Baby news before 2016! :)

I'm so sorry to be such a long time in updating. I had a new post open that I was typing bits into for the last THREE days, because I know me, and if I just post a quick thing then I'll NEVER get around to the details that I wished I could have posted, and I didn't want that. But it looks like I am just not getting around to it quick enough and everyone is waiting for news, so I will have to do the quick news update and hope I eventually manage the details! :/

Rosalie is here! :) She was born something like 19 hours after my last update, wondering if my waters had broken! Everything went fine, and she was born at home, in my bed, at 10.40pm on December 28th. She had a really short cord (just like Lydia!) so I couldn't pull her right up onto my tummy and chest to hold her after she was born, I had to just hold her around hip level, but it was fine. The first thing I noticed was her cheeks! She had such chubby cheeks for a 39 weeker! They didn't measure her length, but mentioned she looked quite short in length, just really chubby for such a little baby! :)

She weighed 8lbs 1oz!! The same as Arthur (he had an extra half ounce on her though)! At 39 weeks! They are going by my scan dates (mine are more accurate as I know when I ovulated), so she is officially down as born at 38 weeks and 6 days - really surreal to consider, for me, since I "only" go into labour and give birth after my due date! :)

She has chubbier cheeks, but she looks to me EVER SO like Matthew (and Samuel, who also looks most like Matthew - he had the newborn cheeks that she has, but he was 9lb 9oz!). I love this because I haven't had a Matthew/Samuel-looking baby in 5 years, and also I feel vindicated because I KNEW we had a pattern going, lol! ;) I find it fascinating and almost unbelievable how this pattern is playing out predictably with every baby we have! There is no reason why it would, but it is! After Lydia (who was an Arthur/Benjamin pattern, right on schedule), the next baby "should" have been a Matthew/Samuel pattern. The only thing that threw me was the bleeding in the first trimester, which was a Nathan/Elijah thing to happen. Also Matthew and Samuel were my 41 weekers, which I expected this baby to be as well, but she has made herself a first and broken all patterns! :P BUT she definitely is like Matthew and Samuel, just exactly as predicted. Amazing! :)

She is 3 days old on this New Year's Day (will turn 4 days old this evening), and doing fine. I need to write more about how she has been and all about the birth, but I can't write any more just now, and I am honestly not sure when I will get to it. :/ That's why I wanted to wait until I'd finally written a whole big post about it all, so that I knew it would get done, but it was just taking too long.

Here are some pics of Rosalie meeting her siblings (they were thrilled to meet her when they got up the next morning!), and then a couple from the next day or two. I am so so pleased with my sweet new baby girl! She's perfectly precious! I will write more when I can...

 

 

 

 

 

These two are from the next day - about 36 hours old. :) Her cheeks make her look bigger than she is in photos, so I put my hand there to show how teeny she really is! I took one of Samuel at a similar age just before Christmas 2010, where he looks very similar to her in the second photo, just more swelling in his face from the birth. :)

 

 

This last one is from the same day, just a few hours later. I was burping her after a feed, leaning her chin onto my hand to prop her up, and I looked down and saw her sweet sleeping face and could not get over her CHEEKS, lol! So here's a memory record of that! :)

 

Here we are last night as the midnight struck and fireworks went off outside our windows. :) Love that I am here breastfeeding a newborn baby, when I thought 2015 would be all about gestating and it was 2016 that we'd be looking forward to meeting her in! :) So happy she's here in my arms!