The Latest Addition!

We are proud to introduce our first Daughter Angeline May Neufeld!

She weighed in at 6lbs 6oz, 48 1/2 cm, and was born at 0523 hrs. (5:23am) on March 14th of 2009 that's the quick info.  

A day shy of 38 weeks!

Melissa did very well in dealing with an intense 5 hours of labor and 25 minutes of pushing.

She was quite alert like her brothers, but preferred to sleep after the first hour and a half looking around.

David is thrilled to be a big brother again!  He has given her hugs and has made very good attempts at saying her name.  When we asked him if we should take his sister home he said "ok!"

The story thus far goes as follows:  It all started with flu like symptoms starting the morning of the 13th Melissa was getting really tired and slightly dehydrated, so we all went to bed as early as possible (considering it lasted until late in the evening)  About a few hours of resting later (not sleeping) Melissa started having contractions, and thinking that this was just another round of pre-labor [apx. 0000 hrs] she proceeded upstairs to have a bath to help calm it down (leaving me to sleep... thank you!).  After soaking in the tub and not having any slow down Melissa woke up her Mom and started the timer [0130 hrs].  About 30 minutes later I was woken up as it was time to get organized because this was no false labor!  A quick call to our life saver Auntie Heather (A thousand thank yous!) to watch over David and she arrived in no time, so off we went to the hospital.  We arrived at the hospital [0245 hrs] and were in assessment for about 35 minutes where Melissa dealt with some contractions in the 5-6 cm. dilation range without any help from gas or drugs.  When a room was finally cleaned up (the hospital was full) we were in and making quick progress [0320 hrs].  At about 4:58am Melissa was 10cm and the doctor broke her water (and with a bit of fentanyl in her system) it was pushing time for Melissa and 25mins later (with an annoying 5 minute stall where we all panted the contractions through) we all had the news we were all waiting for... It's a baby!?!?  Mommy made an effort to watch this time and got to watch the baby come out (which she missed with the first two boys) and I helped with placing her on Mommies tummy and the cord cutting, but nobody knew what this baby was!  After realizing that there was no announcement we all went to flip the baby over and the nurse said it's a GIRL!

Whew!

Melissa and Angeline are both healthy and happy, and after waiting 6 hours in our delivery suite we got moved to a post-partum room (like I said the hospital was full).  Upon arrival we realized that we were not going to get much rest as we had neighbors in suite, we decided that it would be best to go home as soon as possible.  Our neighbors were very nice and the father had a great camera with a detailed zoom lens so we look forward to seeing the photo's of our daughter Angeline and their son Luke.  As we made it clear to the nurses that we wanted to go (and they were overfull so they made sure we could) we had a few checks, a bath for Angeline and we were gone.  After a quick stop at McDonald's for Melissa (and cones for Daddy and David) we arrived at home at 4:30pm.  What a day!