Dear Amy

Dear Amy,

You are THREE years old today. Three. The last three years have gone exceptionally fast, but you definitely been a threenager for a few months now. 

You are stubborn, determined, and persistent when you want something. And you are realllllllly loud when you don't get what you want. But then, when you're not being those things, you are fun, sweet, generous, and hilarious. Basically, you're sweet and spicy and I wouldn't change you one little bit. Not even when you're screaming at me for taking away the chair you were standing on to bang the buttons on the pool controls. That actually happened yesterday. And you cried for a good 30 minutes. 

I went back to look at the last letter I wrote you for your birthday and discovered that I have yet to write a birthday letter for you. And I think that that's one of the reasons you are who you are. You have become the squeaky wheel when you need some grease, and you've had to be exceptionally squeaky with your big brothers and now your little brother around!

Things I want to remember about you:

• Your absolute delight at things you like. You lit up like the candle on your cake when we sang "Happy Birthday" to you at your birthday party on Sunday. 
• How you call Johnny and Hank "my boys". When you wake up next to me (usually) in the morning, sometimes you can hear them downstairs or in the play room and you'll pop up and exclaim "I hear my boys!" and run out of the room to greet them. 
• Equally adorable is how you call your set of plastic princesses from Grandma "my girls". "Mommy, do you know where my girls are?" Pretty stinking cute.
• How your relationship with your Daddy blossomed this year. There are many nights when you rush into his arms when he comes home from work with sheer exhilaration that he is home and you can hug him. You guys have quite the time together. There have been many meandering trips through Vons or slow strolls through the strip mall together, just Amy and Daddy, because Daddy will do nearly anything for you. 
• Your love for sunglasses. You probably own five pairs of sunglasses and you switch them pretty evenly. 
• How you hum the Imperial March from Star Wars sometimes when you're coloring or doing another idle-type activity. Your brothers were huge into Star Wars this year and clearly, a lot of it rubbed off on you. You'll be able to hold your own in a conversation with any Star Wars dork, your brothers and cousin included. 
• The fact that you can and will talk to anyone and everyone, if you feel like it. We went to the Escondido Renaissance Faire a couple of weeks ago and you spent a good two hours in the mermaid cove, talking to and charming the heck out of all of the mermaids there. When Pa and Grams came to visit, you talked and talked and talked to them about everything. Showed them your favorite toys and roped them into playing pretend with you. However, if you aren't feeling like talking, and someone tries to loop you into a conversation, you are NOT going to placate them. Nope. Not a bit. And you might even give them a nasty look and a "huuuuynnh" type noise to boot. 
• Your imagination. You really get into pretend play and want someone (preferably me or Daddy) to play "girls" or "Ponies" with you. When you finally get someone to sit on the floor with you to play, you offer them a choice of which girl or pony they want to be and then say, "Now make them talk!" Johnny has gotten booted from many a play session by playing with your stuff "too funny". You have rules and standards and they must be followed. 
• Your sweetness and care with Mitch. You have been fascinated by him since he arrived, and are constantly asking to hold him or touch him or give him stuff. You desperately want to play with him, but settle for squeezing him a little too hard or running around him in circles while he's doing tummy time or putting a bracelet on his head. You're a fabulous big sister and have been very helpful to me whenever I need a burp cloth or some wipes. You're nearly always ready to help out. 

So many wonderful things to remember, Amy! My hopes for you are that you don't change too much. I think that your stubbornness and persistence will serve you well in the world, but hopefully you'll learn to apply them in more tactful and thoughtful ways! And I hope that you never lose that ability to be vocal about what you need. Too often people, women especially, tend to let themselves be walked over because they're incapable or too uncomfortable to stand up for themselves. If you can speak up in ten or twenty years like you can now, I can guarantee more things will go your way and you will know yourself a lot better than the average person knows themselves. 

I love you so much Amy! Sometimes I have to pinch myself because I can't believe you're ours. You are a bundle of spunky energy and I'm looking forward to another year of you keeping me on my toes! 

Love,

Mommy

Tooth brushing

Hi. 

Sorry it's been awhile. 

I struggle with what to blog about because so much of my life is ordinary and familiar to me that I feel like it would be boring for other people to read. Well, my little brother came to visit his weekend after being away for four months and it made me realize that blogging about the little stuff is okay, because I'm the only person who knows it and it might actually be interesting to someone choosing to come to this blog and read about the life of our family. Right??

So I'll start off with something easy. Amy is nearly one year old now and loves brushing her teeth. Well. Not so much tooth brushing I guess, as the actual toothbrushes. She. Loves. Them. Any and all she can get her hands on she sticks in her mouth. She will get up on the step stool in the bathroom and point at the toothbrushes saying "Ahhh! Dat?!" over and over until I grab one for her. 

I know. That face. 

I know. That baby butt. She's actually brushing her teeth in this picture. It's pretty adorable. 

But first, lemme take a selfie

I never really post photos of myself. Probably because I never take them. And when I do I don't want to show them to anyone because I look like... well, a mom. A haggard one. Dark circles under the eyes, wrinkles making themselves known, hair in disarray, and a Target T-shirt covered in food, spit up, or dirt do not add up to a glamorous picture. However, I realized that I look infinitely better when I take a picture of myself and one or all of my kids, so I think I'll be doing that more often. Especially with Amy because she loves seeing herself in the camera. :) Little ham. 

This is my favorite smile of hers, the closed mouth, fluffy cheeks smile:

 

Amy is 8 months old!

I wrote this post a few days ago, only to have it disappear when I put Amy down in her crib. So this was actually done on today she turned 8 months, but technology hates me.

Anyway! Look at this baby girl. 

This is what she looks like in the morning when she first wakes up. I KNOW. She's so happy to be awake and to find that I'm there next to her. She's just the happiest baby ever. Seriously. The poor thing hardly ever gets to nap and when she does, it's in the car seat or in the wrap on me and only for about 45 minutes. And then at night I have to juggle her and her brothers' bed time (though I do have John around to help) so she often doesn't get to go to bed when she's really tired. Regardless of her lack of sleep, she's pretty happy all the time. 

She is also quite the grown up when it comes to food. Amy is not the biggest fan of purées and chooses finger foods all the time. Thus, she gets them. I also feed her stuff off of my plate and she's liked just about all of it. Enchiladas, back beans, spinach, corn, watermelon, eggplant parmigiana, etc. The only thing she doesn't seem to like is bananas. Still. So strange. She's also drinks water like a champ. I give her a cup occasionally because I would LOVE to skip the whole sippy cup thing, and she can drink from it with my help, which I find impressive... But maybe it isn't? Perhaps all 8-month-olds are capable of this? No idea. I didn't do that with the boys. 

Amy is also moving all over the place. I was commenting to my brother the other day about how different her mobility is from the boys'. I mean, once the boys could move they were scrambling. It may have been a little uncoordinated, but it was fast. Amy, on the other hand, is very deliberate. Right hand, left knee. Left hand, right knee. You can almost see her saying that to herself in her head. It's adorable. 

She's doesn't have any teeth yet, but since she still nurses, I'm more than okay with that. In fact, I'm kind of hoping that she'll go at least a year without getting a tooth. That would be fantastic. 

Anyway. This girl is just amazing. Amazing Amy. 

Fancy waggy baby!

For whatever reason, none of us call Amy just "Amy". John and I call her "Amy Baby" which is from an amended song John started singing to her when she was born. With the tune of "Santa Baby". It's quite adorable. Johnny and Hank were calling her "Amy Baby Bucket" for awhile, though I guess Johnny does actually call her "Amy" most of the time. Hmmm. 

Anyway. Hank has taken to calling her a "fancy waggy baby" and that's the first thing he says when he sees her in the morning. He wakes up (usually in bed with me and Amy, holding a fistful of my hair), looks at Amy and says, "What a fancy waggy baby!" 

I don't know. But it's cute so I'll blog about it. 

And now, naked baby pictures! 

Real food and Amy

Amy loves food. 

The end. 

Just kidding. So I put off starting Amy on solids because I'm lazy. First off, it's such a mess to feed a baby solids! Not just because of the process to get them in the baby, but also when it comes out. Breastfed baby poop is delightfully non-stinky and water-soluble. I can just toss the diapers into the wash without any other steps. Not so once said baby begins solid food. Secondly, I have to prepare baby food. I have to buy it, cook it, purée it, and then thaw it when she's ready to eat it. It's way easier just to pop out a boob. Thirdly, I have to pack some for our outings. On top of the food I already pack for the boys. And sometimes myself. It's just... a lot of work I wasn't going to start doing until I had to. 

Then she started grabbing our food and sticking it in her mouth. Like my pizza. Or John's forkful of enchilada. So I started her on food. 

Her first "official" food was puréed and thinned avocado. She wasn't real impressed. 

So I took that to mean she wasn't ready and waited a few weeks. Her first real food was half a cucumber, because I thought she was teething and I figured a cold cucumber with sharp-ish points on it would be a welcome relief. Then she hollowed out the middle with her gums and ate it... Oops. I didn't really intend for that to be her first official food, but oh well! No pictures to show for it either. 

Then she ate half a peach because I was busy cooking up apples for applesauce and Amy was losing her mind in the high chair. So I handed her half a peach. And I'll be damned if she didn't eat most of it. 

Since then, I've managed to purée some foods for Amy and she's loved nearly all of them. Carrots, brown rice, yogurt, apples, mango, and sweet potatoes are what she's tried thus far. She gnaws on full slices of watermelon, too, and LOVES IT. So far the only food she has flat out hated is bananas. A little strange, that. I thought all kids loved bananas. 

She will eat purées, but much prefers larger chunks of food (like Hank's quesadilla...). She would also much rather steer the spoon herself. She's already quite independent! 

Amy is 5 months old!

I may be losing it. About a week ago, I was so proud of myself because I remembered to take pictures of Amy the day before her 5 month birthday and planned to post them that night to the blog... but then I realized that HANK'S birthday is the 17th, Amy's is actually the 22nd (today). "Whoops," I thought. "No biggie. I'll just post the pictures I took for the actual 5 month birthday a week early."

Notice anything WRONG with this picture?? Apparently I can't count. And the worst part is I didn't even notice until I went to edit them for this post. Good thing I took some other pictures that didn't have that dopey and incorrect "4 month" sign in the background.

EYES!!! And LASHES!!!

Yay for grasping stuff!

 Eventually the boys got involved since they're all about doing the exact opposite I want them to do... and then I couldn't get them to look at the camera at the same time. And Amy was just stunned by the shenanigans.

Hank, look at the camera!

Johnny, look at the camera!

Hank, look at the camera!

Johnny, look- oh forget it.

Amy is doing really well. She's grasping things, putting stuff in her mouth, then dropping it. She can roll front to back and back to front and wants to sit by herself really badly. She's almost there, but not quite. She's so easy going and just rolls with whatever we're doing. She's still sleeping pretty well and is an excellent cuddler. She chills out in the ring sling, the Ergo, the woven wrap, the infant seat, and the exersaucer equally well.

Johnny and Amy have the sweetest little relationship. She ADORES him and he adores her back. I mean, he does weird things to her sometimes, like lick her face or suck on her toes, but I'm pretty sure he's just experimenting with boundaries... at least I hope so. Anyway. When he gets up in the morning one of the first things he asks is where Amy is. He gives her big hugs and constantly wants to hold her. He tries very hard to be gentle with her and then genuinely feels bad when he hurts her. He tries to make her laugh constantly and she laughs with him when he's laughing. Eventually, though, he gets a little crazy with the fake laugh and it freaks her out. It's all pretty cute though.

Amy's four month check up

 Amy went to the doctor a week ago. And aced everything. Like I expected anything else.

Weight: 15 lb 8 oz (70th percentile)
Height: 26.25 inches (96th percentile)

So she's pretty tall/long. And skinny. Ish.

Everything else checked out. She's sleeping like a boss. Eating like a boss. Holding her head up like a boss. She's totally winning at life. :) She had to get five (FIVE!!) shots this time, but she handled it fine. "Fine" meaning she cried like crazy and her whole head turned red until she nursed for a few minutes and then she was okay. Then she slept for twelve hours straight that night. Apparently getting shots is exhausting.

In other Amy news, she's still the easiest baby ever. For serious. She's just... awesome. She's happy all day long, smiling at everyone and everything. She's now grabbing things and bringing them to her mouth and is SO thrilled at being able to hold rattles and shake them. I dug out some baby toys for her today and she had a blast reaching for the things I held out for her and grabbing them. Johnny really liked handing her things, too, but he tends to let them go too quickly so Amy dropped them every time. Oh well. Before he knows it, she'll be grabbing his hair and ears and whatever she can get her hands on that he doesn't want her to have. Not too soon, though Amy, mmmkay?

Amy is 2 months old!

My SIL, Lisa, does a cool photo project of her sons every month in the same place so she has images of them growing up on the same couch from month to month.. I'm not going to claim that I'm going to do that, since I'm a huge flake, but I'd like to try. Because it's cool.

This girl. She's stinking adorable. And has more clothes than Kim Kardashian's kid. Okay, that was an exaggeration. But she definitely has enough clothes to wear multiple outfits a day for a month. I'm not one to let such things go to waste, so every time she spits up on her clothes, or the boys smear their food on her, I change her outfit. Because it's fun.

She's honestly the easiest baby I've had thus far. She sleeps a solid six to seven hours at night and is pretty easy to put back to sleep. She takes all of her naps in a wrap on me, which isn't ideal, but I can't spend more than three minutes putting her down for a nap because I can't leave the boys that long. They're... destructive and can do considerable damage in the small amount of time I'm gone. (And in case you're wondering, yes, I've tried childproofing the house, but what I'm I supposed to do about towel rods or light fixtures? I can't really take them down as they are kind of necessary, but the boys have broken a few in the span of minutes.) However, it's kind of nice that she'll just nap on me because she'll sleep wherever we go and can sleep through really loud noises. Like battery-operated fire engines. And her brothers' screaming.

Now, I know that all of that "easy" stuff will change. I'm not naive enough to think that she's going to be easy forever, however it's obvious that she has a really mellow, easy-going personality. She got five shots at the doctor's office last week and she took them like a champ. I mean, she cried, but then was over it about ten seconds after the last shot was administered. She also is super smiley and will smile at anyone who smiles at her for more than 1.5 seconds. The people at our local bagel shop are in love with her. :) Can you blame them?

Amy's 1 month doctor visit

I know. The last few posts have been all about Amy. Amy, Amy, AMY! It's just that she's had a lot going on and I want to get it down before it's too late to blog about. I guess that doesn't really happen around here considering how awful I am about blogging these days, but whatever. I want to get it down. So here we are.

The 1 month check up was routine and everything is going well with Amy Rose. The doctor knows me by name and seems to have confidence in my parenting abilities (I know, right?), so he just asked a few questions, accepted my answers, and said everything was normal. The only thing I need to do different is give her vitamin D drops. Which I haven't done with any of my children, but maybe I'll do it with this one.

Stats:
Weight: 11 lb 6 oz - 90th percentile
Height: 22 inches - 80th percentile (<-- hasn't really changed since birth, which is why she still fits in some of the newborn clothes)
Head circumference: 15.5 inches - 99th percentile (gotta have room for that big brain!)

The doctor was impressed with her nursing blister and her weight gain. He joked that I must not be doing anything but nursing since she's gained so much weight. Funny, because he said the same thing Hank at the same age. Turns out I just have melted ice cream for breast milk. :)

Amy is 1 month old!

I missed taking pictures the actual day that she turned one month (Sunday), but I did note that it was the 22nd and she was a whole month old. Points for that, right? So far, she's a sleeping champ, rocks at nursing and is generally pretty mellow. Her brothers LOVE her. L to the O to the V to the E. LOVE her. Love her to the point of smothering her on a daily basis. She's not really safe from their affection anywhere, so I wear her often, which means she has no desire to be put down at all. Oh well. It's survival and I'm loving wearing a tiny baby. Eventually I can move her to my back so it's not so cumbersome to carry her around all day. Hopefully.

She's not exactly a month old in these pictures... but then, I'm about 13 days late in posting this, so who cares?

Amy's birth story

Truthfully, I'm a bit daunted by writing this whole story down. It's long. And a little boring. Hell, I was even bored when it was going on. So, I'll try to truncate it here and there to see if I can make it more interesting. And shorter.

Okay. I wrote this angry post about being 41 weeks pregnant. And then later that day (like noonish), I started getting twinges. Nothing major, but definitely something I wanted to pay attention to. Before long, around 3PM or so, the twinges became real contractions, irregularly spaced, but real enough to call my mom and tell her that I may end up having a baby sometime that night and she may just want to stay over at our house. Three hours later she arrives... and my contractions completely stop. And stayed stopped. Ugh. So, I just picked up our evening routine and put the boys down with John and went to bed.

I woke up at 11PM to strongish contractions, which were pretty irregular, but close enough to warrant getting out my iPhone to time them. This continued on until around 3AM... and then they stopped again. By that point, I was ready for some sleep, so sleep I did... until Hank woke me up at 4:30AM as is his custom. Sad face.

The morning went as it usually does, except for my mom being there to get ready for her day of work. The boys and I had plans to go to a play date at a friend's house that morning, so I packed up our bag and got ready to go. As I was packing, the contractions started coming on again. But I wasn't about to miss out on a play date with some close friends where my boys would be occupied and I could keep my mind off the pain, so we went. Two hours later, contractions were about every 15 minutes and getting to the point that I couldn't talk through them. So we went home.

Just after we got home, my brother and his girlfriend, Crystal, came over. Crystal is an acupressure/massage therapist/Eastern medicine expert and I had asked her earlier in the week if she would come work on me and get this labor going. So she came over with her massage bed, spa sounds and magic fingers and really worked on me while my brother played with the boys. One hour later, the contractions were waaaaay stronger and about 10 to 12 minutes apart. Yay! Crystal said she was putting money on a 9PM birth, because at this point, I had to concentrate and breathe through the contractions, which were over a minute long.

John came home and helped me through them and then loaded up the car with our birthing essentials. By that time, we were just waiting for my mom, who left work a little early to get to our house before I pushed the baby out, since Hank came so fast. I called the midwife on call to let her know that we were going to be on our way, and unfortunately, my least favorite midwife was on call that night. Bummer. But I let her know what was going on and she said she'd be there.

Finally, my mom arrives... and my contractions stop. Again. This time I almost lost my ever-loving mind. By this point, my body feels pretty battered, especially my lower back, since I'd being dealing with long, strong contractions for a good portion of the last 36 hours. I was tired since I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before and because I'd been laboring all day. After a few tears, I called the midwife back to let her know that everything had stopped and we were not coming after all. To which she told me to have some water as that might stop the "cramping" I'd been dealing with. Cramps? CRAMPS?? It's a miracle I didn't shout her down over the phone. Luckily my doula, Kelsey, was much more positive when I told her the situation and she was able to keep me from losing it on the midwife.

Anyway. John tried to calm me down by reminding me that my body is obviously tired and needed a break, so I should rest and hopefully once I regained some energy, things would start back up. Which, of course, is not what I wanted to do. Not in the slightest. I wanted to have a friggin' baby and end this miserable pregnancy once and for all! But I didn't have many options since I couldn't exactly will myself into labor. So, John, my mom and I (okay, I didn't do squat) made dinner for the boys, put them to bed and "relaxed" for the evening in front of a movie. I "relaxed" with a heating pad on my lower back that soothed my muscles a little before hitting the hot tub to try to ease the soreness some more.

Fast forward to 11:30PM. More contractions. I had been asleep for about two hours and now my body was picking up where I left off that afternoon. I got out my contraction timing app and after one hour, the contractions were 90 seconds long and 10 minutes apart. My lower back was KILLING ME, so I woke up John and asked told him to rub my back during each contraction to make it bearable. After about an hour of that, Hank woke up and John had to go and deal with him, so I was left to labor alone. 30 minutes later, it was clear that John had fallen asleep in the boys' room, so I went downstairs to my mom's room and asked her to help me through the contractions. Thank goodness she was there! This labor was so different from my last one in that I was frigging exhausted, so I felt like each contraction took everything I had. But then another one would come on and I'd feel even worse after that. But the back rubbing helped.

Not long after I walked down to my mom's room, around 2AM, she suggested John and I get a move on since the contractions were now 8 minutes apart and still about 90 seconds long. I went upstairs and got John up, letting him know it was time to get going. I called the midwife and my doula to let them know that we were packing up. I changed into my "birth outfit" which consisted of a nightgown, yoga pants and black nursing bra then headed to the car, all the while dreading what lay before me. Laboring in the car isn't horrible, but it's certainly not a lot of fun. I like to labor on my side or on all fours, but neither position is really safe while in the car. Well, I needn't have worried because after I got into the car, my contractions slowed down and got way weaker. Then after fifteen minutes of driving, they picked back up again in intensity.

We made it to Best Start Birth Center with very little fanfare or commotion at 3AM. That's one nice thing about giving birth in the wee hours of the morning, the roads and birth center are deserted. I walked in, took one look at the midwife (I'm going to call her Agnes) and burst into tears. Not really sure why. I was in transition at this point and I already know that I cry like crazy in that last phase, but John suspects that I was really disappointed that Agnes was going to be delivering my baby. Or, apparently, that's what it looked like. Maybe he's right.

Anyway. I got checked and was at 7cm, but completely effaced and thus "stretchy" as Agnes put it, so I could get to 9cm if stretched out. But I still needed to do some work to get there. So Agnes retreated to another room to rest up for the final act while I labored for a while on the bed. Then I labored on a birth ball. Labored on the bed with the birth ball. But nothing was really comfortable. My lower back was on fire, even between contractions, and I just couldn't find a position a liked. I decided to try the bath to see if that helped. I got into the bath and the contractions slowed down. A lot. To the point that I was afraid we were going to have to leave since they might stop completely. So I got out and decided to put my clothes back on and walk circles around the birth center.

I told John to lie down and get some rest while Kelsey followed me around on my quest to get some contractions going. She was such an angel. I was downright crotchety with my start and stop labor plus being in transition for this long was making me even crankier. Oh, and don't forget that I've had approximately six hours of sleep in the last two days. Kelsey just kept smiling and trying to guess what I needed or wanted. She kept me hydrated and even attempted to get me to finish the banana I had started in the car... and wasn't put off when I gave her an angry hand gesture to indicate I wanted no part of the banana since I wasn't hungry and it was making me nauseated.

We continued like that for, oh, an hour or so. I'd have a big contraction that would last over a minute and would require every single ounce of concentration I had to stay relaxed and then I'd have two or three wimpy ones in the next 20 minutes. It was so frustrating. This was not the textbook, linear labor I had experienced with Hank. It was completely unpredictable and I was losing it. Finally, I asked Agnes to measure me again. This time I was at 9cm and could easily stretch to a 10. Agnes suggested that I start pushing on the big contractions to see if the baby's head could push me to a 10 and maybe jump start the pushing contractions. Okay. Jump start. Let's do this.

I headed back to the bathtub, waking John on the way and told him the plan. I got in the water but had the same problem from earlier: I couldn't get comfortable. I didn't want to be on my knees since the tub had a rough textured bottom, but I didn't want to sit since my legs felt cramped and leaning back was uncomfortable. Finally, John offered to get in the bath with me (he kept his underwear on, in case you were concerned) and sit behind me so I could sit in his lap. That worked well.

By this point, after all the walking and shifting of position, I was tired. And frustrated. And just hated my body for not doing what it was supposed to be doing. Plus Agnes was sitting right in front of me, like a vortex of all positive thoughts. (In Agnes's defense, she had already delivered a baby that shift and it was 5AM at this point; I imagine that would be enough to exhaust anyone.) I was crying and losing patience and kind of coming unglued. I was terrified that I would be too exhausted to give birth, which is a fear I had had this entire pregnancy, as I don't get much sleep EVER and this pregnancy was really an energy suck.

After a few uncomfortable and unnatural-feeling pushes during regular contractions, the nurse, Elizabeth, asked if I liked honey at all. I said that I do, and she got me a huge tablespoon full of honey to eat. I ate it without any question and, no joke, 30 seconds later, a huge pushing contraction came on. I pushed for about 15 minutes or so and out came the baby... Kind of. The head actually wasn't coming out as fast as anticipated, so Agnes felt around with her finger and was a little shocked to be grabbed by a tiny hand! Turns out there was a hand tucked up next to the baby's face, which was slowing things down. So, Agnes pushed the band back and out the baby came!

Agnes caught the baby and put her on my chest to stay warm. When I finally thought to check the sex, I held her up and noticed that she didn't have a penis, like I thought she did. The umbilical cord had looked a bit like a penis in the fleeting look I had gotten when she was pulled out of the water. But no! I had a baby girl! And everyone in the room was shocked. Floored, really. But definitely in a good way.

Amy Rose Durso was born at 5:45AM, Friday, November 22nd, thanks to a big tablespoonful of honey. Oh, and John and Kelsey helped, too. And Agnes. Kind of.

The whole thing was not what I expected, but it was all worth it because of this little face. Welcome to the world, Amy!

Ain't she purdy?

This is my doula, Kelsey. She is a rock star.

Birth euphoria. Drugs don't make you feel THAT good.

We have a GIRL!!!

Look! Look! I actually birthed a female!

Amy Rose Durso was born on Friday, November 22, 2013, at 5:45AM. I gave birth to her in a tub, underwater, at Best Start Birth Center with John, our doula, Kelsey, and the midwife and nurse present. The labor itself was... difficult and long, but I'll save that for another post. For now, here are pictures and a quick introduction.