We are so lucky to have Baby Janie home with us and can't believe how relatively smoothly things went bringing her into the world- besides the seven days overdue she made us wait to meet her!! My friend Emily's mom said my babies just like to stay in there where it's quiet since life is so busy on the outside :) We are adjusting to life with three- easy so far with so much help from our families. We are counting our blessings these days that is for sure.

Thursday night we had my parents, Oma, Mark, Sarah and cousin Clara over for dinner before we went into the hospital at 7:30pm. "Team Grandmas" Oma and Jannie took great care of the girls after we left overnight here the first night and all of them over at Jannie's house the second night! We forgot to take a family picture but here are the cousins.

I was hoping to go into labor on my own this time (breech baby c-section with Francie and then nine days over due/semi-induction with Maisie) I figured a third baby would come on her own but again I was wrong... So a week after my due date my doctor had me come in to the hospital to start an induction (since I am considered "VBAC" every time I can't be induced with the usual drugs and they do a Foley Bulb to induce which is a little archaic- TMI for the blog/my sister ;) This was the same thing we did with Maisie and Janie's birth was very similar… a little faster but still had it's ups and downs.

Heff is the best labor coach and partner I could ask for. He was and always is so supportive and sweet :) He helped me through the first 8 hours of contractions with a Foley Bulb and Pitocin this time before the epidural. Last time the Foley took 12 hours to get to 5cm and this time it only took 3 hours! But then, like last time, I was "stuck" at 5cm for a long time and they played with very low levels of pitocin but it turns out Janie had a cord wrapped around her neck so with each contraction her heart rate would drop a little. We tried changing positions on my side a lot to keep it up but it was a little scary to watch the monitors and try to stay in a position to keep her heart rate up. They had me on oxygen and were watching carefully.

Finally around noon I asked if I could sit up and her heart rate was better and she seemed to be moving in the right direction with a little gravity. After an hour I told the nurse the doctor should probably check in soon and sure enough I was 10cm and ready to go! Things happened quickly and after 20 or 30 minutes of pushing we met our beautiful baby GIRL!!!

First photos - a few minutes old!

She was just fine and got a 9 and 9 on her APGAR but because of the heart rate we had two pediatricians in the room ready to check her out, two nurses who were very good to us and five doctors who were all great. We love Stanford! They were all excited it was a "surprise" baby and everyone was placing bets. Heff stood by his girl guess and I was leaning towards boy so for the THIRD time in a row he was RIGHT and I was WRONG! How strange and unusual ;) He knows his girls!! I guess this makes us pretty likely to keep having girls- we'll take them!

Proud Dad of THREE girls

Our sweet nurse Kristin - we had her with Maisie too! We had a great nurse Susan for the first 8 hour shift and she said Kristin was in the nurse's station fighting to get our room since she remembered us from last time :) She was very supportive and calm and helped bring Janie into the world right before her shift was over!

Packed up on the gurney to head to Maternity - lots of stuff to haul. I told Heff I overpacked and he said "you think?!" ;)

We dropped Janie off at the nursery to get all checked out and cleaned up- Heff stayed with her and Jannie, Oma and her BIG SISTERS arrived to see their baby girl for the first time!

Uncle Jerry! He came to visit and helped me "set up" my room while everyone else was still with Janie in the nursery. I told him now he knows what Heff feels like when I kept saying "can you hand me this/get me that/hang this up" :) Thanks Jer!

Lots of cuddles and passing around - my two babies :)

Andrea (and Craig, isabel and Thomas) were here for the arrival too!

Jannie. Jerry and Janie :)

Dr Cisco was right over to check out all her moving pieces

as my sister commented "ouch, Janie is getting ignored for iPhones" Had to text/FB/blog it out there that Janie was here! It was so funny- after she was born we texted our moms and my sister to say it's a girl… 3 minutes later I get blown up with 12 texts saying "a GIRL!" the cyberspace waves went to South Africa within seconds to my god-daughter Claire who is there on a semester exchange and she posted it to my Facebook- crazy how fast word gets out now! We made everyone wait to hear the name until we could tell them and my dad in person.