She's here she's here she's here!!! Our Almond is here! Our sweet little dark haired, dark eyed little girl decided to come out and play!
After 2 weeks of craptastic prodromal labor, and 11 hours of active labor, she arrived at 5:41AM on 9/3/15. 7.0lbs and 18.5" of pure hand sucking joy. I got my VBAC, no cesarean required. The hubby hung on all night in his work shirt, as I summoned him from there... and I guess I kept complaining about being warm so the room was cool. Or something. I definitely remember the temp of the room never seemed right.
I was at my mom's when my belly started to feel funny. Felt like I was having a 20 minute contraction - not painful but so so so very tight. After that the "real" contractions started, the ones that sent me to the hospital, the ones that got me admitted.
(Watching her on the monitor and listening to Peanut play trains while typing this, good fun!)
The shaking, puking, constant back labor... I soon decided to get some pain meds. Epidural worked this time, more so in my left side, which we all agreed was great considering it didn't take at all in my left side with Peanut. Alas the medicine works by gravity and Almond wasn't liking me laying on my right side, so by the time it was time to push, which was just an hour or so after my water broke? I had been on my left side for quite a while and I couldn't move that leg at all. So that was fun! Took hours for it to wear off too on that side, later on I made a little white lie and said I was fiiiiiiiine so I could get my shower, hehe.
When I summoned the nurse to let her know I suspected I was ready to push, at the same time the doctor on call (nice old man) was getting the other patient in active labor ready for a c-section after her body reacted poorly to the pitocin. We weren't sure who was going to get to go first, but I guess she ended up being fairly comfortable after they took her off the drugs, so they decided to take care of me first, or at least to let me give pushing a shot? I kind of got my hopes up that it'd be like 3 pushes when they immediately decided that I got to go first after giving it a go, it still took 40 minutes of pushing to get her out. But we did it!
(She's whimpering a bit in the crib, but A) she's got to learn to like it sometime and B) if she doesn't take the best nap ever that's fine, she likes to be up at night)
She came and I got her on my chest and I got to coo at her and stroke her face. Pretty emotional stuff, especially reflecting at the time how I didn't get anything like that with Peanut, they pretty much took him away after a brief look.
I guessed like 6lbs 13oz for her weight, Hubby guessed the same as me so I decided his guess was 7lbs.... which ended up being right. So I decided I got credit for the right guess ;) She hung out in our room for most of the day without getting a bath. The nurses kept smiling and saying how nice it was to see how much we just wanted to hold her and didn't care that she wasn't squeaky clean.
She had jaundice in the intermediate to high range, making her very very sleepy but we didn't need to keep her for bili lights or anything. Today she's 12 days old, and she's at 7lbs and 5oz, so above birth weight. Aside from the middle of the night party sessions things are going well. Peanut loves her, I'm healing, Hubby is surviving her and work and helping out tons. Though I suppose I should go give Peanut a little more attention while she's napping. I wanted to jot down the memories before I forget though, and my usual computer time is after he goes to bed... and I've been crashing about the same time lately. Heh... heh... *yawn*
