Introducing...

Annalyn (Annie) Campbell
born October 29, 12:05 pm
8 lbs. 11 oz.
20.5 inches

Welcome to the world little Annie!

With Daddy:
Ready for bathtime:
Nevermind, not ready for bathtime:
Big sister Rachel was so ready to welcome Annie. And to visit Mom and Dad.
Holding her new baby sister:
We are a happy family. So glad to have both our cute little girls!
Rachel was a fan of Annie's cute hair.
Annie's hair is a bit lighter than Rachel's black hair she had when she was born, and I guess it's about the same length. I thought it was shorter than Rachel's, but right now, looking back at Rachel's baby pictures, they look about the same length. I was convinced Annie would be a lot balder than Rachel because I had a lot less heartburn this time around than with Rachel. Annie's not exactly bald, but she may have slightly less hair than her big sister did. (I'm pretty sure that for confident children later on it's good to compare them to each other often, right? ;)
Grandma and Grandpa Knight have been so nice to entertain Rachel while we've been hanging out at the hospital. And we love that they live so close and can bring her over to visit, or Jake can run over there to eat or take a nap.

Grandma brought Rachel over to visit today, too, and Rachel got to stay for a while and hang out with us and watch The Little Mermaid.
She's been a trooper, but misses Mom and Dad a bit, I think. So tonight Jake went home to sleep and to let Rachel sleep in her own bed, and hopefully get a regular night's sleep, which she's not all too good about with all the excitement at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

For those who care, here's the birth story. For those who don't, skip down to see the Annie/Rachel look-alike contest.
I've been afraid of going all the way to my due date with Annie because Rachel was 8 lbs 15 oz born on her due date, and a lot of the time babies get bigger as you go along and I didn't want to give birth to a 9+ pound baby (which it turns out was a valid fear--if Annie was born on her due date she would have likely been 9 1/2 pounds--at 38 weeks 2 days she still was only 4 oz. short of matching Rachel's weight). Anyway, so fearing a big baby I wanted to go into labor early, and decided to take a little castor oil, since my mom, my aunt and my sis. in law all have strong testimonies of castor oil. :) With Rachel I was way too chicken to take the full 2 tablespoons, so I tried 1 teaspoon, which got contractions going for 3 hours, but not very regular ones, then they quit. This time around I was still afraid of the full 2 T. but thought if I'm going to try this I should just do it, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it all the way, so did 2 less-than-full-tablespoons--probably about 1 1/2 tablespoons a little after noon on Thursday.
Thursday afternoon around 4 pm I was having contractions and by 7:00 they were every 2 or 3 minutes, but not any more painful than my Braxton Hicks contractions that I've been having for months. But we decided to go in anyway, since it would be easier before Rachel's bedtime when we could just drop her off and Grandma and Grandpa's house, rather than waiting for them to drive out to our house, then drive in to the hospital. In the car the contractions began to be a bit more uncomfortable. Wednesday I'd had a doctor's appointment and was 3 cm dilated and 60% effaced. At the hospital I was still 3 cm, but I think a little more effaced. They had us wait in the OB triage area for an hour, then rechecked me and I was 4 cm and 80% effaced, so they admitted me at about 9:30 that night. At midnight they checked again and I was only about 4.5 cm and the contractions were slowing down. They didn't really pick up the rest of the night. I'd lay down and rest, or sometimes fall asleep for a half hour at a time, then go walk the halls, having contractions off and on, but the contractions were obviously not strong enough or often enough for anything to be happening with labor. But since I was comfy enough and it was the middle of the night, we let the doc sleep and in the morning gave her a call and she said to go ahead with some pitocin to augment labor and get things going again. So at about 7 am I got pitocin started, and contractions started right back up, and soon were getting stronger. The doctor came in and broke my water around 8 or 8:30. I was still just at 4.5 cm at that point. Around 9:30 I got an epidural because I knew that with pitocin the contractions would be getting intense sometime soon, and there was a c-section scheduled for later and I didn't want to get stuck without the anesthesiologist when I was ready. So when I actually got my epidural I still wasn't in pain. Getting the epidural was more uncomfortable than the contractions I was having at the time. After the epidural was in, around 10 am, I was about 6 cm dilated and was starting to think that this was going to take forever at this rate. By 11:30, though, I was 9.5 cm and the doctor was on her way over. Before she got there I started feeling pressure and was ready to push, but had to wait. Thankfully I had an epidural, but even then it was hard to not push. She got there at about 11:50, got suited up and I started pushing at 11:55, and Annie was here by 12:05 after 3 contractions worth of pushing. Jake hadn't eaten all that well that morning and was holding one of my legs while I was pushing, and had his legs locked, so he started to feel faint and almost passed out, but sat down instead and recovered in a couple of minutes. So now Annie is here and we're happy to have her. She is a very good baby who sleeps a ton, and eats really well.

"What you lookin' at?"

After the first few hours after Annie was born we thought she looked a lot different than Rachel did, but after a short time when some of her splotchy newborn face had normalized I realized she looks A LOT like Rachel did when she was just a few days old. I've been trying to find pictures where they look the same, but I don't think pictures can quite capture the faces the right way, or maybe it's just certain expressions that they look exactly the same as each other and we miss snapping the photo at that moment. Anyway, here are a bunch of Annie:


She was getting mad shortly after taking this picture because she wanted to suck on her fingers, but her binkie was in the way.

Here's one of me when I was a baby that every once in a while Annie's face with a certain expression totally reminds me of:
And here are a few of Rachel:

Anyway, I don't think the pictures capture it at all to the degree I see it, but I think Annie looks a lot like Rachel did at this point. And she's a cute kid, so things are looking good for Annie, too. :)

Tomorrow we get to go home from the hospital and have fun as a family getting to know Annie. Rachel loves Annie a bunch already, and she's going to be a great big sister.

Sorry for the novel. And the picture overload. I guess I should have made this into 5 or 10 separate posts. :)