Visitors!-June.

On Wednesday night, we got a call from mama and papa. Mama told Henry that our baby was a girl. When Henry asked "How do you know?", she told him it was because the baby was out and her name was Georgiana. Henry was so pumped that he spent the evening running around the house yelling "She's here! She's a girl! She's here! She's a girl." Grams asked how I felt about it and I just yelled "No baby!"

That night, papa came home to take a shower and see us. He told us that mama calls Georgiana "Georgie" and he calls her "George." Henry thought about it and decided he would call her "Christopher." (Our favorite neighborhood baby, remember.) I perked up a lot at this idea and spent the rest of my time in bed repeating "Baby Ris-so-fer."

On Thursday morning, Grams and PawPaw made us take baths so we could go meet our little sister. We stopped to get mama and Georgie a bouquet and the florist gave Henry and I our own flowers to take our new baby. I think she likes them.

Despite my previous protests, I couldn't resist the allure of a sweet little baby.

Henry was anxious to get her hands on her. After a brief lecture on "Why you don't shake your 15 hour old sister to try and wake her up," mama let us get our hands on her.

Henry was very taken with her. I still insisted on calling her "Christopher."

For the moment, PawPaw granddaughters outnumber grandsons 3 to 1. (9 more days, Aunt Kate!) He seems to like the newest one.

Grams was very pleased that she finally got to meet this baby after spending 10 days on baby watch at our house.

Mama made us these shirts for the big day. It seems like one hundred years ago when she rushed to get them done before her due date.

Henry has one too. After we roughed up Georgie sufficiently, we noticed mama's lunch had arrived spent a while mooching fruit and apple pie.

We sang "Happy Birthday" and as mama ended the video, Henry remembered that he found a stash of presents last week that were supposed to be from the new baby. He knew there was a new truck in there. He also got a real pair of big kid scissors and a Dick and Jane book. He's already read the first 23 pages on his own. I got 4 new horsies that I LOVE! Thanks, George!

We got Georgie a "monkey George" of her own.

It took a lot of convincing that this wasn't the same George that currently resides in my bed and that we should let Georgie keep it.

After about an hour of us jumping, yelling and "accidentally" calling the nurses on the remote control bed, mama decided it would be best if we watched a little tv while we waited for papa to take us out to lunch. (Did we mention he taught classes on Thursday? That deserves a raise, Clemson.)

henry thought the old Tom and Jerry cartoons that PawPaw loves are almost as funny as his new favorite- Road Runner cartoons.

For the most part, mama was happy to see us, though she couldn't get us to sit still for more than 2 seconds. After everyone left, she was glad to take a long nap.

Georgie relished her new treasures, which also included these cute deer jammies because Grams can't stand the thought of a little girl stuck wearing green and yellow gender neutral clothes. The hat was mine, but I let her borrow it because football season does start in a few weeks and Georgie wants everyone to know that she is definitely a Bengals fan.

The birth story.

Mama sure does love this blog. It serve as an excellent tool for spreading Turner cuteness propaganda and keeping in touch with our friends and family all over the world. But primarily, it's mama journal so that we can always look back at all of the memories we've made as we've grown into a family.

So bear with us, as this is going to a be a particularly wordy post about how Georgiana came to be with us. Mama wants to get it down soon, before all of the sleepless nights and chaos starts to blur her memories.

It's no secret that being a week overdue was really wearing on mama. She was really getting grumpy and on Tuesday afternoon, she broke down and called the doctor to beg him to induce her. She did not take the news well when he told her that the first available time for induction was on Thursday morning. Tuesday night was a rough night for her. On Wednesday morning, she thought she'd give it another try. She called Dr. Hearn and he said that one of the scheduled inductions for Wednesday had already delivered. Now Dr. Hearn also knew that you can't just throw in an induction on top of an already busy nurse's schedule and expect them to be happy about it. so he suggested to mama that maybe she drive to the hospital, visit him in his office (which is already in the hospital) and if she was any further than 3 centimeters dilated, he'd just admit her with early signs of labor. Deal. She and papa were in the car and on their way (after a stop at the Village Baker for pain au chocolat).

When she had her exam, she was already 4 centimeters dilated and the exam was enough to start a few contractions. They went upstairs, checked in, and settled down into the delivery room. It was about 10am. For the next two hours, mama was hooked up to an IV and monitors and allowed to her to progress on her own. She continued to have regular contractions, but they weren't very painful or productive. She spent most of it out of bed trying to move things along.

Dr. Hearn told her she'd most likely have to start on pitocin. It's no secret mama is not a fan of pitocin and being induced. So she requested her epidural early. At noon, the anesthesiologist (a UW-Madison grad!) hooked her up and she had to spend the rest of labor in bed. Soon after Dr. Hearn examined her (5 cm) and decided to break her water to get things moving before they tried pitocin. When they broke her water, there was very little amniotic fluid, so they hooked up Georgie via an internal monitor.

This pitocin started and everyone took a nap. Papa was tired because he was up half the night trying to get ready for his classes that were starting on Thursday, expecting that he'd spend Thursday in the hospital, not Wednesday. Mama's blood pressure kept dropping because of the epidural, so she spent most of the afternoon in a light-headed daze. They had to keep giving her medicine to get her blood pressure back up. Around 2, the nurses told mama that Georgie's heart rate kept fluctuating. It's supposed to stay in the zone between 120-160. But after every contraction, it would drop down to almost 60. They monitored it for an hour. Dr. Hearn decided that the low aniotic fluid was probably to blame. Georgie was lying on the umbilical cord and cutting off her blood and oxygen supply. In an effort to ease some pressure, Dr. Hearn actually hooked up an IV into mama's uterus pump in saline to "float" Georgie and give the cord some relief. This worked for a while and Georgie's heart rate stabilized. At this point, mama had cords and lines coming from everywhere. She should have had papa take a picture.

It's probably a good thing that she was in a daze, because watching the monitors was pretty nerve wracking. It's no fun watching someone's heart rate fall and not being able to do anything about it.

Around 5:45, Dr. Hearn checked mama and she was 8 centimeters dilated, but Georgie still hadn't dropped all the way down into the birth canal. not wanting to wait any longer, Dr. Hearn thought maybe mama should try pushing. Up to this point, mama could feel the pressure of her contractions, but they didn't hurt at all. While they staff was busy getting the room ready, Georgiana knew it was her time to do some work and mama had 3 big contractions that HURT (even with the epidural). You may remember that June's delivery was the same. The three contractions did their job. It only took three contractions, with three pushes during each and Georgiana Mae was born.

Now Dr. Hearn did not tell mama until afterwards, but he did have an operating room ready in case mama took longer than 10 minutes to deliver. And he told them that most other doctors probably would have just ordered the c-section much earlier. We are very grateful that Dr. Hearn kept a close watch on the situation and managed to get us through without major abdominal surgery- which was NOT part of the birth plan.

Georgie's birth was a very emotional moment. Obviously, there was a great deal of relief that any danger was now past. Mama was also very surprised at how dumbfounded she was that she FINALLY had the baby! Seriously, we'd all just about given up on the idea that a baby was coming at all; it took so long to happen. Papa was pleased that, for the third time, he was right about guessing (though he insists there was no guesswork involved) the gender. And everyone was sure mama was having a boy.

This birth experience was so different that mama's other two and of course, didn't go as planned. Henry's birth was the all-natural, drug-free (except pitocin), 9 and a half pound baby, "I-can't-believe-people-want-to-continue-having-children", hippie Irish-Russian doctor sitting on the delivery table in a snowstorm experience. June was born after mama and Henry both came down with a nasty virus and spent all day sick until mama got so dehydrated June decided to bail out because the ship was going down.

Because she's in pretty good shape and it's her third kid, we all got talked into the idea that there was no way she as going to go overdue. Much less a week overdue. She didn't intend on being induced and hooked up to every machine in the hospital. But she is grateful that she avoided a c-section and that Georgie arrived safely and healthy.

And here's the stats for those of you who have been waiting:

Georgiana Mae Turner

born August 18th, 2010 at 6:10 pm

8 pounds 2 ounces

20 3/4 inches long

13 3/4 inches head circumference