Baby Alice is Here! (warning... lots of pictures)

Remember how I was afraid of going over my due date and having to give birth to a big baby, well.... Wednesday evening I was in a lot of pain, so we decided to go to the hospital. As soon as we got to the room where they check to see if you are in labor, my contractions slowed down and the monitor didn't pick them up at all. They sent us home, dejected. All night long I had contractions, but was able to sleep through them, and kept praying that hte delivery the next morning would go smoothly.This is a picture we took right before we left for the hospital at 5:30 am Thursday for the scheduled induction.As soon as they got the IV in, but before they actually started the pitocin, my contractions started to be very strong and two minutes apart. They checked me, and I was as a six so they decided that I didn't need any pitocin. Two hours later we had this beautiful baby. For the first time I had a man deliver my baby and it was a totally different experience. Instead of letting gravity work for me and me being in charge of when I was going to push, they had me balance in one of those yoga poses, and try to push the baby up, against gravity when they told me to. Despite all of that I am very grateful that he didn't perform and episiotmy (I didn't even tear, despite the fact that this baby was two pounds bigger than my biggest) and I am also grateful that it did only take two (of the worst imaginable) pushes to get her out. At one point I really didn't believe that I could do it, and for the very first time I actually screamed during labor, like in the movies.
Notice how the scale says 10 pounds and 4.7 oz? That is what a big baby looks like. Do you see how thick she is around the middle like a big kid? And check out those healthy thighs. Don't even try to tell me that in the first belly picture at the beginning of this post that I didn't look big enough to have her inside me, because with all my other babies, they just tucked themselves up under my huge ribcage, so that even at nine months people were still asking me how far along I was. This was the first time that I actually got the basketball under the shirt effect. I didn't used to understand how people would say that they couldn't even bend over at the end of pregnancy until this one, and my bathrooms hadn't been cleaned in at least 3 weeks, until my sweet mother came and did them, because I physically couldn't bend over or kneel down to reach behind the toilet.
Me with all my children.
Adriana holding her new baby sister.
We didn't get a really good shot at the hospital, and even the hosiptal pictures didn't have her eyes open. This was the first day she was home.
BTW, After two snow storms, we have about 2 1/2 feet of snow on the ground.
You can kind of see my new haircut in this picture. We took this as we were waiting at Annika's dance class, before we took Grandma to the airport.
It was so nice to have my mom to take care of the kids. We are really going to miss her (and her good cooking). The kids really had a great time with her, and I enjoyed being pampered.
Annika with Alice. I keep calling Alice, Annika. It is terrible, but she really looks like her.
Ariel with Alice.
Here is a series of pictures that I took today after her bath. I thought maybe she would look better in a color other than pink. Do you think any of them are birth announcement worthy? I had to play with the coloring because the lighting was less than ideal.
This was with natural sunlight shining on her face but it made her close her eyes.
Babies love to turn their head to the side.

I'll keep trying to get one of us together.