Tatum Grace Phillips

SHE is here!!! Our second daughter, Tatum Grace, arrived on Thursday, September 9th at 5:16pm. She weighed 6#11oz. and was 20 inches long. She is healthy and gorgeous! We are thrilled she is finally here and are adjusting to having two children. She is a good tempered baby and her big sister is obsessed with her! :)

We decided not to find out the gender this time as the pregnancy and delivery are not as much of a surprise as they are the first time around. So we saved the surprise for the big moment of delivery. And as EXTREMELY hard as it was for me not knowing, it was worth it at the end. Finding out she was a girl at the moment she entered the world was a truly special moment and one I will never forget.

The labor and delivery aspect was much different than Emme's because I started it naturally verses having to be induced with Emme. I must say as far as labor goes, it was an awesome experience and I hope that if we have more children, the labor is similar to what I went through with Tatum. I was able to walk up and down the hallway, my epidural worked this time around (and I withheld from getting it longer than I did with Emme!!!), and I had the BEST nurse (Roxanne) in the entire world. The only downfall was that my personal physician, Dr. Kelly Moore, was off that day so Dr. Suzanne Strubel-Lagan delivered Tatum instead. We remained in the hospital for two days and were discharged on Saturday, September 11th.

Emme has been taking her role as big sister very seriously. ;) So much in fact, that the first week home, she attempted to nurse Tatum on the couch. Her vocabulary has exploded over the past month and I sometimes cannot translate what she is expressing. She was "holding" Tatum on her lap and lifted up her shirt and was pointing to her belly saying something. I finally figured out that she wanted to "feed" Tatum so I called Joe in from the kitchen and told her to go ahead. She then turned Tatum into her belly to "feed" her. It was hilarious and adorable at the same time.

We feel extremely gracious and so blessed to have two healthy and beautiful girls and look forward to making many memories with them and see their relationship flourish as sisters. That was something I always wanted but never had...a sister. I guess God just had a different idea for me, he gave me four unbelievable sister-in-laws instead and I wouldn't trade them for the world!!! Funny how things work out...