Our sweet baby GIRL!

Baby Addison Hope was born on June 9th at 4:00 in the afternoon and weighed in at 8 pounds 13 ounces. It is quite ridiculous that I'm just now posting this little angel baby's pictures, because she is almost four months old, which I can hardly believe! Her birth story is already fading from my memory a bit so I wanted to be sure and "write it down". Don't judge me for waiting so long....we're really busy at the Landress house!

I began having contractions about 10:00pm on June 8th which was a Wednesday night. We went to church as usual. I proclaimed to the ladies at church that I was feeling no signs of labor though PAST due and was very ready to have this baby. Little did I know she was going to make her debut the very next day. I stayed up all night timing contractions, trying to rest, packing last minute items, doing dishes/laundry, and finally decided about 3:00am it was time to get serious about calling the doctor and getting to the hospital. Mitch was already up at this point showering and getting his bag together

I called our wonderful sitters Linda and Brittany Wiggins who had agreed to be on standby any hour to come and stay with the boys. Just as promised they came over dark and early and stayed with the boys. It was such a blessing to leave the boys in bed undisturbed. We also made calls to my parents and Mitch's parents to let them know Addison was on her way and they should be too!

Mitch and I loaded up in the van and at this point my contractions were steady about 4-5 minutes apart, but not terribly painful. When they checked me in triage I was still in pretty early labor, so my doctor sent word that I could either go home or walk the halls of the hospital and then be examined again. Since we live an hour from the hospital, I opted for the walking option (I was trying to avoid pitocin and an epidural so my wonderful doctor didn't want to interfere too much with my progress).

Mitch and I walked, and walked, and walked for about 2 hours. Same floor, same confusing circles. At this point I had not slept and was exhausted. The contractions were not extremely painful yet but were getting stronger. My doctor checked me again and agreed that I could be admitted. She stripped my membranes to help things along and told me to walk some more (glad I packed my tennis shoes, even though I looked pretty ridiculous in hospital gown).

Due to a miscommunication, the nurse insisted on hooking me to a IV bag of fluids for my next marathon stroll around the labor and delivery floor. My contractions were getting more intense at this point and were only 2-3 minutes apart. I could no longer walk during the contractions but had to stop and hang onto the hand rails along the hallways (so that's what they are there for) with both hands and breath through them. All the while dragging a very rickety IV pole down the hall with me. Mitch was in charge of timing contractions and driving the IV pole. We're a good team! We both stayed very calm but I was in quite a bit of pain. After about an hour, of walking, stopping, timing, walking, stopping, timing, I was admitted to my room. Here they hooked me to the monitors and I took a seat in the rocking chair. And I rocked and rocked and rocked, stopping for contractions that were getting more intense. Mitch massaged my sore legs between contractions, but not during (please don't distract me during a contraction) My nurse checked my progress after a whole lot of rocking and discovered that I was 8 cm! Woohoo! As a completely unimportant side note, my delivery nurse was SUPER sweet and looked a lot like Casey Anthony....fortunately she wasn't Casey though and we didn't mention the resemblence to her, for fear of retribution! At this point I was told to stay in bed and on the monitors and she also told me that my water had broke. I knew that it had not broke, but she assured me that she thought it had so I couldn't get out of bed.

At this point I was terribly shocked that I had got to 8 cm without excruciating pain and stress and I was VERY excited because the nursing team started transforming the room. You know how it goes, they started gearing up the room with all the medical instruments, mirror for me to watch, the baby bed/warmer. As you can imagine, we were thinking....THIS IS IT! Any minute now. There were also tears for the first time. They were tears of pain and excitement.

Little did I know that my "transition" labor would take another 3 hours! All the other hours were a breeze, but the combination of being confined to the bed and the more intense contractions and the lack of sleep (I had been up about 30 hours at this point)....let's just say I didn't handle it as well as all the other hours combined. Lots of tears, lots of pushing that little button to get the nurse to come in, and a couple doses of Nubain. When my doctor finally came in to check on me she discovered that my water had not broken (I already knew that) and decided to break my water. She also is a wonderful, reassuring presence and coach. She made me sit up in bed, relax, breath, and within 30 minutes of her coming in Baby Addison Hope made her debut! The cord was very tangled around her, but my Doctor quickly unwound her and we got to see and hold our sweet baby girl!

Of course, no words can describe the sweet joy of holding the baby that you have longed for and felt inside you for months and months. It is a miraculous gift of our Creator and in that moment Mitch and I both felt completely blessed and totally in love with this new little Landress!