Baby News!!!

Our little girl, baby numero quattro, surprised this mama by deciding to be born almost three weeks early! In fact, she snuck in the day after her big sister's 4th birthday.  Introducing Little Jenny Wren:

All of my babies so far have been big chunkers, this is my first little baby (6 lbs 2 oz at birth). So that explains the enormous pajamas she's wearing in this picture.  My sweet sister-in-law headed out shopping and sent a huge package of newborn size clothes for her, and now she is more appropriately dressed.  Only I don't have any of those pictures on the laptop yet, of course.

The "big" sister and brothers are so so excited. They love her to pieces and I have to ask them to step back a little when I'm trying to nurse Jenny Wren, since they are always as close to her as they can get.

The birth was amazing, my fourth home birth and my first water birth. After lots of pre-labor the night before, once I actually accepted that she was coming early and went into real labor (which, it seems, just required my finally making that mental adjustment), she was born in an hour and a half. It was my most present labor yet. I remember at one point joking with my midwife between contractions; I had packed a dresser FULL of baby girl clothes, and there were two boy outfits sitting on the bookshelf.  I said "those two are just in case it's a boy".  I was just so sure she was our girl.

Little Jenny Wren has Down syndrome, so these past three weeks have been a whole new experience for us - more doctor appointments (we went to basically NONE with our other babies) and more challenges breastfeeding. We were so blessed to have the home birth, because that saved us from any time in the NICU - she was doing very well that evening and when we took her to the doctor the next day, and so we've been able to just deal with the necessary evaluations without any hospital visits. Most importantly we had an echocardiogram, which showed that her heart is in great shape. Now, I am a full time feeding mama... trying to help this little girl get the eating habit down, and doing lots and lots of pumping. The hardest thing for me has been accepting that she cannot get sufficient nutrition directly from the breast, and that I need to use bottles of pumped milk to achieve that for her. But I've been making lots of milk so no need for formula, I've had some good conversations with other mamas who have been through this, as well as great lactation consultants and I am really hopeful that we can be back primarily breast feeding before this journey is over.  I am very committed to long term breastfeeding with all my children, so this has been a hurdle for me.

My amazing husband has been able to take extra time off work to run the household while I take care of this babe. He has been our rock. 

I have lots more pictures to post of Jenny Wren, her big brothers and sister, and other things that I want to update on this blog (homeschooling! reading! other kiddos!) but just posting this has been a little treat for myself. So, more to come...