The Hart of Life: March 2013

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Hannah Photo Shoots

Hannah is 2 1/2 weeks old now and we love her dearly already. So far she's been a pretty easy baby and seems to have a more mellow personality than Abigail. Hannah is giving us 3 hour stretches of sleep at night between feedings and doesn't have the day/night confusion like most newborns, so that's been a blessing. At her two week appointment yesterday, Hannah weighed in at 8 lbs 5 oz , so she's gaining weight like a champ (gained a pound in one week) and is healthy. We are so very thankful that she didn't catch Abby's cold!

We've had a few newborn photo shoots thanks to my sister-in-love Tara and my friend Alison. Here are some photos from Hannah's first week shoot with Tara:

And here are some shots from our two sessions with Alison:

Family Shots:

Thank you so much Tara and Alison!!! You are both so talented!

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Introducing Hannah!

Hannah Callista Hart was born Saturday, March 9th at 8:49pm after 16 hours of labor. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 13 oz and was 20.5" long.

Birth Story (for those who have not already heard it):
My water broke at 4am Saturday morning and we headed to the hospital at 10am after we got Abigail situated with my parents. I wasn't having very regular contractions at that point, so after we checked in, they let us walk around the hospital for awhile to try to get things moving. By 3pm, I was still only at 3cm so they started me on pitocin (argh!). I decided at this point I was just going to make it as far as I could before getting the epidural since I knew they wanted the baby out 24 hours after my water broke and I didn't want to end up with a c-section for "failure to progress." David was an amazing coach and we tried lots of different positions and breathing techniques while laboring through my contractions. At 7pm, we got a new (AMAZING) nurse who checked and told me I was at 7cm. Because of our birth plan, the nurse knew I had originally wanted to try to make it without an epidural (I thought once pitocin started that it would be unlikely to happen that way), and she told me she thought I could do it and would help us get there. Things moved quickly at that point and after some severe pitocin/transition contractions, I went from 7cm to pushing in about 15 min. Four pushes later (and no epidural), Hannah was born! (I won't lie, there were about 10 minutes where I was thinking I was pretty stupid for not getting that epidural!) She was totally healthy and we got to enjoy a beautiful hour of skin-to-skin time with her. SUCH a different experience than when Abigail was born. It was exactly what we were hoping for. Thank you Lord! What a gift!