Welcoming Velzy Bell

Velzy Bell Calkins was born October 26 at 6:27 pm.

The Arrival Story:

As many of you know, I was struggling with my pregnancy, especially in the last part! I was getting desperate to produce this little girl that we had been waiting for. My friend told me that I should take Castor oil...for a long time, I didn't want to do it, but desperation got the best of me and so I took the castor oil Monday morning around 8 am. Now if any of you know the effects of castor oil, you know that they aren't pretty. However, the consequences of drinking castor oil never got to me, so I thought that it wasn't going to work. By Family Home Evening, I began pretty hard contractions.

While Kasey was giving CPR lessons, I was in pain. I went downstairs and laid down, but the pains were not going away. I told Logan that he needed to drive me to the hospital so we got our things together and headed over there. I was in triage for awhile and they made me walk for 3 hours because I was only dilated to a 2. After I returned, I was dilated to a 3 and so they admitted me into a bed.

I waited an hour before I got the epidural and around 4 am, I was sitting pretty. My mom and sister, Caitlin came around 4 am as well and Tanya came around 6. For most of the day, I was just laboring. I told them that they needed to break my water, but it took them forever to do so. My labor progressed a little, but not enough, so they put me on petosin. By 4 pm, I was still only about a 4. So they upped my petosin and by the time I got to a 5, it took only 30 minutes to get to a 10.

But the doctors were changing shifts, so I tried desperately to hold back my pushing. The nurse asked me to push once to see if she was ready. I pushed once and her head started to come out, so they called the doctor. Once the doctor was there, I pushed once and little Velzy was here.

She looked so much like Cache when she came out. She was so beautiful and I was immediately in love with her. I held here skin to skin for an hour and then they measured her. She weighed 8lbs and she was 20 1/2 inches long.

She has been so wonderful. She hardly cries, sleeps through the night (I have to wake her up to feed her) and she is just beautiful (I am bias of course).

Cache is taking to his sister really well. He absolutely loves her and is very protective of her. He always wants to hold her and calls her "girlie". We are so proud of him for being so good and patient with us. He is amazing little guy and we love our family so much.