Then, on Thursday, August 1st around 4am I woke up having contractions that felt like they might be the real deal. Around 7am I checked in with my dear friend, Amy, who planned to come for the birth (and mother of four children herself) and she concurred. I was in labor. Hooray. If you considered that labor may be half as long this time, I thought we may have ourselves a baby by the afternoon. So, I also checked in with our midwife, who agreed, and asked me to keep her updated and call right away if my contractions reached a certain intensity and/or my water broke. MP stayed home from work to wrangle MP2, and I spent the day doing last minute things - getting house cleaned, laundry done, etc. Amy decided to come over mid-afternoon, and we sent MP2 to Nana and Papa's after his nap in the afternoon. But those pesky contractions, while getting more uncomfortable, were not reaching the intensity and regularity that I was looking for to mean baby was imminent.
Around 9:30, Amy decided to go home, and decidedly discouraged and dejected, I called the midwife back. Through my tears, I told her what had gone on (or, more appropriately had NOT gone on) all day. She suggested that I may just need to rest or relax. She said to take a hot bath and try to sleep. Her opinion was that I would wake up either a) in more intense labor, and need to call her, or b) not in labor at all, and we'd be having a baby another day. So, I followed orders and got into bed. Around 1:30, I started waking up with each contraction, and they were feeling pretty intense, though I could sleep between them. After an hour, I decided to time them, and reached to grab my phone and as I did, my water broke. At this point, I woke Matt and he called our midwife. She and her apprentice arrived within a few minutes of each other around 3am. I got into the tub, and after another hour and a half (of which I'll spare you all the gory details - except there may have been some crazy-lady-screaming going on), MP caught his second child under the water as she was born! We pulled Nora Cate up and checked the clock...4:42 am. Born on a Friday, just like her big brother (in fact, just 10 minutes later than he was born).
She weighed in at 8 lbs 6 oz (exactly the same as MP2) and measured 19.5 inches long (only 1/2 inch shorter than MP2). They even looked just alike! We were just over the moon to see her and hold her and count all her fingers and toes and see just how perfect and beautiful she is.
All told, the hard part of labor was about half as long...it just took us some time to get there. Again, not unlike MP2, who had me in labor that started and stopped all day Thursday, July 8th and after some rest, things got going in the early hours of Friday, July 9th before his 4:32am birth.
We spent Friday resting and getting to know one another, until just after dinner time, when big brother came home and met her for the first time. He took one look at her and then asked Nana and Papa to come play with him in his room. Then, while I was reading to him before bedtime, he asked if she could go back into my belly. I let him know that getting her out had been tough, so I thought we'd just keep her out here. Never thinking the question this would prompt - "How did Nora Cate get out of your belly, Mom?" I decided to change the subject and save that discussion for another day!
A million pictures like the one on the bottom yields one barely passable family photo such as the one on the top!
Proud Nana & Papa!
Siblings - MP2 on the top and NC on the bottom...I think they look practically identical here, though NC looks more like herself these days.
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