We're so excited to announce the birth of our little girl, Lydia Courtney Hodgson. I know that we haven't mentioned her or even any details of my pregnancy on the blog ... life with a two-year-old and all the many things that we've been doing these days have definitely kept me away ... but we're excited to share it all right now.
To begin, I was very blessed to have a very carefree pregnancy. Everything seemed to go very smoothly, and Lydia and I maintained our health well till the end. At times, I even forgot that I was pregnant -- minus my growing belly and the little wiggle worm inside -- but it was a great 9 months for me, and for that I'm truly grateful! At the beginning of the pregnancy, even though it was completely planned, I was quite apprehensive about my ability to welcome and care for a second child. My emotions got the best of me on some days and I felt as if I was going to miss out on my special time with Caed. (We've only been home for a few days now, so I can't say how reality has really played out yet, but God has given me a new perspective and I know that welcoming Lydia into our family will only bring more joy to us and into Caed's life. It might cause me to be more creative with my time to do some of the things I've always done with Caed, but that's all part of parenting, right?)
I hit 40 weeks on my due date Saturday, the 22nd. And it's amazing that I made it that long based on what the doctors were saying at 36 weeks. All speculations were that Lydia was going to come early, but as time went on, that was proven to not be the case. Lydia came at 40 weeks and 1 day! But based on the quickness of her arrival on the 23rd, I think she really wanted to be punctual and was trying to make up for the extra few hours past 40 weeks that had passed.
It's amazing though. Over the past month, we had soooo many things on our house to-do list and we weren't sure if we'd be able to get them all done before Lydia's arrival. Thankfully, we finished them ALL, even though we only had 8 hours to spare. In the last month, we replaced our old dining room table, purchased and put together new bookshelf storage in the dining room, built and painted bookshelves (all Brad!) in the kitchen book nook, re-organized the mud room and purchased a chest freezer for food storage (just arrived last night!), had a friend build closets in Caed's new room, caulked and painted those closets, moved Caed into his new room and set up Caed's old room into Lydia's new nursery. And we can't forget all of the cleaning and grocery shopping that took place in between those projects to get our house together before "D" day. (Talk about nesting!!!)
As the days to my due date grew closer, Brad said a few times how it would be nice if my labor began at 6am, so we'd have the whole day ahead of us and a whole night of sleep behind us to get us through the day. Well, the Lord certainly heard that comment and made it happen!
Lydia's Birth StoryAfter finishing up our to-do list and going to bed about 11:30 Saturday night (my due date), we were semi-anticipating that labor would begin sometime the next day (that's how it went down with Caed). I slept pretty well that night (unlike the night before that was bombarded by irregular contractions) -- I only had to get up for regular bathroom breaks and a 5:30am "Mommy I need my B (Caed's fond term for his paci) call". And just as I settled back into bed after tucking Caed in, regular contractions started. I had just finished timing my 4th or 5th contraction, coming at about 6 minutes apart, and then suddenly, my water broke. Fairly calmly, I leaned over to Brad and told him that my water had just broke and we began to make our way out of bed and think through what needed to happen. (I was pretty sure at this point that we should make our way to the hospital pretty quickly ... my water didn't break with Caed, so this was new for me. But for some reason, we didn't move that quickly.) I did call my doctor, but after two tries, I never received a call back. I tried to get myself together while I attempted to tell Brad everything that we needed to be doing. One of which was to tell mom that labor was starting and have her come over immediately. Yet, the urgency of the matter was still not there and we still continued to take our time. But within a very short time, my contractions quickened from 6 minutes apart to 4 minutes apart to 2 minutes apart and fewer and much, much stronger! When I finally made it downstairs, my mom had just arrived and Brad quickly began to load the car. It was 6:55am. While I waited, I tried to eat some banana with peanut butter to make sure that I had something in my stomach, but that wasn't too successful. Eating and contractions don't go too well together! (I realized this as I leaned on the couch to support myself during a contraction and suddenly felt that Lydia would be making her appearance soon!!) That's when we scrambled out of the house into 19 degree weather (felt good to a woman experiencing contractions) and began to make our 5-minute commute (without much speeding) to the hospital.
When we arrived at Patient Registration, Brad ran in to get a wheelchair for me and it didn't seem like any hospital staff understood the urgency of what was happening. The lady behind the check-in counter proceeded to ask me for my license and insurance info and took her time. Then, the woman who came to take me to triage pushed me as slow as molasses! I asked, between contractions, if she could speed up a bit, and she responded with a "no, because her shift was already suppose to be over and she was tired!" I apologized for her "inconvenient" situation and just prayed that I would make it to triage without having a baby! Once in triage, the nurse asked me a few questions, but didn't have time to do any necessary paperwork or even run normal stats on me or the baby. My doctor came in, checked me out and said, "I'll be right back, I need to get my scrubs on ... we'll be delivering a baby any moment!" I was then transferred to another bed that they pushed down the hall to Labor and Delivery and before I knew it, everything was all set up for baby Lydia to arrive. I couldn't believe everything had happened so quickly! This wasn't quite what I had in mind. (I had a 14-hour labor with Caed, with lovely drugs and an epidural to help with any pain.) This time, there was no time for any of that. I asked at one point as Lydia was making her arrival if there was anything they could give me, and it was almost a joke, because obviously they couldn't ... oh my!
I'm not one to go into all the lovely details of her birth, but I will tell you that Brad said that if there were any first-time moms in the rooms around me, they were probably second-guessing any decisions they thought they'd made and were trying to leave labor and delivery! Ha! But regardless, I made it through (thank you, Lord!) and Lydia was born at 7:44am. (Only 44 minutes after we left our house!) Brad and I said afterward that it felt like we just went through the drive-thru and now have a baby ... it all happened so quickly! I'm very thankful for the quickness of it all and that Lydia wasn't born in our house, car or any where in between! And most importantly, we're thankful for our beautiful, healthy, new daughter, who was born at 8 pounds, 12 ounces and 22 inches, who has lots of dark, brown hair, long fingers and toes, and beautiful, long eye lashes (all of our initial observations about her :).
What's in a name?Many of you know that it took us quite a while to decide on baby girl's name. Lydia was a name that I liked way before I was pregnant. Baby names are always something I think about from time to time, especially before this pregnancy because we knew that if we ever had a baby girl, we'd like her middle name to be "Courtney" to add a 5th generation of Courtney to our family. (The name alternates from first name to middle name every other generation.) And anytime we talked about that, we knew that we wanted to use a first name with it that had 3 syllables to go before it. One day last spring as I was reading through Acts, I came to the story of Lydia in Acts 16 and thought how neat it was that this woman, who was a seller of purple cloth, and was a worshiper of God (but hadn't heard the message of Jesus yet) welcomed the message of Paul and Silas about Jesus as she did and believed instantly, and how she then proceeded to invite them into her home to care for them on their church planting journey through her region.
As we talked about names once we knew that baby #2 was a girl, Lydia was always a name that we came back to, but it just took us up until a few weeks before she arrived to decide on it. So, Lydia Courtney Hodgson it is! And one neat thing about it is that Brad noticed that
John Piper sent out a tweet early Sunday morning (the day Lydia was born) that read like this, "O Lord, let there be ten thousand Lydias today! Acts 16:14." Piper sent out his tweet at 6am that morning and my contractions started promptly at 5:55am. How providential and funny! John Piper, now you only need to pray for 9,999 Lydias.
PicturesA picture with Dr. Harden
Our family of 4 (well, 6 if you include Monkey & Elmo)
Caed and GG during their first visit with Lydia
All ready to go home!
Sunday to care for Caed while we were in the hospital and to help us with odds and ends around the house once we got home. (Thanks Mom!) It was really nice to have her around.
irst two weeks of life drastically reduces the chance for cradle cap. So, we're trying it. (Caed had cradle cap for a while, so if we can do anything to prevent little Lydia from having the same, we're going to try.) I love to wash her hair and surprisingly she seems to enjoy it too. What a sweet little girl! As her hair gets wet, her dark hair curls right up and is cute as can be. It looks like she just got out of the salon ... he he he.
er with mommy and daddy's help on the couch. (A nice tip he got from his new I'm a Big Brother Now book.)
