Dang! Ben and I make cute babies!!

Well, the day finally arrived that we welcomed Anny Pixley Johnson to the world. She was born on June 23 at 3:56am. She was our second smallest baby (big surprise) weighing in at 7lbs 13oz. Of course, she was almost two weeks early. We knew she was a girl as we could see hair on her head as I was pushing. My girls have all had hair at birth, the boys were bald. Well, we weren't surprised when she came out with hair, but we were suprised with the blackest, thickest head of hair I have ever seen (at least on my babies)! She is absolutely adorable. She has perfect skin coloring, and the cutest little lips. Her eyes are so dark and beautiful. She is really a strikingly, beautiful baby, if I do say so myself.

My water broke on Sunday evening before we retired to watch our Sunday night movie. We drove off to Banner Desert and arrived there about 7:30pm. Because of my Beta strep test, they quickly started me on my antibiotics, but because of my blood pressure being so high, they quickly got me on magnesium to prevent me from having any seizures. Usually, they wait for the second dose of antibiotics before starting the pitossin, but my blood levels came back with high liver enzyme levels so things really got rolling after that. I don't think I've ever been so nervous about a delivery, but I think I remained calm. The epidural man finally came (love him!) and about 2 hours after my epidural, Anny arrived. I never remember having to push so hard and long, but with the cord around her neck 3 times, she just was on a short leash and it was hard for her to come out. She quickly recovered though, and her heart rate always seemed fine. Ben, my mom, and my sister Brittany, were the only ones in the delivery room this time. It was a quiet delivery compared to some of my others.

For those of you not aware, and I don't have any good pics yet, she was born with a partial pinky finger and a full thumb, but missing the other 3 fingers on her right hand. She has some skin that look like little stubs of fingers, but there is no cartilage or bone in them. We will take her to a hand specialist at some point, but that is down the line. They think she had a blood clot in her hand at about 6 weeks gestation that impeded her fingers from developing. We have known for a long time now and have been concerned about her heart creating the clot. So far, no problems to speak of with her heart. That was my biggest worry. I will link you to my other blog sometime in the future for more details about that. We call her our "hanging loose" baby because with a pinky and a thumb and no fingers, she looks like she is always telling us to hang loose. She can still grasp with what bones are in her hand and thumb, so that is a good sign. She will definitely be a lefty though. Please don't be afraid to look at her hand and touch it if you want. We are going to be very open and want her to be comfortable about it as she grows.

I'll post more later when I'm not so sleepy.