Alese Harper

Three weeks later and I can finally find a little time to post about the birth of our beautiful baby girl Alese Harper Wolff. She arrived at 1:45 am on Monday, October 15, and she came on her own. She weighed a healthy 8 lbs. 2.5 oz and was 20.5 inches...and to my slight surprise, she was a girl! I was somewhat thinking this babe was going to be a boy because I had such a different pregnancy. But Jeremy was pretty sure it was a girl, as he's been preparing to have a house full of estrogen ever since we had Ashlynn. Lucky man :) I can only imagine how fun it will be for our girls to grow up together just a couple years apart.

Back to the arrival of Alese. I started having contractions at home that Sunday evening at about 7:30 pm. Consistently 10 minutes apart, I finished giving Ashlynn her bath and Jer brought her over to my in-laws in case this was the real deal (I think he could tell by seeing a little more pain versus the ones I had in previous days). Since I had been having contractions for a few weeks already, I was thinking it might just be another set of false ones that would go away. But after Jer got back, they were consistently 5-6 minutes aparts and getting stronger. So this was it! By the time we left the house for the hospital, they were 3 minutes apart. Since Ashlynn's labor was kind of pokey (when I went into the hospital at 3-5 minutes apart, I was only dilated to 2 cm), I thought I'd be moving at the same rate as the first time. Well, I was wrong. Once we got up to our room around 11 pm, the nurse checked me and I was at 7 cm. Jer and I looked at each other with surprise and excitement, knowing we'd hopefully be meeting this baby sooner than anticipated.

To make a long story short, after a lot of back and forth I decided to pass on the epidural since I was progressing pretty quick. I had an epidural with Ashlynn and was glad I did since it was such a long labor (which sometimes they say the meds may slow things down a bit). But my hope was that by not having pain meds, I could keep progressing quickly like I already was and we'd be meeting our baby in no time. Well things did move relatively quick, but the pain got more intense than I could've imagined by the end. I remember at one point looking at Jer saying, "this was a baaad idea." But there was no turning back at that time. All I can say is that the pain got to a point where I couldn't wrap my head around it to find a way to mentally or physically cope, other than with the support of my hubby and the nurse who talked me through it. After another hour or two of hard contractions to get to 10 cm, I pushed for 15 minutes and there she was. A completely different pregnancy and different labor/delivery, but another beautiful, sweet and amazing moment that brought us another healthy little girl.

Daddy's little girl

Sisters meeting for the first time

Such a good big sister

Jer testing out my bed (since his "ched" (chair/bed) was pretty lame)

Heading home

Stretching out at home for the first time

Daddy and his girls