Jonny is here!

It's a GIRL!!! Our sweet Jonny was born January 14th at 3:03am. We are so excited that she is here joining our family of GIRLS and that we now have 4 girls! What a crazy loooong day it was but we are so happy that she was born happy and healthy. The day started at 4:00am on the 13th. I woke up to some pretty hard contractions. They were about 10 minutes apart but kept me awake because they were pretty hard. When Spencer woke up at 5:30 to go to the gym I told him I was having contractions and he debated going to the gym or staying, but I told him to go because I didn't think things would speed up too fast. He actually had a really important busy day in New Jersey so even though I thought that I may have the baby that afternoon, I didn't really tell him because I knew he needed to go to some meetings and meet people. So he went to work, Charley went to school and around 9am my contractions stopped and I would only have a hard one every hour or so. I had texted my friend Jennifer and Lizzie to give them a heads up that I had been having hard contractions and Jennifer texted me later that day around noon to see how I was feeling. Around that time my contractions started picking up again but stayed about 10-15 minutes apart. I was pretty emotional on the phone because I didn't know how the day would unfold and couldn't really make decisions and Jennifer could tell I was a bit stressed with how the rest of the day would go. She offered to come over and help me and even take me to my OB office to get checked and see if I was dilated. So she left her kids with her husband Brian and met me at Charley's school around 2:30 when I picked her up. We walked home together and she helped the girls get a snack, start packing to go to her house while I called my OB office. Luckily my OB said to come in since I told them I was having hard contractions. At this point I hadn't told Spencer anything and Jennifer urged me to call him and tell him :) I didn't want to scare him that he needed to come fast since I knew he was in some important meetings but he had just finished and said he would take the train back into the city and meet me at my OB office in Soho. So we dropped the girls off at Jenn's house and she drove me to my OB in Manhattan. I was just going to take the train but she again told me that she would drive and its as actually a lot faster than I thought! She was so level headed during all of this since I was super scatter brained and couldn't really make decisions. I got to me OB and she checked me and said I was already dilated to 5 cm. Spencer met me there and was able to talk to my Doctor as well. Her advice since it was about 5pm at this point was to get dinner in the city, stay close to the hospital and see if things start picking. If they don't, then go home and we could schedule an inducement for the next morning. I thought for sure things would start picking up soon so we knew we would most likely just stay in the city for the night. Luckily I had brought my hospital bag with me so Jennifer drove us over to the NYU hospital, we picked up some Mediterranean food close by and then she went back to to help with all the girls. She was so great and helpful!!

Spencer and I had dinner and just stayed in the lobby of the hospital for a few more hours to see if things would pick up and they didn't! For about 2 hours my contractions were consistently 10 minutes apart but super hard when I did have one. Around 8pm we went upstairs and checked into labor and delivery. It was weird going in saying I was "in labor" without having the usual signs of contractions like every 2-3 minutes. We both were just super calm and even though my contractions were still 10 minutes apart they admitted us knowing it was my fourth and that things would pick up fast and soon. Once we got into a room the Dr. checked me again and I was still 5 cm dilated! This was not what I wanted to hear since it had been so much later from when my doctor checked me at my OB office! But we were at the hospital and knew baby would arrive so that was good! We kind of just chilled, tried to rest and Spencer watched some football. Around midnight nothing had picked up so my doctor came in a broke my water. At 1am I got my epidural but contractions were still just 10 minutes apart. Finally at 2:45am they decided to give me a very small dose of Petocin to help speed things up. After they gave me the Petocin my Doctor said she would be back in an hour to check how things had progressed but about 10 minutes later I felt the urge to push and could feel baby coming fast! Spencer called in the nurse and the doctor and told them baby was coming. Sure enough the doctor could see baby's head and told me not to push yet since they needed to set up a few things. I couldn't help BUT push! There was such that urge and my body just wanted to push! Everyone worked super fast around me to get things in place before baby came out. I pushed only 3 times and baby girl was here at 3:03am! All I couldn't hear was Spencer saying, "Mads it's a girl! We have a girl!!!" We were both so excited to have another girl!! They placed her on my chest right away and she didn't even cry! I asked if something was wrong and they said she was fine.. everything looked great! She just didn't cry. She was very calm. Spencer mentioned that we hope we just continue to have a calm and content sloth baby just like it took her forever to arrive and just like she came out very calm and not crying!

Jonny came out with a full head of dark hair! I was so surprised to see so much hair and so dark! She definitely had the most of all the girls! She weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 19.5 in. long. We were able to stay in the room for a few hours and I tried nursing her and she began sucking right away. I am always so amazed at this reflex that babies have! Around 5am they took us upstairs to our room and Spencer left around 7am to go home and take a nap before going over to Jennifer and Brian's house to get the girls and bring them back to meet their sister.

A few things I want to remember about Jonny's birth: Jonny came two days early from her due date. I had always had her due date as the 16th of January even though the doctors said it was the 23rd. Based on what I knew and thought, I thought she was due the 16th. Because we thought she would come so fast (since Lenny did) we decided to set an inducement date for the 16th. Spencer really didn't want to have an Uber baby and since we were 45 minutes from the hospital and needing to get the girls somewhere if things progressed fast it just made sense to set an inducement. But luckily we didn't need to get induced since she came the 14th!
When we went to the hospital we had 2 boy names and 2 girls names picked out. If Jonny was a boy we liked Anders and Baylor and if she was a girl we liked Stevie and Azalea. After she was born we just weren't settled on Stevie and so we went back to the list of girl names and really liked Jonny! It just felt right! I asked Spencer if we should do her middle name Gloria after his Grandma Gloria Steenblik and he thought was would be really nice. HIs Grandma had passed away on his mission and from what I heard she was just the sweetest lady. It is also a nice that my dad's first name is Jon. So she has a very family centered name that I love!
I also LOVED my nurse at the hospital. His name was Austin and he was just fantastic. He was very attentive to my needs and came in a lot to check on my and make sure I was comfortable. He was very prepared with everything and helped me breath and push when I needed. He was just super friendly and really funny too! After I had Jonny he took me into the bathroom and helped me wipe down my legs from the blood that had gotten on them. He was just fantastic at his job.