Surprise!

So at 9:30am on Friday August 15, 2008, someone decided to give Valerie a good kick...from the inside. Her water broke and we were off to the hospital. At 4:14pm, Claire Ann Stormont introduced herself to the world! Yes, she is 4 weeks early, but she was quite determined. Valerie progressed naturally and began pushing a little after 3pm. We had a wonderful nurse, our midwife was with us for most of the labor, and our doula was as well. Valerie was amazing, and no hormones or pain medication was needed. The nurse commented to other nurses several times that Valerie pushed as though she had an epidural...all I have to say is that she was awesome.

Claire weighed in at 5 lbs. 15 oz and is 20 inches long, which is a wonderful size for how early she is. We had some early worries about her blood sugar being low, which is quite common for an early baby (they store a lot of energy in the last month, so she didn't have that advantage). But we have had her on a dextrose IV and her blood sugars have been very good. Over the course of today (Saturday), we have been working to get more forumula into her and back off of the IV a little. Once we have confidence she can maintain her blood sugar without the IV, we should be ready to head home. Right now, we hope for her to be able to go home on Monday.

She was on a heater yesterday, and today we turned it off and she has been maintaining her temperature wonderfully all day...no need for the heater any more, which is a very good sign that she is doing well despite being early. We have had increasing success as the day has gone on with her eating...the first attempt was a little bumpy, the second better, and we just had a really great feeding frenzy!

Claire is in good hands with the Special Care Nursery nurses, and we are going to try and get a little rest so that we are ready for her when we go home. We are really excited, and Claire has been super cute and super sweet. We could not be happier with her progress. We were obviously caught off guard, so we didn't have our camera with us, but we got some images after the birth with a disposable camera that Valerie's mom brought us, so hopefully we can get those posted soon. We do have a few cell phone pictures that aren't great quality, but they show what a beautiful little girl Claire is! Here they are (all of the wires in the last picture look a little scary, but they are just for monitoring to make sure she stays on course):