Ethan holding Eve. Samuel, once we got home, holding her. Eve holding her pacifier in. :)

A few days before Eve was born Samuel asked if he could hold her when she got here. But when Ian brought them up to the hospital Samuel wouldn’t hold her because he didn’t want her to cry. But to my surprise Ethan wanted to hold her. When Ian held Samuel up to see Eve for the first time the look on his face said that he had just seen the most amazing thing. For months I had told him that his sister was in my belly and that when she got big she would come out and when he saw her, his face showed that he knew that was his sister. Over the last few days he has continued to surprise me with how protective he is. He has to make sure she is ok, and he doesn’t like it when visitors hold her; actually slapped a friend’s hand a way when she touch Eve.

I was scheduled to be induced at 5 Friday morning but started natural labor contractions at 2:30 am. I got the epidural at 5 and it was smooth sailing from there. Anesthesiologist was quite funny and good at keeping your mind off things. He explained a lot about how the epidural worked.
You know in movies when they say “don’t push...I want to push…No no don’t push it’s not time yet” well, I now know how that feels. Toward the end I stopped waiting for them to tell me when I could push and I would just do it when I could feel the pressure. The Doctor tried to rotate her because she was facing up and it was making it more difficult and painful but Eve was having nothing of it and put herself right back the way she was.
In all it took 45 mins to push and 7hrs and 45 mins of labor. With Samuel and Ethan I didn’t get to hold them till have they had cleaned them up and got their weight but after Ian cut the umbilical cord they put Eve, after birth, purple and all on my belly, it was really cool!

The hole in the grown is made by a nose.