Photo shoot- Georgie.

Grams and PawPaw left to go back to Ohio on Saturday, leaving us all alone. Luckily, our neighbors had a party, so we headed over there for free food and margaritas. I got cuddled by all the moms. Henry found three other 4 year old boys to play with. And June found two 7 year old girls who spent the entire evening guarding her on the playground and entertaining her. Mostly, mama and papa loved spending three hours uninterrupted. We had so much fun that we all stayed out until 10 pm.

On Sunday, we spent the day catching up on sleep. We had a great 2 hours when everyone in the house slept. Hopefully this continues after I stop sleeping 18 hours a day. But we'll take it while we can.

During the quiet time, mama took the opportunity to set up a photo shoot. We took these on Sunday, and I already look different. You'll be glad to know that I'm filling out and I'm not so splotchy anymore. Mama's going to have to work on keeping this blog updated.

I'm a pretty content baby. One of mama's favorite things about me is how I act when I'm waking up or falling asleep. Usually, I spend a few minutes looking around with just one eye open. On the sleeping front, no one can really complain. I'm up until around midnight. We all go to sleep and I wake up 3 or 4 times to nurse between midnight and 9 or 10. but mama doesn't mind because after I nurse, I go straight back to sleep. And last night, I slept 6 hours straight, making it the longest stretch of sleep mama has gotten in about 4 months.

I don't like to be put down. Luckily, there are lots of people to hold me all the time. We'll see if mama can keep it up when everyone leaves. Mama read somewhere once that a newborn is used to being held 24 hours a day, so any time not being held is a big adjustment. It also helps that mama has a sling.

Good news on the belly button front! Yesterday, we spent the morning at the dock park. It was a little cooler, but still very muggy, so mama unbuttoned the legs on my sleeper. When we got back to the car, Grandma noticed that my cord fell off! We never found it, so it must be somewhere in the park. Papa says I'm instantly more likable without that gross blue thing.

I'm breaking mama's heart with how much I'm changing. Yesterday, I started making cute cooing sounds. And today, mama noticed that I was moving my eyes around looking for everyone.

But most of the time I just look like this.

The last day at the hospital- Georgie.

There was another way that the Anderson hospital was different from Madison's. On Thursday night, mama had just finished nursing me for an hour and a half straight. And I was still hungry. Mama wasn't really into this, so she asked the nurse if she could give me an ounce of formula so I would settle down. Red alert! The nurse and the lactation consultant both assured mama that if she gave me formula, it would guarantee that I'd never nurse again. Mama said thanks for the advice and please go get the bottle.

Oh, that's the good stuff. A quarter ounce did the trick. And later, the nurse told mama that they gave me another half ounce in the nursery. I guess they'd already given up on mama.

Over the next two days, I got a bottle every night before bed. I sucked it down straight and was super happy. And you'll be glad to know that mama is still nursing me, despite everything the lactation consult told her.

On Friday morning, mama said we were leaving the nice, quiet hospital and headed home. WHAAAT? The kids there are crazy! NOOOO!

But the insurance company said we could stay, so mama and papa restrained me so I couldn't run away.

All ready to go.

When we got home, June delighted everyone by calling me "Baby Georgie" and not "Christopher." Sounds like they may accept me after all.

Henry was very proud to hold me.
How sweet.

Apparently, he thinks babies are the same as kittens.

What a great big brother! He's always trying to make sure I'm happy. When I'm not being held, which is a rare moment, he wants to make sure I'm in the swing or bouncy seat. And he is in charge of turning it on. And mama has also noticed that all of the boxes of diapers she's stocked up have been moved from under the bed upstairs to beside our changing station downstairs.

And he takes almost as many pictures as mama.

So far things are going pretty well. Henry, obviously, loves me. June has had a few bad moments, but she doesn't really seems to know that it's my arrival that seems to be messing everything. Luckily, she seems to be catching up on sleep and her mood is improving. Papa is trying to juggle being with us and keeping up with classes. Mama is feeling great. She wants to publicly thank our friend, Miss Page, who recommended Cramp Bark to mama to help out with postpartum pain. We had to search across the Upstate to find it, but she got some and it's amazing! Thanks for the advice, Miss Page.

In tribute to Grams and Pawps- Henry.

We officially want to send out a great big thank you to Grams and PawPaw for the wonderful support they provided over the past two weeks.

Poor Grams made it down a full 9 days before Georgiana was born and was a very good sport about having to spend her days with a very grumpy mama. And she spent most of her time keeping June and I entertained. We were super pumped when mama caved and let us all play with play-dough. thanks for lobbying on our behalf, Grams!

When PawPaw came down to see his newest grandchild, all he got was old Grumpy Gertie. He and Grams stepped up their game and they extended their duties from not just entertaining us, but removing us from the house so mama could take naps and feel sorry for herself.

When mama was in the hospital, they took us out to a place called Toadily Fun, which is full of inflatables and video games.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any better, it did. PawPaw promised me that we'd camp outside. But, wouldn't you know, it finally started raining and it rained all week long. Rather than risk soggy ground and mosquitoes, PawPaw set up my tent in my room and squeezed into my tiny tent. PawPaw, you've officially gone above and beyond the call of duty.

Thanks again for coming, Grams and PawPaw! We're glad you got to meet Georgie before you left.

We'll miss you!

All about me- Georgiana.

Well, mama just got around to granting me author rights on the blog, so this is my first chance to let you know a little about myself and my first few days in this bright, loud world.

Mama says that having a baby in South Carolina was different than in all-natural Madison. She's glad that before she started pushing, she requested that I be handed right to her when I was born. The nurses thought this was a really unusual request, but they obliged. I'm glad they let her hold me instead of cleaning me up first. I did not like that nose sucker thing. Mama also had to tell the nurses that she wanted to hold and nurse me before they took me straight to the nursery for my bath. I'm such a natural nurser that I nursed for a good long time and mama told the nurse to come back when I was done. Eventually, they made her give me up. When I got to the nursery, they found that my temperature was down and had to put me under a heat lamp for a while. I ended up being gone for almost two hours by the time they got my temperature up and measured and gave me my first bath. It took so long that papa left to go home, so no one was around to see my bath. that's the life of the third child. Mama wanted to come down, but they made her stay in bed. She was mad that they wouldn't let her try skin-to-skin contact to try and get my temperature up, like they did in Madison when June got cold. She sat in her bed stewing and almost went down to the nursery on her own when they finally brought me back to her.

A little about my features. My hands and feet are really long and still pretty wrinkly. This picture doesn't really do them justice, but i have some seriously skinny legs. They couldn't figure out why, because I weighed only 2 ounces less than June when she was born (and a full pound and 4 ounces less than Henry. Whoa!). Then mama did some research and realized that I am a full 2 inches longer than June was! (Aren't you glad we have this blog? It was so easy to look it up two and a half years later.) Mama says I already take after my Great Grandma (the original Georgiana) because she's also tall and thin. But I don't think she has Gollum feet like these. Would it have hurt to eat a few more hamburgers in those final weeks to fatten me up a little, mama? All the newborn clothes we have are completely baggy, but getting to be too short. And all the feet in my sleepers are way too tight.

You might be able to see in the close-ups that I have a few broken blood vessels in my eye. The pediatrician said this is normal after birth. Personally, I think I a few broken blood vessels is a small price to pay for the fact that I came out totally cone-headed and have regained a mostly spherical-shaped head.

A note on mama- she's feeling great! Mama says this every time she has a baby- but it really is an amazing wonder that the human body can go through something so traumatic and live to tell the story, let alone feel so recovered just days afterward. Don't get her wrong, she's not headed out to pick peaches like our friend, Hollie two days after she gave birth. But she does feel good enough to be up and around and even went to a consignment sale two hours after she got home from the hospital on Friday afternoon. She does maintain that the worst pain she has is from the dTAP vaccine that they shot into her arm. She hasn't stopped complaining about how sore it is.

This is a look that seems to be emerging as one of my favorites. When I get drowsy, i don't bother using both eyes to look around. Just one will do. And it works out well, because my eyes are crossed most of the time anyway.

Grams said this picture looked familiar, and when they got home to Ohio, she found this one and sent it to mama:

Do you think I might look like my dad? It caught mama and papa off guard because I didn't look like my identical newborn brother and sisters, who apparently take after the Seibert side of the family (which involves being born with tons of black hair that falls out after a few months). But I do seem to have inherited my dad's light hair, big cheeks, and wide nose. Maybe this means I'll finally be the dark haired kid my mom wanted.

Grams also sent this picture for reference. She said pap's newborn look didn't last long.

Soon, his looks changed and he started looking more like he looks now. Mama asked papa if he was happy to have a kid that finally looked like him. He said that all the girls in my class will be jealous of my abilities to grow an awesome beard.

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