wave" to let him know when one was starting. My exhalations turned into louder "ohhh" sounds during the peaks of the pressure waves. At 7:55 PM I told him I felt like we should go to the hospital, and he called our doula to have her meet us there. I just felt a little different, with more pressure (sometimes pain) by my tailbone and a little nausea. Even though the pressure waves weren't really consistent or closer together, they were lasting for a minute or longer.

We arrived at the hospital about 9 PM. I had to have a nurse assess me before admitting me. She told me to put the gown on but I said I would rather wear my own clothes, and she was okay with that. She put a fetal monitor on my belly. It immediately showed decelerations in the baby's heart rate (the same thing happened to our other daughters). At 9:15 the nurse checked me and found that I was dilated six to seven cm.

We went up to a labor and delivery room. We had requested the room with the best tub, but the staff suggested that we be in the room closest to the operating suites. I changed into just a shift (like a full-length slip) with a short-sleeved maternity shirt over it. The nurse put in an IV. There was talk of releasing the bag of waters to help things along. It could let the baby's head move further down the birth canal and also we would be able to place an internal monitor on her head to better track her heart rate, which the staff was pretty nervous about. The attending physician came in and met us at 9:40 and talked with us. This was probably when he said he thought the baby wouldn't be able to handle the labor, which would likely take at least four more hours to dilate fully, and the pushing that would take maybe two hours or more (since I have never pushed a baby out).

There are a lot of details that I don't remember but our doula had written them down. Labs were drawn on me at 9:50 and I felt shaky. My husband and I wanted to wait for the midwife (another one I had never met) to come, but after talking with our doula we decided to release the bag of waters to help the baby move down and encourage dilation.

At 9:55 the doctor released the bag of waters. I do remember that, because it seemed like he was in there for a long time, and it hurt! There was meconium and some light bleeding. Someone had me lie on my right side to try to relieve pressure that might have been on the umbilical cord. I had ear buds in with a relaxation script playing, and our doula provided comfort with massage.

Our midwife arrived at 10:10. Now when the baby's heart rate decelerated it sometimes got as low as the 50s before coming back up to normal. With my doula's help I moved to hands and knees position, again to avoid pressure on the cord. At 10:20 my husband discussed my preferences with our midwife and asked for me to be given every possibility to give birth vaginally, because it seemed that from the moment the doctor arrived he was preparing for a Cesarean birth.

At 10:35 I stood by the bed; I didn't always know how I wanted to be, but I did not want to be on the bed anymore. Now some of the decelerations were happening even when there wasn't a pressure wave, and some dropped into the 40s. My husband offered me sips of water, and I put my arms around his neck during pressure waves, which were coming anywhere from three to thirteen minutes apart. I felt really hot, so my doula and midwife helped me get my shirt over the I.V. cords so I could take it off and wear the shift only. I also put my hair in a ponytail and they turned a fan on.

I sat on the birth ball for a little while. My midwife was in the room when the doctor returned at 11:00 and said he felt "absolutely obligated to do a Cesarean." My husband continued talking with the midwife until 11:20. He also talked things over with our doula and requested time alone with her and me. We agreed that we had done everything we could and the baby needed to be born by C-section. When the midwife had checked my cervix for the last time she had said that the dilation was the same and now the baby was transverse. My sweet husband gave me a wonderful Priesthood blessing. Then the anesthesiologist and other women came into the room to prepare me for the surgery.

At 11:55 they had me sit in a wheelchair to go to the operating room. The midwife came, too. The anesthesiologist was very kind as she gave me the spinal epidural, and I enjoyed the numbness that made it feel comfortable to lie on my back. I think my arms were still shaking, as they did during the other Cesareans, but they were in a more comfortable place. I remember warm blankets over my arms, and I remember feeling more calm and happy compared to the disappointment of my first "failed" VBAC. My husband called my mom to tell her that we would have our baby soon. He put on scrubs and a mask and joined me at 12:05 AM.

Our daughter was born at 12:06 AM, only 11 minutes after I entered the operating room, so he got there just in time! She weighed 5 pounds 13 ounces (1 ounce less than Second Girl) and was 18.5 inches long (1.5 inches shorter than both First Girl and Second Girl) with a 35 cm head circumference. She looked like her sisters did as newborns, except she had a lot of dark hair.

Her Apgar scores were 9 and 9. As I found out later, the cord had been tightly around her neck, twice. Also, she pooped in three diapers within ten minutes. Before I could hold her for the first time, she had to have some help in the nursery for about two hours. She had swallowed meconium and she was retracting as she was breathing. My husband went with her and took some pictures and videos, and he came back to room 8 at 12:48, just before I did. Our doula stayed with me while he returned to be with our cute baby in the nursery.

I would have preferred not to have surgery, to be able to feel our baby come out, to be one of the first to hold her. But, knowing that we were doing what our little girl needed, I actually smiled during the operation. I was grateful for the way everyone treated me before, during, and after the birth. They knew what my preferences were and they were patient and respectful. I had no pitocin, and no drugs until the spinal.

The doctor came in later and kindly explained that he thought the need for a Cesarean may be related to the shape of the inside of my pelvis. We don't know about the shape because we have not had x-rays done, but we do know that our little babies are not "too big" to fit through my pelvis. He said he had put stitches, not staples, in my incision so that we could leave the hospital early to spend Christmas morning at home with all our kids.

At 1:30 my husband called my mom again to tell her about her granddaughter. Soon after that, our baby was able to join us, now that she was breathing much better. She learned how to breastfeed pretty quickly and she has been perfectly healthy. We LOVE having this girl in our family!

 

(two different cameras)

 

This was so sweet . . . pure adoration.

"BIG sister" shirts

baby #3 update: 27 weeks

I am 27 and a half weeks pregnant. My womb and my womb-mate are growing and measuring right on. I like to refer the prenatal development chart in one of my university textbooks. It says that Third Girl should now be about 14 inches long and weigh almost 2 pounds, with eyes that can open and close. I have gained 8 pounds (two of those in the last four weeks, and six in the four weeks before that). I don't remember how my weight gain was with the other pregnancies besides the total number of pounds, but it would probably be good if I gain about a pound or more per week until this baby is born. I wrote before that I was exercising most days. Since then, it's become closer to two or three days a week because . . . well, I think I have more days when I am just not in the mood to work out. It's more likely to happen if I do it in the morning, and it is easier and more enjoyable to read a book while walking on the treadmill than to do my 40-minute prenatal strength training DVD.

I'm grateful that I have not been having any nausea (since about 14 weeks), heartburn,  constipation, swelling, varicose veins, stretch marks (I have never gotten any), calf cramps, etc. I remember that several times during my first pregnancy I had to jump out of bed in the middle of the night to stand up because of the sudden pain in my calf. I haven't had strong food cravings or aversions. A few times during this pregnancy I have craved Mexican food or stuff from the olive bar at the grocery store. I have also been really enjoying green salads, berries, and Healthy Choice fudge bars, but I wouldn't call those cravings.

Sometimes I do:

• feel a little uncomfortable or back-achy by about 9 p.m. or earlier (stretching, walking around, or lying down can help)
• get a headache
• have a hard time falling asleep again after getting up to use the bathroom (or if one of our many apartment neighbors is noisy and wakes me up)
• have trouble breathing through my nose -- the last few days I have been more congested and blowing my nose, but it seems that we all have minor colds.

Also, I wrote that I don't want to be in a hospital for this baby's birth and that I have been seeing midwives at a birth center. I love the idea of being in labor without having to continually meet and be observed by new nurses and others who come in the room without warning. I feel that a woman in labor is not a "patient" and most of the time doesn't need a hospital (read the preface of this birth story). What do statistics mean to one individual, anyway?

Although I still would prefer to give birth in a birth center or at home, my husband and I know that unfortunately our insurance will not cover any of the delivery cost unless the care provider is a Certified Nurse-Midwife or obstetrician. The women at the birth center I have been going to are a different type of midwife, which means we would have to pay for the entire cost out of our own pockets. The one or two CNMs here who do out-of-hospital births are already booked. It is frustrating and makes no sense to me that our insurance would not reimburse us for any of the less-than-$3,000 cost (while they have covered each of my $10,000 c-sections). But my goal is to have a natural vaginal birth, and that can happen in a hospital. So I called my doula for advice, and we switched to CNMs. My doula didn't hesitate when answering my question about which hospital she thinks would be best for me personally (she is the same doula I had in 2006). Last week was my first appointment with one of the midwives at the clinic near that hospital. They are very supportive of birth without drugs or medical interventions and they are very pro-VBAC. The hospital has the lowest epidural rate in the state and is "Baby-friendly" (I was not aware of this before and I think it's fantastic!). My husband and I both really like this midwife and are confident that the others in the practice are excellent, too. She recommended a certain Webster Certified chiropractor -- someone trained to work specifically with pelvic balance in pregnancy -- actually the very same chiropractor I already starting seeing for adjustments. It will be helpful to the midwives to have a copy of my records from my last birth and from the birth center, and I am looking forward to receiving my own copy. (FYI, you can simply go in and get your own medical records for free.) I've been told it is hard to overcome "the failure to progress scenario", but we are thinking positively.

I have spent and continue to spend many hours studying the normal process of labor -- the way women's (and babies') bodies were designed for babies to come out. I'm re-reading the book Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. I cannot recommend it enough. I also have learned a lot from the films The Business of Being Born and Orgasmic Birth (Don't avoid this just because of the title. The idea is that giving birth can be a good and enjoyable experience. There is a shorter version called Organic Birth.), and about 5-10 facebook groups including the one for Birth Without Fear.

Why do I want to stay at home until I am in active labor? Why don't I want an epidural or something? The mind and the body are closely connected. For me and my baby, I want to let the natural hormones of labor flow. I want to have a comfortable environment with as much freedom and privacy as possible, and minimal interruptions and interventions. From Orgasmic Birth:   

The pain down here gets sent up to the brain, the brain releases hormones which go down here to the uterus and tell the uterus what to do or not to do. And if you take away the pain, the whole normal physiology is gone (Marsden Wagner, M.D.). 

[M]any of the interventions that are commonly used in maternity care today will reduce the release of these hormones in a laboring woman’s body and make her birth less ecstatic, less pleasurable, and actually less safe for herself and her baby (Sarah Buckley, M.D.).

What if you numbed your feet and then you were supposed to walk down a highway? You'd have difficulty walking down the highway. . . . If your birth canal is numb, it doesn't work the same way (Christiane Northrup, M.D.).

Besides the change of providers, there is something else that has changed. Unless another idea comes to us, we chose Third Girl's name! We will give her both a first name and a middle name, like our other kids have. As always, nobody but my husband and I will know the name until the baby is born. Sometimes when we leave my mom's place, she says to my belly, "What's your name?" or "Goodbye, Gertrude. :o)

Finally, some photos:

I had fun comparing some photos of my bump during the last pregnancy and this one. (We really didn't do any belly profile pictures during my first pregnancy, except for a photo shoot my friend Anne did about 2 months before my due date). My mom's neighbor was surprised that this baby is a girl, because just like last time, she thinks I look like I'm carrying a boy. Also, it's definitely impossible at this point to make my abdomen appear non-pregnant. A couple of days ago a cute old man asked me, "Is that a basketball or a watermelon?" I said watermelon, but when I get a moment I try to picture her tiny human body inside of me and express our love for her. I wonder exactly what each movement is. I swear, at least twice she has kicked in response to something I said about her. For example, when I had my hand on my belly and said to the other kids, "I have a big belly with a baby inside," I immediately felt her kick beneath my hand. I'm doing my best to enjoy the next three months with her inside me. We will have plenty of time with her on the outside.

my first birth story

In 2006 -- before I started blogging -- I had nine lovely months of pregnancy (Really.  I didn't have complications, and I loved being pregnant. Both times, in fact.). Then we welcomed our first child into the world. I wish I would have journaled more of my thoughts and feelings at that time. Now that I am writing about her birth in detail, a little more than four years later, I can only do my best to remember.

I have always wanted to be a mom. I know I had small impressions, several times over a period of probably eight years, that my first baby would be a girl. During the pregnancy, I never felt that it was boy. (My husband and I checked the gender during the 19-week ultrasound anyway, and we were very excited to have a daughter. We had conceived her during his leave from Iraq, and this ultrasound was right after he returned home to stay.) We chose her first and middle name but, when talking to anyone else, we referred to her as "Top Secret," or "Topsy" for short, until after she was born. Later my husband began calling her "Shboogoo" -- the name I chose for my blog's URL.

****

Late on the night before my due date (which was actually 41 weeks, not 40, because my obstetrician changed the date after we had the ultrasound) , my contractions seemed to feel slightly different than the ones I had experienced during the previous week or so, but I didn't really know. Without telling my husband, I began writing down start times. We went to sleep looking forward to the next day: some friends were coming over for breakfast, and later in the day we would eat dinner with family.

At 4:00 a.m. on my due date I woke up and my contractions were more regular, coming every 15 minutes. Around 5:00 I woke my husband and told him what was happening. Later we called our friends to cancel the breakfast, but now I'm sure that we could have still done it.

Some time during our childbirth class my opinion -- that I would get an epidural if I needed it -- had changed. I planned on a drug-free hospital birth with a doula, and my husband was on board with that.

One of us called A., our doula, at 9:25 a.m. (according to her notes), to tell her my contractions were 12 minutes apart and 45-60 seconds long. She didn't need to come over yet, but it was nice to have her expertise over the phone.

Although it was cold, we walked outside, probably once around the condominium complex. A shower helped the contractions get closer together. I loved sitting on the birth ball. My husband was with me every second as I quietly breathed through contractions, and on his laptop he made a really cool spreadsheet with charts and graphs to track them. Nerd! By 3:20 p.m. they were 5 minutes apart and at least 80 seconds long, and at four I thought I felt a trickle of amniotic fluid releasing.

We asked our doula to come, with her counter-pressure and other doula skills. When she arrived I was on all fours. My contractions were spaced the same as a couple of hours earlier. She was impressed by my husband's spreadsheet; I don't think she had seen anyone do that before. Nerd! She was really helpful to me, which of course helped my husband, too.

My mom and two of my siblings came to visit, and brought leftovers from dinner. I remember eating a little four different times, and each time I threw up a while later.

After my husband took a nap we decided to go to the hospital, and we and the doula all got there around 9 p.m. (This was seventeen hours after labor began.) During the short drive there I actually told my husband I felt like I could be pretty dilated already.  When the RN checked me I was 3 cm dilated and 90% effaced -- some progress since being at 2 cm two and a half days earlier. I don't know why they didn't send us back home, but it was probably because with the external fetal monitor they could see the baby's heart rate decelerating pretty low with each contraction. Apparently I was wrong about the trickle; I don't remember this, but the notes say, "waters are released." I guess that means the hospital staff talked to us about breaking my water for me, and we must have agreed to it.

We met (for the first time) the doctor who was on call. Because of the holiday weekend, the nurses' shifts were shorter, so the first one I had was off two hours after we arrived. Then it seemed that there was a new nurse every three or four hours (instead of every twelve)! I think the frequent changes and meeting new people slowed down my labor. By 11:20 p.m. the doctor wanted "change in an hour's time." I had the monitor on my belly again, and the baby's heart rate was still decelerating with each contraction, then returning to normal.

After midnight (Friday now) the new RN found that I was 3 cm or slightly more dilated, 95% effaced, and the baby was still at -1/-2 station. I ate flavored ice chips. We followed my doula's suggestions. However, the baby wasn't ready to come out. An hour later my contractions were 8 minutes apart. The nurse placed an I.V. in me. She started pitocin at 1 mL per hour, and we watched Finding Nemo. She increased the pitocin about every half hour. The contrations were getting slightly closer -- and maybe more intense because that is one typical effect of pitocin -- but I think I felt fine.

The next RN checked me at 3:30 a.m.: 4 cm, 100% effaced, and +1 station. She turned off the pitocin at 4:15. Our baby's heart rate dropped into the 70s during contractions but she recovered well. The doctor came in and I was given antibiotics. At 5:30 I was still laboring without pitocin. I enjoyed slow dancing with my husband (being vertical can let gravity help a baby descend). Unfortunately, my contractions were 8 minutes apart.

At 6:30 another new RN told me I was 4 to 5 cm dilated and +1 station. A new obstetrician came in a while later -- still not the one I had been seeing throughout my pregnancy, but I did think he was the friendliest of the three. The nurse placed an internal fetal monitor and IUPC to show more information than the external monitor gives. Almost an hour (not very long) after I had been checked, the OB checked me and in his opinion I was at 4 cm, 80% effaced and +1 station. He talked about the possibility that we would need a cesarean section to avoid infection because my membranes were ruptures. Twenty minutes late, they gave me pitocin again, followed by another IUPC (I think my movement from going over to the bathroom made this necessary), and amnioinfusion to cushion the cord.

I had written in my birth plan that I preferred not to have these specific interventions. My labor was not how I had anticipated it, and in many ways you cannot plan a birth, since you do not know what problems might occur. Still, the interventions are more ridiculous to me now that I have done even more research on childbirth. Does it make sense to say that the baby needs to be born within 24 hours of the water breaking or he/she is at risk of infection, but to do frequent vaginal exams (which also increase the risk of infection)? By the way, if they broke my water the night before, it had only been 10 hours (not close to 24) and the doctor was already recommending a c-section.

My mom came at 8 a.m., partly to let my husband get some sleep. She's a wonderful mom. She felt bad that my labor was going on for so long (hers were only a few hours each). They gave me some oxygen. At 8:55, IUPC #3 was placed, and the pitocin increased to 2 mL per hour.

Around 9:15 the nurse was concerned about our baby's heart rate going down into the 60s; it was still recovering, though. She paged the doctor, stopped the pitocin, and we decided to have a c-section because it seemed that the doctor thought it was necessary. It looked like the baby wasn't handling this very well and for some reason my cervix was not dilating. Also, we did not want her to have an infection, and I was tired and starting to get hungry since they only "allowed" me to have flavored ice chips.

They gave me Terbutaline to "turn off" the contractions, and we waited for the doctor to return from delivering a baby at the other hospital. Meanwhile, they did the other (not fun) things to prep me for surgery. I was happy to know that we would definitely meet our baby within an hour. We had someone take our Wayne Egan CD into the operating room. The anesthesiologist walked to the operating room with me and my husband, and the spinal anesthetic (which has a quicker onset than an epidural) and the entire surgery only took thirty minutes. I chose to have a curtain in front of me instead of watching. I'm sure my husband talked a lot to make me feel comfortable. The doctors liked having the relaxing piano music there (I did, too); I was their first patient to request that music play during a c-section.

I'm not sure if I wanted to smile.

Our daughter was born at 10:59 a.m. (This photo may gross some people out, but we like it. The hospital staff told us my husband could take pictures of the surgery.) We were more emotional than we thought we would be. We loved her immediately. She was beautiful!

The umbilical cord was long, and had been around her neck, shoulders, and waist, and tangled in her legs. Apparently that explained why her heart rate was dropping. She must have been grateful to be free of the cord squeezing her. Her Apgar scores were good, though -- 7 and 9 -- so had she really been in distress? She weighed 6 pounds 3 and a half ounces, was 20 inches long, and had brown hair.

They reassembled my body and stapled the incision in my skin.

The first non-blurry photo of our first baby. She had a good cry!

  First picture of our faces together; I couldn't hold her yet because of the anesthesia.

I wanted to see what was happening and longed to be part of it.

I remember the strangeness of having an operation (having done it twice now makes it easy to remember): the cold room, shaking, feeling them touch and pull without causing me pain, and my arms being straight out away from my body.

After the doctors lifted my baby above the curtain to show me, and after my husband and I looked at each other when she first cried, I wondered when I would be able to have her near me. That picture of her and me above was just a short sweet moment. I know we went to our room at 11:30 and she was in the nursery (no, I don't know why) until 11:45. We are not sure when I first fed her. I think I slept most of that day. She didn't nurse correctly right away, but thankfully, we did figure out breastfeeding and continued for over thirteen months. She has been very healthy, and she is one of our greatest blessings.

 Held by daddy, having her first bath.

 Family of three!

Nursed to sleep (probably her second or third day of life). This has always been my favorite baby picture of her, partly because it was my idea -- my husband took it from my perspective.

 My doula for this birth, holding Shboogoo a few weeks after.