Baby Lennie

My Birth Story

I was 40 weeks and 1 day (my longest pregnancy) and determined to NOT have another Csection, when wouldn't you know, I start having contractions.  When they were 10 minutes apart we decided to call the doctor...a little early but because of my previous 2 c-sections they wanted me in the hospital a little early for monitoring.  Unfortunately, my super supportive OB was out of town which was a bit of bummer, but we headed to the hospital, arriving a little after 2am, knowing we'd get someone else in her practice.  At the hospital we found out that even though I was still contracting, there were no changes to my cervix.  Talk about a downer!  Normally they would just send me home until the contractions got closer together and some changes started to occur, but the baby's heartbeat kept dropping with every contraction, normal, but not returning to normal post-contraction, definitely not normal.  So they told us we had to stay in the hospital for monitoring.  Around 10am the next morning the OB came in to check me, still no progress even with contractions all night, and that the baby's heartbeat was still not as "reactive" as it should be.  We had two options, C-section or wait it out at the hospital being constantly monitored.  We decided the best thing for us and our baby was to go ahead with the c-section.  Even if we waited it out, there was no guarantee that I would ever progress any further and who knows how many days we'd have to spend in the hospital waiting.  I'd been contracting for so long at that point with no change, we didn't see the point of waiting it out in the hospital for a few days with our baby's heartbeat not "reacting".  The Dr performed the C-section and our healthy baby girl was born at 11:04am at 7lbs 15oz.  Justin and I always try to guess birth weight and we both guessed 7lbs 14 oz! ha!  pretty good.  I've been asked a few times if I'm disappointed that I didn't get my VBAC and the answer is NO.  It was so great to finally be able to experience "going into labor" on my own and having that drive to the hospital with the hubby, contacting all the way.  Until this, I didn't even know what contractions felt like...now I know, without having to experience the crazy intense ones :)  We are so blessed with our Baby Lennie.  She is a super easy newborn that sleeps most of the night and looks exactly like her big brother did.  The kids adore here.  Ethan keeps asking for more babies and Claire thinks she can take of Lennie all by herself...and that's another story.  

The Name

Well, it's no secret that Justin and I struggled tremendously coming up with a name.  The only name we seemed to agree on was Annalise.  So that's what we thought we'd name her.  Annalise Lennie Peterson, Lennie after her great-gma, who we adore.  We called her Annalise for 2 days in the hospital and we both just felt like it wasn't right.  We even started calling her Abigail, our runner-up name and it still didn't sound right.  So when they finally said we could start getting ready to head home, we knew we had to put something down on the birth certificate or we couldn't leave the hosptial.  Finally I just said, "Let's just do it, Let's just name her Lennie for her first name".  I could tell instantly by Justin's face that he liked the idea.  So grabbing the birth certificate paperwork he started to write down Lennie, when he paused and said, "Are we really going to do this?", Me, "Yes", Justin writing it down, "okay no turning back now". :) It's funny to us now, because she is Lennie, meant to be a Lennie.  We think this is why Annalise sounded so weird to us in the hospital, because it wasn't meant to be her name.  I hear the name Annalise now and I think, oh I love that name...It's so beautiful, but it just wasn't meant for our little girl.  We love the name Lennie, and love that she is named after such an amazing woman.  We can't wait for them to meet in just a couple weeks.  On a side note, because we called her Annalise for 2 days, poor Ethan and Claire kept calling her Annalise for days after we changed it.  ha!  Now they've got it straightened out and call her Baby Lennie or just Little Sister.  We chose her middle as Sue after both her grandmothers.  Justin's mom and my mom both have the middle name Sue.  It brings us such joy to know she is carrying on these names.  President Hinckley said, "Be true to who you are and the family name you bear", poor Lennie's got all the family names :) ha!  High standards for this one. :)                

Newborn pics

In the hospital pics

view from our room- Indy Temple

Heading home and super thrilled about our carseat

My obsession with matching sibling clothes in full force.  Pics by Daddy in our Big Brother, Big Sister, Little Sister shirts.