Hi! Sophia is here! She was born at 3:30 am, after about 2 minutes of pushing, but a lot more very painful ctx than I like to think about :) She seems to be EB's polar opposite, which is actually quite good -- she is calm, quiet (except when she wants to nurse!), and very peaceful. I mean, I can put her down when she's asleep... and she stays asleep! Stunning! Of course, she's only 9 hours old, but still. She's already a pro at latching on, which is a relief. Would have posted sooner, but was sleeping.
I'll write up a longer birth story shortly. It was about 27 hours all told, mostly prodromal, but things got really serious last night around 11 -- very, very long contractions. Just before she was born, I had one that felt like it lasted for about 10 minutes, which really sucked. I could feel her head pretty low, though, which was good, and pushed just a few times before her head was out. I think I went too fast, though, as there is a small labial tear; not big enough to stitch, just big enough to hurt :)
Sophia 6 lbs 7 oz -- a bit bigger than EB, but still smaller than I'd expected -- and 19.5 inches long. Apgars 10 and 10, very pink at birth and still quite pink now -- guess she'll match all the clothes we've been given! She's just perfect. Here is one preliminary picture, many more to come.
I forgot to mention the weirdest part -- there was an extra, small placenta. It was starting to take a really long time to deliver the placenta -- 30 minutes went by and Cilia (my midwife) was getting worried. It seemed so ironic to me that we could deliver a perfectly healthy baby at home, and then have to go to the hospital to deliver the placenta. So she did some cord traction, and other usual things, and then, white-fonted because it is awfully gory, she put on what looked like a livestock kind of glove, and went all the way inside my uterus to try to figure out why it wasn't detaching. Owie and yucky.
Finally I had some more good contractions, and the placenta came out, along with the little placenta. It wasn't attached to the actual placenta at all, but was just inside the sac -- I guess this would have been a real problem if it hadn't come out, because the real placenta was intact, and there would be no way to know that there was another one in there. I can't remember the name for the little one, but the midwife and her assistant ooohed and aaaahed over it for about 15 minutes; they'd heard of it, but never seen one before. It's likely that the little placenta was what caused the bleeding at 28 weeks. I'll put links to some pictures of it up later, for the non-faint-of-heart.
Here's a link with a disgusting picture about the placenta (not my picture; ours looks like just a normal placenta with the other little one as a satellite). It's called a succenturiate lobe , if anyone's curious.
I ate pizza during this last labor. Not great for the heartburn, but it was gone by the time I got to hard labor. With Entropy Boy, my mom cooked a turkey on the second night, so we essentially had a Thanksgiving dinner in May. Once I was actually in real labor with Sophia, though, I just drank a lot of water. Didn't want juice or food, though I'm sure my midwife would have preferred I had juice to keep my blood sugar up. I was very dizzy just after Sophie was born, so had an instant breakfast shake.