October 23 at 10:08pm

I was scheduled for induction at 7am on October 23rd as I was a week overdue. I went into labor at 1am that morning and labor stalled sometime in the afternoon so they had to induce me anyhow. My mom, my sister and Tom were there with me throughout the ordeal. I started pushing sometime around 6:30 or 7pm and she finally emerged with her hand up near her head (after I had an episiotomy) at 10:08pm. Dr. Avery delivered her at Durham Regional Hospital. Happily- I remember few of the details until they put her on my chest. I'm also pleased to report that the numbness in my leg went away at some point and so I'm pretty much back to normal now.

Holly's stats

• She was 8lbs 7 ounces.
• 21 3/4 inches long
• blue/gray eyes
• LOTS of brown hair

Holly the fish

Holly loves bath time! She likes to kick her little feet around in the pink tub that our friend Dawn gave us. We still feel like bathing is a two-person affair so we don't have any photos of her in the tub. Once she's in the towel she's less happy since she's often a little chilly no matter how warm we make the house. We look forward to bath time more once she has more neck control.

First smiles!

Holly started smiling about a week or two ago (at 3 weeks after birth). It took several days to confirm that what I was seeing was a "real" smile and even more til other people saw it so people would stop calling me crazy. But now we have lots of smiling photos. The photo above was taken on Thanksgiving morning. (This shirt had to be changed soon after the photo thanks to some high quality spit up action.) The photo below was taken a week ago while she was playing on her activity mat in the morning.

Before she was Holly...

She was Baby Dye-Merrigan. We noticed time and again at the ultrasound that she was an active little one.

I'll use this post to talk about the name (since there have been a lot of questions about it) and tell you about each part of her name.

• Holly: Although from this blog you might get the idea that she's named after one of Audrey Hepburn's most well known characters, we actually picked it up off a sign in Maryland for a place called Holly Farms. We were on a long drive and we started chatting about what we would name our child (that we had no intention of having) and we came up with the name Holly and both loved it. When we found out I was pregnant, we discussed it and still loved the name.
• Caroline: We had another middle name picked out until two weeks before she was born. I was having more "painless" contractions in the middle of the night after a party we went to for our friend's recent home improvement. Tom and Chris played at the party and were asked (by request) to play Sweet Caroline. For some reason we both had that song in our head that night and Tom suggested we use Caroline as her middle name. We both loved it.
• Dye: So I've never been a fan of the hyphenation system so when I found out I was pregnant, we discussed it and settled on a 50/50 chance. If little baby Dye-Merrigan was a boy he would be a Merrigan, a girl would be a Dye. We know this isn't traditional, but then, neither are we!
  

So that's the story behind the name. We successfully kept her name a secret from everyone until she was born despite threats, pleas and manipulation. The first time I said it aloud to anyone (other than Tom and one friend of mine who got me drunk years before I was pregnant and pulled it out of me) was when they put her on my chest after she was born.

All Holly all the time

Rather than continuing to send mass emails and photos to folks whether they want Holly updates or not, I've started this blog for those who wish to follow little Holly as she grows and grows.