July 2nd 2011

Okay okay, I know you're all dying to hear ;).......... I finally have some time away while the lil girl is sleeping and I actually DON'T feel sleepy. Pretty rare..

 Here's the scoop.

So the few days leading up to delivery day I had been feeling some lower abdominal cramping in the area all around below my bellybutton. My stomach wasn't feeling tight at all, so I figured they weren't contractions. They were just uncomfortable. Friday night they progressed more and more, but I still didn't feel like I needed to time them. We ended up going to sleep around 2am because my brothers wanted to play some video games and I figured, why not? It'd probably be the last chance. At around 4:30am I woke up to go potty, was feeling crampy, and got a text from Jamie. From then on I kept myself busy, texting, facebooking, checking email. Finally, around 745 I fell back asleep and at 815 I woke up with pretty painful contractions. As it subsided I fell back asleep and at 830 I woke up again with them and thought, okay I should probably take a shower. So I do that, and then told Jonathan to take one too just in case we had to go to the hospital. At 9am I decided to time the contractions. They were 4 minutes apart lasting 50secs. I had forgotten when exactly to head out, so it was as I was reading "What to expect when you're expecting" that it mentioned "You'll probably be in the hospital by now if your contractions are now 3-4 minutes apart. "

After reading that I was like, CRAP! We gotta go! :} So I woke up my mom, we hopped in the car.  and I called my midwife and we headed to the hospital.

(if you read a few posts before, this confirms my inability of not knowing when I should head to the hospital haha)

We checked in and got to our room at 1030. They had me on 2 bags of IVs while they contacted the anesthesiologist. She got the epidural in at noon. And it hadn't fully kicked in until 1:45 (most everything was numb, except the one side). My midwife decided to break my water and after I was fully numb, the nurse put a catheter in. I was able to rest for a little while (as much as you really can with people always coming in and out.) The nurse said to let her know when I felt the baby descending and I had an urge to push. It was a weird feeling. It was like I could feel her ..but it felt like, ticklish? If that makes sense.. It's hard to tell since I was so numb haha.

Anyway, so my midwife comes in and the nurse informs me how to push. So we start that up and it was so weird. At first I was pushing with my head. Then I tried bearing down to push and they said they could see her head. I was watching Jonathan the whole time. :) As her head slowly came out they asked me if I wanted to touch it (EW! haha). I did, and kind of squealed and laughed. After about 10-15 minutes of pushing she was out. They actually told me to STOP pushing, because she was coming out so fast. The midwife asked Jonathan to get ready to cut the cord and he said "Just tell me where to bite!" and I busted out laughing. Lydia was born at 3:26pm. My midwife said that was the easiest delivery he has ever done. And that I was the first person he'd known who had actually smiled and laughed during delivery haha. And that if he had them all like this, he would do this for the rest of his life. He said it was his pleasure. :) I'm glad it went well for all of us. I had a small tear but that was taken care of. Couldn't feel a thing.

{Like I said before, aside from Jonathan, epidurals are the 2nd love of my life!! :D Totally amazing.}

.....As you can tell....

They placed baby girl right on me.. although I wasn't sure what to do cause she was wiggly and slimey. Then they took her away, cleaned her up and was given back to me. Me and Jonathan were both pretty surprised that we weren't as emotional as we thought we'd be (we thought we'd cry). But we were so happy to have her. And everything happened so fast and we were in a humorous mood. So that's probably why.

I had her with me most the day (I actually didn't go to sleep til 2am when they took her away). She had a low temperature. So they had to come in every so often to check her. And then at 2, they took her for a few hours at night to the nursery to put her under the lamp to get her temp up.Which worked. Of course, now we just have to work on her bilirubin levels and weight.

She is such a good baby. Rarely ever cries, only when way hungry, and barely fussy when she wants to be changed. She softly coos in the morning when she wakes up (which is enough to wake me up) but never cries. She is so alert and happy. Was smiling by day 3! I love her little smiles.

I love her so much

 

Anyways... that's basically the story! The recovery period has been a mix of emotions! I definitely should have read more up on that. And I wish I could have gotten my vicoden on the 4th of July when I needed it haha. By the time I was able to get it I wasn't in as intense pain. Recovery with learning how to breastfeed has made things difficult, tiring, and exhausting. But my baby girl Lydia, is SO worth it! She has changed our lives forever!

        Every Day Is Rewarding!