She’s here!  Ashley Kaitlyn Murray made her debut on Monday, October 12, 2009 at 5:14 p.m.  She weighed in at 6 lb. 15 oz. and was 20 inches long.  She was one day shy of 38 weeks when born.  An over achiever, that’s for sure!  I won’t go into details of the whole labor experience, but it went very well.  My water broke at 5:30 a.m. and contractions started after that.   We ended up leaving the house around 7:30 a.m. to go to the hospital.  Van was ready to go before that but I wanted to take a shower, eat breakfast, feed the boys, and stay calm.  I was probably too calm if you ask Van!   

The labor and delivery unit was already full when we got there, so my doctor came out and got us and took us to the office next door.  There are 3 tests they do to check and see if it’s your water that broke, and not something else.  One of them is looking at it on a slide in a microscope and it looks like frost on a windshield.  The doctor let us look at it to see what it looks like.  It was pretty neat, it looks just like frost.  So she sent me back next door to the hospital to be admitted.  We had to wait a little while for a room.  It was a busy baby day!

Once we were in a room, they got me all set up and started the pitocin around 9:00 a.m.  Man does that stuff work!  The contractions got stronger and harder and around 12:00 p.m. I got an epidural.  That stuff works, too!  What a difference that made.  By the time the epidural got in my system, my parents, sister and brother-in-law arrived.  Which was good timing so by that time I was more comfortable.  Labor progressed much faster than expected.  In fact, my doctor was leaving at 5:00 p.m. that day and joked that she doubted she would be the one to deliver.  Especially since this was our first baby and it usually takes longer.  But it came on so fast and took everyone by surprise.  By the time we were in active labor, we had to wait 8 minutes for the doctor to arrive (which felt like forever) and about 2 minutes later, little Ashley was born!  It was such a surreal experience!

She is absolutely perfect, if I do say so myself   Such a beautiful baby!  She has a head full of long jet black hair and steel blue eyes.  We came home from the hospital yesterday (Wednesday).  She is 3 days old today, and goes to the doctor tomorrow for her first check-up.  She is asleep in the pack-n-play right now and is on the verge of waking up.  So I’m going to go ahead and post some pictures while I can.  Will post another update soon!