Claire Cait Ratchford

Clair Cait Ratchford.  Born at 1:45 PM on March 18th

 Davy did not Faint...enough said.  Actually he did really well and was a huge help.

 Claire getting her first bath.  She loved getting her hair washed. 

 Getting her first tan under the heater lamps. 

All the kids came over to see the baby.  Leah and Eva are "little moms".  Ronan was a little scared but did touch her foot before he left.

She's been sleeping a lot.  So far, so good.  She is a great little baby.

So Rachel here just wanted to add in some details about the delivery and Claire's birth. We decided to get induced on this one. The excitement of rushing to the hospital on Ronan and feeling contractions to a ten needed to not be repeated. Plus my doctor was going out of town and I really wanted him to deliver me. So we check into the hospital at 6:45 and got all set up. As they were monitoring me we noticed that I was having regular contractions on mine own but just not feeling them. I got started on pitocin and then the doctor came in and broke my water at 9:00. I got my epidural shortly after. It was very painless but then I only got numb on one side. I could still feel my contractions on the other. So we turned me and dosed me to try to numb the other side. It helped but I never got completely numb and felt a portion of my contraction for my whole labor. Besides that everything went perfectly. The babies heart rate stayed good the whole time. When I got to a 8 they called the doctor. By the time he got there I was ready at a 10. I pushed for 2 contractions and out she came. What was the most shocking was her dark hair. We have had all blond babies. So in the hospital we had a bit of a problem because I couldn't walk by myself until 8 am the next morning. Dave and the 60 year old nurse had to take me to the bathroom every time I needed to go. By the next day I was feeling good and ready to get out of the hospital. So we packed up and headed home around dinnertime Saturday night.