Lolli's Birth Story

Lolli kitty was getting quite a large tummy and we had a lot of fun trying to guess how many kittens she was carrying.  Karis thought her due date was on Wednesday, but Wednesday came and went and she only grew larger.

She still cracked us up daily by trying to get in the van, jumping through the railings with her big belly, and chasing the girls around the yard.  It reminded me so much of my own pregnancies, when I felt like the time would never come and I was just going to keep on being pregnant forever.

I had written down Mother's Day as Lolli's due date and kind of hoped she would go into labor while Grandma was here to help.  But instead of kittens, we had a very sick little baby on Sunday afternoon.  Sophia came down with a raging fever and basically wouldn't let me put her down for a second Sunday afternoon or Monday.

Monday night, Sophia woke me up about every 45 minutes, needing comfort and nursing.  When my alarm went off the next morning, I was a walking zombie and barely coherent because I was so exhausted after two nights of very little sleep.  I started walking to the big girls' room to wake Karis when I heard a very strange noise.  I sleepily asked Karlie what it was, and she thought it was the birds outside.  For some reason I decided to check on Lolli in case something was wrong with her.  I stepped into the garage and was met with the surprise of my life!  There was a dark, wet kitten (that looked like a mouse) all by itself on the hard, concrete floor of the messy garage, just meowing as loud as it could.  I picked it up in complete shock and looked around for Lolli.  I couldn't find her at first!  My heart sunk.  I was afraid she had abandoned her kitten or gotten hurt during labor and I hadn't been there to help her.  But then I saw her, curled up in a plastic grocery bag of clothes we were planning to give away!  I took her the lost kitten and saw there was another kitten under her. I quickly began to fear that she might have lost other kittens in the mass of clothes in the bag, so I moved her to the box we had made for her and yelled for Karlie to help bring the other kitten to her.  We did not find any others so we figured that two kittens were all there were.  I tried to help them find a nipple to nurse on but they just couldn't seem to do it. I wasn't sure how long they had been out and was getting worried but then Lolli surprised us by having another kitten!  I had just assumed we had missed all her labor but we soon found out we had only missed the beginning because she ended up having 3 more over the next hour.  It was so exciting!  All the 4 big girls were awake by this time and just so thrilled to be a part of it.  Lolli was so exhausted that she didn't even notice the 3rd kitten coming out and I had to gently wipe its nose so it could breathe.  But as soon as it let out a tiny mew, Lolli immediately turned to it and started cleaning it and taking care of it.  I also googled to see how long it takes kittens to start nursing and it said it can take 2 hours, so that was a relief.  We were just amazed that she had 5 kittens!  It was so perfect since we have 5 girls who wanted to pick a name for them.  The girls were just so excited that they could hardly stand it so they decided to go jump on the trampoline to let their joy out a bit.  It was just the most joyful morning ever!