Claire Elise Hillstead

Claire Elise Hillstead was born today November 5th at 2:52pm. She has beautiful petite features and weighed in at 7 lbs, 4 oz and is 19.5 inches long. She has pink coloring and so far appears to be a mild mannered baby.

She came into this world after giving us a little grief last night when we first got to the hospital. Prior to starting any IV or Pitocin drips, the nurses started to monitor her heart rate and noticed brief moments of deceleration in her heart rate whenever Anne was on her right side. That slowed down the whole process and the Dr. delayed starting the Pitocin until later in the evening after things normalized. There were a couple times where Anne had to roll completely over or kneel on all fours to get the baby’s heart rate back to normal and it appeared we were headed for a C section.

Early this morning, after getting the epidural and the Dr. breaking Anne’s water, they put a heart rate monitor on the baby’s head so that they could more accurately monitor her heart rate. For the rest of the morning, everything seemed great with her heart rate ranges and so the Dr. took things slow and asked us to be patient and started the Pitocin at small levels and monitored her heart rate for any decelerations during contractions. She stayed strong as the pitocin levels increased and finally was able to come vaginally to us this afternoon. She was a “squirmer” throughout the pregnancy and had gotten herself wrapped in the cord a couple times so we are grateful for coming to the hospital when we did.

She is so sweet, mellow, and seems very content to be here with us. We feel very blessed to have her successfully with us now with no complications and are enjoying her sweet spirit.

- TY