Introducing Camille May

I'm not sure if I can even remember back three months ago to include many details - it's a bit of a blur!  But I guess the best I can do is just start and see what comes.

My last post, "I spoke too soon...", was written Saturday night, the night before I went into labor.  I had it mostly finished, but I actually posted it Sunday morning while I was in labor in the hospital trying to get my mind off the pain! :)  So, let's see...

Saturday night I went to bed completely discouraged and sobbed for probably the first time in years. Seriously, I sounded like a child and it wasn't pretty.  I was so so sick and just knew I was going to go into labor that way.  Originally, what I had planned (and yes, I know that's a total joke) was for my mom to get here and to celebrate Bryce's birthday on Friday, get all the work done I needed before having a baby Saturday, and then to get a good night's sleep and roll out of bed Sunday morning and have my water break rather than waiting around and watching all the time my mom was going to be here go down the drain with no baby.  But Saturday night when I was feeling so sick (hadn't felt that sick in a LONG time) I changed my mind. Apparently, my body didn't get the memo.  ACCORDING TO MY ORIGINAL PLAN I woke up Sunday morning, rolled out of bed and my water broke!!!  I wasn't due for another week and a half - what were the odds of THAT?!  I stood up out of bed, felt a really small amount of water and very articulately told Marty I was in labor.  It went something like this:

Me:  "Um...."
Marty: (not really awake) "Hm?"
Me:  "Um!"
Marty: "What?"
Me:  "Um!  Um um um um!"
Marty: "What!?!!?"
Me: "I think this is it!"
Marty:  "Are you sure?"
Me:  "No.......UM!  YES!
Marty:  (surprisingly calm) "Ok."
Me: "Wait, no, maybe I'm not sure...Can you go get my mom?"

And it went on like that for some time.  For me, having my water break was not at ALL like you see in movies.  Anyway, that morning was actually really calm.  I wanted to do quite a bit of the laboring at home, so I leisurely took a shower, ate a sandwich and an apple, asked my mom to french braid my hair, sat on a lot of towels. :)  I was still so completely shocked that I hadn't gone into labor that Thursday night at Chuck-E-Cheese that honestly we were all just waiting around and so ready.  The kids were like, "Ok, cool, we'll see you when we get home from the hospital."  In the end I felt so horribly dehydrated (pregnant+throwing-up+the other end too+too nautious to drink anything for days at this point=scary dehydrated).  All I really wanted was to go to the hospital and have some fluids and zofran administered IV and just get this show on the road.

We got to triage at 10:15 and were told that I was 70% effaced and at a five.  At 10:30 we moved and got blood work done, LOTS of fluids at my request, and started a really small dose of pitocin at 11:30 to get things going a little.  It had been almost 5 hours since my water broke and not much was happening.  But that small amount of pit was all it took.  By 12:00 I was feeling the this-baby-is-coming-NOW-contractions and I was ready for the epidural, which I got at 12:30.  The next hour was somewhat of an embarrassment for me at the hospital.  I had been feeling so gross and awful and weak that this was the first of my four labors where I really thought (and expressed many times) "I can not do this."  But, there's not really any going back, right?  You HAVE to do this.  So I did.  The epidural did the same crazy thing it did with Brynn and basically just didn't do anything except make my legs numb.  But this was not my first rodeo and I wasn't going to be as passive about it as I was with Brynn.  We got some more nurses in there to tweak some things and JUST before the baby came, it finally started kicking in in the right spots.  :)  Of course.  But anyway, when I knew it was really time, after one push her head was out and I was hearing Marty and the doctors remark on ALL that dark hair!  I was confused and felt weird trying to process that because I had this image of her turning out just like Gabe and not at all like the other two (Gabe had just a little hair and it was light).  With one more push she was out, on my chest, and I got to see for myself that she was not at all the way I had pictured her all this time!!   So our baby girl was born at 1:40.  She laid on my chest wide-eyed, beautiful, and looking quite a lot like Sister.

Not sure what else to say after all the excitement other than everything was so completely sweet, and as always, beautiful - the bonding, the nursing, the peace after the trial, the sweet newborn smell, passing her back and forth between Marty and the nurses.

We've been fighting over baby girl names for years - Marty wanted Megan, I wanted Celeste, we couldn't agree so we went back to the drawing board and came up with some new names to take with us to the hospital.  To be honest, I still thought I'd be able to convince Marty of Celeste. :)  But when she wasn't born the way I'd been picturing Celeste all this time we both totally agreed on Camille.  She was just...a total Camille for some reason!  And May is her middle name - also my grandma's middle name who passed away just before Camille was born.

Camille May Johnson - welcome to the family!!

Camille May

April 28th, 2013

7 lbs 14 oz

20 inches