Quinn Welcomes Little Sister, Reese Delaney!

It's been hard to keep up on my blog - there are just not enough hours in a day, what with a full-time (very busy) job, a commute out to the boonies nowadays (which we do NOT regret one single bit), raising a 5-year-old daughter, and oh yeah - welcoming a NEW Kircher into our family!

Please welcome Reese Delaney Kircher! She was born 12 days early on July 2, 2011 at 8:23am, weighing in a 7 lbs, 2 oz, and measuring 20 inches long. She's absolutely perfect, and Big Sister Quinn couldn't be more proud :-)

I have a good set of lungs!

We've been preparing Quinn for weeks that her little brother or sister was going to arrive anytime now and she's been great. At 5 years old, she gets it - a baby is a lot of work and I'd be very busy with it when it arrived. So when my water broke at 1am Saturday morning and Kirch grabbed Quinn to take her over to our next-door-neighbors' house, she woke up and Kirch explained to her that he and Mommy were headed to the hospital to have the baby. She became aware of what was going on and ended up talking Denise's head off for an hour-and-a-half before she fell back to sleep!

Meanwhile, Kirch and I jumped in the car and headed to Holy Cross Hospital. We arrived about 3am and got checked into our room. My labor pains had subsided by then, but I was still contracting and at about 3 cm, so Dr. Newhouse let me progress on my own. By 5am the labor pains were back in full force and I requested an epidural (what, you don't think I was going to do this natural, do you?). By the time the anesthesiologist got the epidural in, I was in some pretty good pain - having contractions every 2 minutes or so and doing my best to breathe through them. After an HOUR of waiting for the medicine to kick in, it FINALLY did and I relaxed. So then from 6 to 7:30am, I waited to fully dilate and by 8am it was about time to push! I checked the clock (8:15am) and proceeded to push for 3 rounds of 3 - the last of them 7 minutes later, when our beautiful daughter came into the world! She was a great delivery - 7 1/2 hours from start to finish (2 hours shorter than Quinn) and such a nice surprise - because I thought, once again, that she was going to be a boy! Just after Reese was born, Kirch once again surprised me and told me he had known for some time that she was a girl - and had successfully kept the secret from me for the remainder of my pregnancy. I'm so thankful for his discretion - we both got what we wanted (he knew, I didn't, he wanted a girl and got her, I didn't care!)...

So since then - she's what? Five days old now? Reese has been really great and Quinn has been a wonderful sister to her. We are adjusting well as a 4-person family and look forward to having wonderful experiences together as our girls grow up together!