First Cousin!

Greta's first cousin was born yesterday.

Clara Ashley Neary

It all happened so fast! My mom was supposed to be arriving to visit with my sister today, but they changed plans so that she arrived on Thursday. Thursday evening, I chatted with them via FaceTime and my mom said that she'd arrived that afternoon and decided to take a nap straightaway. I told them how excited I was that Michelle would be having a baby so soon, and Michelle said, "Yeah, I dunno . . . maybe, maybe not " and remarked on how she'd been off of work for nearly a week and the baby still hadn't arrived.

That night at 11pm, Greta was crying and fussing. I woke up to go tend to her and saw that I'd received a text message at 10pm saying that Michelle's water had broken. I responded and she said that her contractions had started right away and were 3-4 minutes apart and asked if she should go to the hospital. I told her it was really her discretion -- for some people, 4 minutes apart is the "go signal" to go to the hospital, for others (like me), labor can continue like that for hours still.

I got another text from her saying that she was going to the hospital. Then I went back to sleep.

In the morning, I was wondering how long she'd be in labor and how things were going. When I checked my email, I saw that I had several emails from my mom with titles like, "Grandma and the Girls" and "She has arrived." The earliest of these had a time stamp of 2:13am! At 10pm her water had broken (which was her first sign of labor) and at 2:13am, I was receiving photos of her breastfeeding!

For an entire day, I marveled at how fast her labor had gone and kept telling people about her amazing, 4-hour-from-start-to-finish labor and delivery. And then, just now, I realized that it was actually only 3 hours. Because her water broke at 10pm my time, but it was 11pm her time. And the reason that my mom was able to send photos of my sister at 2:13am, when the baby was born at 2:14am was that the photos must have been sent at 3:13am their time. Which means that her labor went from a little before 11pm to 2:14am her time. About 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Ben and I would be lying if we said we weren't jealous. I think I still have a little PTSD over my own labor experience. And she didn't even have morning sickness! Man, somebody's gotta bottle that whole BFP-to-delivery experience and sell it!

We're insanely happy for them and so excited for our little niece! I can't wait to meet her!