Acelynn Chori

On Sunday Jan 26th, I was sitting in church, when Jeff drew my attention to this stray sticker from a lesson I previously taught. It somehow ended up there on its own.  It was an omen! 

That same night, after we were home from Sunday dinner at my mom's and the kids were in bed, Jeff and I sat down to have the final talk of all talks about whether or not we wanted to induce this baby and when. After a full hour agonizing over it, we decided wait it out as long as we could and induce by the 10th. (I was due Feb 5.) At the closing up of this conversation, I laughed and then let out kind of a whiny "Je-eff."  Upon checking, sure enough, my water had broken. All that for nothing. We called Grandma Chris to come to our house since the kids were asleep, and while we waited for her arrival, I cleaned he house. (It is no fun going home from the hospital to a messy disaster... or to have your MIL come see that.) We headed in, and all the while I was hoping contractions would start, but no such luck. Got admitted (about 1 or 130 am) and started on antibiotics, then waited.

That takes the cake for biggest I've ever been! Forgive my pale, tired look. I was so pregnant and it was 1 in the morning!

Jeff was able to sleep a bit, I rested some but couldn't really sleep much. About 5 a.m. they started talking about pitocin since I wasn't contracting regularly.  I was a bit sad, but once I made the decision, let it go.  I got started low, but was moving slowly still. At shift change, the new nurse came in and said "I'm going to get aggressive with this pitocin." I absolutely hated the sound of that, but had little change in two hours, so I didn't say anything.  (At maybe 8am?) she quadrupled my dose, and that was it. It seemed like only minutes later I was begging for an epidural. The anesthesiologist (and student) finally came.  I was having really rough contractions, longer than the breaks between them.  While I'm getting my epidural, I can hear the A giving the student instructions, pointing, redoing, critiquing... and I was seriously dying.  It was about the best time I wanted to be a specimen for a long teaching moment. I was contracting so hard and so often that the nurse made me move and lie down in the middle of writhing so she could check me.  She said she was afraid I was ready to go. (I think I was at an 8.5 at that point.) They finally finished and it took a bit to set in. After an extra shot, I finally felt better.  Then, really only minutes later, I was ready to go!  Dr. Gibson came (yay!) with a student, and it was a pretty quick deal, like always for me.  After some good pushing and the same old tear, Acelynn Chori North was born at 10:28 am.  Our surprise (but not really too much of a surprise to us) girl.  My mom and Jaimie were there, too.

As per usual, Jeff cut the cord.  She was extra vernix-y, the most we've ever seen. She literally cried loud and hard for 2 hours right after birth.  It made me really scared for the future, but she hardly ever cried at all after that... phew!

She was 6 pounds 15 oz!

She had trouble maintaining a good temperature, so I did a lot of skin to skin with her and she got lots of warmed blankets.  When we finally moved to antepartum recovery, they kept commenting how many blankets she had. :)

They brought us a congratulations cake!  Fun.

Cutie with a hospital crocheted hat!

Ready to go home! (In a gender neutral onesie, of course!)

Thankfully, my recovery with Ace has been really great, too, which is what I was wanting out of a natural delivery, so that was a bonus!  Must just be cause she wasn't huge and she was my fourth.  And that makes me really glad I had the epidural. :)
Let me just go ahead and fill you in, since we get asked all the time.  We found "Acelynn" in a baby names book, it's pronounced just like it's spelled.  Ace-Lynn.  And Chori is the union of her grandma's names - Chris and Lori - pronounced Corey.  She's a sweet sweet baby, and she completes this family!