Baby girl is here :)

Aly was born on 7/26.  She weighed 6lbs 1oz, and was 19.5'' long.  She's our skinny little princess!!

Here's the story:


On Tuesday, I had everything at home pretty much ready to go, so I was just lounging around the house & getting kind of bored. At about 9:30 I figured I would give the dog a bath while it was still cool enough to put her outside for awhile. As I am in the middle of her bath, the phone started ringing. I couldnt answer because I was all soapy & gross from cleaning up the dog, so I stand up to start cleaning up & felt a whole bunch of water. I was pretty sure it wasn't from bathing the dog, so I started cleaning everything up. I got the dog outside to dry off, got the bathroom cleaned up, and by that time it was pretty apparent that my water had broken. So I called the nurse back - turns out she had just been calling to schedule my induction. Perfect timing I asked if I could stay home for awhile since I wasn't having contractions yet, but they wanted me to come in to get checked. So I called DH and told him he should head home - and while I waited I did the dishes, laundry, cleaned the bathroom, just anything I could to stay busy & hoping that it would start some contractions too.

DH got home and we waited for the laundry to finish washing (too hot to leave wet clothes ), tossed things in the dryer, and went to grab lunch. I knew once I got there they would admit me & not let me eat, so I wanted to get some food first. We grab some fast food & sat in the parking lot to eat. We got to the hospital around 11:30 and got checked in, and they started monitoring for an hour. They checked me & I was at 2. Still no contractions, so they wanted to start pitocin right away. I asked if we could hold off & if I could walk to see if it would start up on its own. I did 40 mins walking (as fast as I could through the halls), 40 mins monitoring until 4:30, but the contractions still were not starting. Since my water had been broken for more than 6 hours at that point, they wanted to go ahead with the pitocin. The bad part is once that started I really was confined to my room since I had the IV pole to lug around The contractions started going & were manageable at first, but by 6:30 they were getting too strong to handle. I debated getting the epi for awhile, but finally decided to go for it. I was disappointed since I really had wanted to do all of it on my own without either of the meds, but oh well. Once I got the epi I was able to relax. At 7 I was at 4, and just hanging out with DH. We figured it would take awhile since I had only gone from 2-4 in the last 5 hours.

At 8 our moms & my sister came up to see us & visit for a bit. They were all watching the contraction monitors & commenting on how high & long they were. I really couldn't feel it, so I was just having a good time hanging out Really, the epi was wonderful! About 9 I felt another pop, and told my mom to go get my nurse. Turns out my water hadn't broken completely before, so I guess that was the rest of it. The nurse came in to get me cleaned up & check again - I was at 8! The moms decided to not leave, but to go hang out in the waiting room. I could feel the pressure of the contractions getting lower & lower - it felt like she was pushing herself out. I told the nurse at 9:30 that I left like she was coming out with each contraction. She checked me again & told me to hold on - she had to call the Dr first. It was time to push!! We were shocked that it had gone that fast!! We were expecting to not get to that point until 3-4am. So the Dr comes in about 9:50 and I start pushing. By 10:12 she was out! DH did cut the cord, and amazingly enough he didn't pass out or anything It sounds dumb, but it didn't really hit me that I was having a baby until she was out. The first thing I said to DH when I saw her was "OMG - that's a BABY!! " The nurse & the Dr just laughed. I did end up needing a couple of stitches because it went so fast, but she's tiny so thankfully she didn't do too much damage!!

It all went really, really fast. And was surprisingly a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I wish some things could have gone a bit differently, but overall it was a really wonderful experience. She had some issues with nursing at first - for the first day she just was not interested at all and would just sleep. I couldn't get her to wake up, and if she did she would not open up her mouth at all. The LC came in & we tried a nursing shield a few times. That's apparently all she needed to figure out what she was supposed to be doing. The next time I tried to use it she fussed & pulled it off. She figured out how to latch on her own, and was doing great until my milk came in all the way and we had to bring back the shield.  Right now we are dealing with engorgement & a mild case of mastitis, so hopefully we can get that cleared up & go back to nursing without the shield soon.


This last week has been really, really crazy.  But for the most part I am loving every sleep-deprived second :)