Penelope "Pen" Knight Riley

Penelope Knight Riley arrived on Saturday, June 26th at 5:33pm in quite a dramatic fashion. She weighs 7lbs, 12oz and is 20" long. She has a full head of dark brown hair; just slightly more than Nolan had when he was born. There appears to be some red undertones to it, but that could just be wishful thinking by family members. I personally am not sure that Brian is ready to deal with two redheads in his life...

How she arrived: I had started labor around 9:30 that morning, but was pretty much in denial about it until around 1:00pm when contractions kept waking me up from my nap (Nolan was sleeping and I desperately wanted a nap of my own). At that point, I decided to get up and start packing my hospital bag...I hadn't done that yet because I'd convinced myself that she was going to be coming around mid-July, not EARLY!!!!

Brian arrived home from his golf tournament and I told him that I thought I was in labor (I still wasn't 100% sure and didn't want to be "that girl" that showed up at the hospital and wasn't really in labor). He, of course, said it was probably something that I'd eaten and not to worry about it. About 2 hours later we decided we should probably go to the hospital and at least have someone check me out, so we called Pappa T to come up and hang with Nolan and off we went.

My contractions started coming a little more frequently and were close to 4-5 minutes apart by the time we arrived at the hospital. At least now I knew for sure that I was in labor, but was still fearful that I'd get checked in and the nurses would tell me that I was only 2 or 3cm dialated. Brian and I checked into the maternity ward and as we were walking back to the triage room to get changed my water broke. Typical me, I joked with the nurse that "either my water just broke or I peed in my pants...hahaha". In hind sight, I probably shouldn't have been joking around because in the next 10 minutes my labor came on really quickly and the nurse was just out lolly-gagging around eating her dinner. I made Brian go out to get her and seriously, less than 10 minutes later Penelope was born. Yes, in a triage room. No, we weren't even checked in. Yes, they had to scramble to find a doctor to catch her. No, I did not get an epidural (I wasn't even hooked up to an IV, blood pressure cuff, heartrate monitor, etc). Yes, she is amazing and yes, we survived it. I definitely got the story that I always wanted about going into labor and experiencing it naturally...just makes me a little nervous about how quickly the next baby will arrive!

For now, enjoy these pics from her first few days in this world. Nolan absolutely adores her and constantly asks to hold her and kiss "him" (he can't seem to call Pen a "her:" yet)...both of which he does very well.