What a Merry Christmas!

Hello to all! And Merry Christmas!

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As you all know, I recently gave birth to our first child on December 11th at 1:11pm. She is a beautiful little girl by the name of Elizabeth Noelle. She came in weighing 8 pounds and 5 ounces and 19 inches (not completely stretched out, for reasons I will get into later). Now being almost 2 weeks old, I finally get a moment, and access to the Internet, to write about her.

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As some of you also know, our plan was to have her as naturally as possible. Well, this is not what happened. I was due on the 4th, and due to medical reasons, basically being that the safest time to deliver a baby is between the 39th and 41st week, my doctor told us that if we had not gone into labor by the 10th she wanted to induce. She said that I was a prime candidate for inducement with "vaginal success", so not to worry too much.

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I really wanted her to come on the 7th, I thought that would be a cool day to be born on, but in spite of all our attempts to induce, she held out, and held out, and held out. All the while I was getting more and more grumpy about the whole thing. I did not want to have to be induced, I wanted to be able to go into labor, and I had been told that if I were induced, because it brings on contractions quicker and stronger, there was a more likely chance that I would want to have medication, which I didn't.

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Anyways, the whole weekend passed, and still no labor. So we called the hospital as told on Monday morning the 10th at 7am to find out when we were supposed to arrive at the hospital. (We had an appointment, but nothing is certain with inductions, if they have a busy day, or an emergency, you are likely to be bumped.) Well, they were having an emergency and said they would call us between 11 and 12, so I went back to bed having not slept well (also a contributing factor to my grumpiness). They called us to say, later. We called them to hear later. And finally around 5pm we heard tomorrow. Dang it all! I was irritated, even though I didn't want to have her on the 10th, something to do with my minor OCD and having a thing for odd numbers.

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Again, I did not sleep well, and thought about calling at 3 in the morning to see if we could get a jump on things, they had said that we could come in at midnight, but we were so tired, we didn't want to start the process of labor in such a state, not that the nights sleep did anything to help. We called at 6:30 and were admitted to the hospital at 7:30. Yay! My doctor came in to check my progress, I was at total effacement and 3 cent dialated. At 9am we started the potocin drip and gradually increased it so I was having contractions. They weren't all that strong when my doctor came back to break my water at 11:30. Upon doing so, she made a discovery, soon to be confirmed by an ultrasound, Elizabeth was breech!

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So much for any of that natural stuff. Medically induced, breech baby, going in for a c-section, gonna have to have drugs... My doctor was awesome. She stood there and told me what could happen if we tried to have her naturally (that her head could get stuck as my cervix began to close down, beings that normally the smallest part of the baby would come out last so the cervix would be almost done, just when the head-the biggest part-was attempting to come out). Well, that wasn't an idea I liked. So, we prepped for surgery, that is after my doctor's patient next door gave birth to her 5th, which didn't take long.

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I should be writing this story in segments

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To surgery! Yay!- Not so much, but at least I was going to see my little girl soon. They gave me a spinal block and the lower 3/4 of my body was soon asleep. One of the weirdest sensations for me was that as my legs fell asleep they were up in the air, and that is how they continued to feel to me, even after I saw them put them down and strap them to the table. The doctors cut me open, I felt some tugging and pushing on my belly, they said she was coming out, the Anaesthesiologist told Jake he should watch, that he would regret it if he didn't, Jake watched, they told me to look to the right as she went by, and I had a little girl. Oh my goodness! Jake was so cute, he couldn't figure out where was supposed to be, with me or her, and kept going back and forth, or stretching out over the 5 foot space trying to touch us both.

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Jake took Elizabeth with the nurse to the nursery to get her cleaned and weighed and all that stuff while I was being sewn, stapled, cleaned, and trying to breathe and ward off nausea (side effect of the anaesthesia).

Pictures to come soon.

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She got an 8 on her 1 minute APGAR, and a 9 on her 5 minute. Almost a completely healthy baby if not for 2 small things, well they are small now, but I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I heard them for the first time. First, she was born with hip displasia, which means that her hips were out of socket, a problem that I was born with and my mother before me. (Although until that day I did not know that I too had had the problem) She is now wearing a harness for the next few months to hold her hips in socket as the bones form around the joint. This harness has a 90 something success rate, so hopefully that will take care of it and like me she will show no signs of the problem thereafter.

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The second thing was that she had a heart murmur. This is the one that got me. I had heard the doctor and Jake talking and all I heard out of the conversation was bi-pass. AHH! As it turns out the kind of bi-pass that they were talking about and the kind I was thinking were not the same thing, thank you God! We went to the cardiologist last week and there is nothing to be concerned about. There are a couple of holes in her heart, but they are of the sort that should close by themselves in the next couple of years. To prove how unconcerned the doctor was, we have a follow-up appointment in 4 years.

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So, our baby is very healthy, even if she looks a little funny in her harness. She is beautiful and has so many expressions, even if some of them are brought on by gas. We are in total rapture with her. Now we are about to celebrate her first Christmas, her 2 week old birthday! Yay!!!

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Well this post has gone on long enough, I think I got everything in there. I love you all, have a wonderful Christmas, we can't wait to introduce you to our little hippo (name we gave her because of her eating habits). Merry Christmas!