Meet Élise Charlotte

40 weeks exactly, that’s how long I carried you. We have our due date baby, that, of course timely like her mama, only 5% of babies are actually born on. But just like that, the counter refreshes and you’re 2 whole days old this morning. Our precious baby girl, Élise Charlotte Pigeon, decided to make their appearance into the world on Sunday, July 12th, 2020 at 6:28 am at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, weighing 7 lbs 11 oz and measuring in at 20.8 inches tall.

If you’ve followed our pregnancy journey through social media, you’ve probably realized it’s been a rough ride for me, so I was constantly hoping the sooner this was over, the better. I wanted to rush it away, yet knew I shouldn’t. It started feeling different the evening of Monday, June 29th; the mood, the type of discomfort, abilities and inabilities. That Friday I started having fairly regular contractions all day and was very uncomfortable by that evening. Monday, July 6, I had a lovely five hours of false labour; because she wanted to tease me just a little. I was absolutely exhausted all week because of that. My midwife says she thinks because Max was off that Monday, after a full weekend with him, my body felt relaxed and safe to give it a go. So all week, I was hoping that they would arrive the following weekend, their due date after all! Friday, July 10th is when it all started going down. It was 10:30 pm and we were just settling into bed for the night when my water broke. It was pretty close to the movies, when the tell you it likely won’t be, with a big gush all of a sudden. Three hours later, my midwife came in for a check as I was advancing fairly quickly.

I was in active labour by around 12 pm on Saturday, but because everything started Friday night, I didn’t get much (any) sleep. By noon, I was around 36 hours awake at that point so my body stopped progressing. It was at that point that our intended home birth became an assisted hospital birth, because my body wasn’t going to do much more on it’s own without rest. We got to the hospital around 1pm on Saturday and got an epidural, not because of the pain, but so that I could actually sleep. By that evening, my body was back to progressing on it’s own. After letting me sleep as long as they could that night, the dawn quickly came and Élise made her entrance early Sunday morning.

We only have a couple of photos, because of course Max was a little preoccupied, but enjoy these few glimpses into our long weekend. And of course, to no one’s surprise, Max, being the calm magical presence that he is, is wrapped around her little finger and soothes her like no one can. Welcome to the world, Élise Charlotte Pigeon!