Tessa Brynn arrives

Triumph at last! Our baby entered the world Saturday at 7a.m. at home and in our tub as was hoped for. I’ve been thinking that I might get around to sharing her birth story but I’ll try and give the condensed version for now. Friday night Avery went for a sleepover at her grandparents and Dustin and Noah stayed up playing Dungeons and Dragons. So I also stayed up past my normal bedtime knitting and re-watching the first season of Downton Abbey. I finally got into bed at 11p.m and was noticing the familiar contractions that I’ve been experiencing for the past few weeks. However, as I lay there trying to fall asleep they began to take on a slightly deeper and stronger tone. Thinking that this may be it, I got up and walked around and sure enough the contractions progressed. After another hour to make sure it wasn’t another case of pre-labor, I had Dustin call the midwives to give them a heads up.

From 1 to 2 a.m. my labor continued to progress and I had Dustin call the midwives back to have them come over. I think they showed up around 2:30 or so. By then I was having strong contractions but they were 4 or 5 minutes apart and I wanted to speed things up and be done with it all already so I asked Vanessa if she could pop my water. As I was already about 8 cm dilated, she was willing to do so and sure enough my contractions picked up the pace to just a minute or two apart. I continued to labor, mostly hanging on Dustin until around 6 a.m. I hopped in the tub once for quick relief and then got back out and cooled off. I started having the urge to push, so I got back in to the tub and was very relieved to feel her head crowning soon after. I took my time and let my body do the work, doing very little intentional pushing myself until I actually thought I could get the whole head out in one push, upon which I exclaimed, “Yes! That’s the best feeling ever!” and flipping over to my back revealed her head to all, who hadn’t realized I was that close. From there, all was fairly easy and I was able to finally hold our baby in my arms for the first time, which actually is the best feeling ever and one of the most precious moments in my life.

She was alert and calm. She hardly uttered a squawk, but just looked around at all of us for several minutes. We were surprised by her size and her abundance of dark hair. We woke up Noah as soon as I was holding her in my arms. He got to see his dad cut the cord. We called my folks to let them know to bring Avery home. Then we all hopped into bed together.