Welcome, Adeline Frances, on Saturday January 25, 2014

Adeline Frances entered the world at 2:21am last Saturday, just in time to celebrate Paul's 2nd birthday - on the very same day, can you believe it? What a bizarre coincidence! Things went smoothly, with no complications, and we're both happy and healthy at home.

Friday the 24th was a funny day of disbelief, really, and practically denying what my body was actually doing. I felt a few contractions after moving some of Paul's books in the early morning, but we went about our day perfectly normally, albeit feeling a little tired, including Momtime, meals, 39 week check-up, and Friday night skype with some of Dylan's family. At the check-up, I was measured at about 4cm, but I took that in stride along with the earlier contractions due to so many older and younger moms alike sharing stories about __cm for a few weeks or feeling Braxton-Hicks for the entire last month. This is all to say that I really didn't expect anything to happen. So, I was a bit shocked by a couple of contractions that smacked me in the face at 10:30pm after I'd called it a false alarm around 9:30pm via text to my family. I'd already given up and headed to bed to rest after those "strangely intense" false labor pains. Hm...

10:30-12:30 saw me lying in front of the fire to rest between hard, pinching front labor contractions and hopping up to pace or sway them away every few minutes. They weren't regular, but they were long and intense. All very different to my long, slow, & steady labor with Paul. When, at around 12:30, I had 2 just 5 minutes apart, lasting a good minute, and then 2 back-to-back with no break, Dylan and I finally joined reality and called our friend, Heidi. She rushed over to sleep here with Paul, and Dylan & I were at the hospital around 1am. I must say, through all of the complaining about care providers, the practicality of standing on the snowy driveway next to a warmed up car waiting for a contraction to pass before calling out go-go-go and actually getting to the hospital before the next contraction hit was ... priceless. Anyway, we were set up in the room, I was checked, and the nurses sort of surprisingly said we were prepping for a delivery already by around 1:20 or so. Things kept on going, getting harder and more intense, until about 2am and the rest went fairly quickly ... in hindsight, of course ;). Little, blue Ada, weighing in at 7lbs 11oz was placed on me at 2:21, and the next few hours went quickly! Dylan cut the cord, we started bonding, she started eating, Dylan cuddled her; we were quite frankly just so pleasantly surprised with our daughter. We couldn't stop counting our blessings. After the stressful emotional chaos of the previous weekend with c-section & breech questions, we just welcomed a perfect little angel with no problems or hiccups in labor and delivery. We prayed.

And then we tried to sleep. That's always the trick in hospitals, though, innit? Dylan and I each had about an hour's sleep before the rush of morning kicked in at Mayo, and we ate, loved on Ada, and planned our escape. It's Paul's 2nd birthday, after all! We can't spend the whole day here. Heidi, her husband, Josh, and their 2yo, Molly, brought Paul to the hospital to meet his birthday pressie of a sister around 11am, and after lunch, we were discharged. The Beckers are another blessing to us! They took such good care of our birthday boy! Heidi carted him off to their house after P woke up and even made him pancakes (which I'm sure Molly, too, enjoyed). We were really thankful for their help!

Ada's birthday and Paul's 2nd birthday finished out at our house with a lovely evening spent with the Bivers! They came down from St. Paul to celebrate Paul's birthday, but we had a bit of a change of plans ... though, in the end, they worked so hard to celebrate it the way we would have anyway; it was awesome. Colleen cooked us dinner while Mike & Dylan prepped fruit and veggie platters, and we even got to have Dylan's delicious cheesecake he'd finished while I was in labor the night before. Paul opened his pressies, and I have a good feeling he wasn't overlooked on his birthday. What a crazy feeling to cheers once over the birth of a newborn daughter and a second time over a 2nd birthday for a son. Our hearts are full.

Brand new Adeline

The new Knolls

Mama and daughter

Papa with birthday boy & girl

Cake cutting = serious business

Sibling love

Precious Baby Ada