Here are a few pictures from our photo shoot today. Ursula was spending some time with GeGe and PawPaw, so it was just me and my little munchkin. Enjoy!
She must be having a nice dream....
Please, no pictures!
Start at the bottom first...these posted backwards. But at least I got some on here! More hopefully to come soon.
Getting ready to go home...
My little sunbather....
Well, we are finally home with our little Nahla (though from what I'm told, at over 8 1/2 pounds, she's not that little) and we are doing well. We've had 2 nights with her here, one great and the other not so much. We came home on Saturday and I don't think I slept at all that night since Nahla decided to stay awake the entire time. Sunday night, however, after a few little adjustments, she fell asleep around 12:00 and woke up around 4:45am to be fed and was up around 6:20 to start the day....waaaay better! She has had her first Dr, app't and she is doing great! Today I had my first day home alone with everyone, Ursula, Nahla, 3 dogs and 2 cats, as Steve had to attend a seminar for work. I was a little nervous at first, but I have to say, everything went well and much better than I expected. Even the nurse at the Dr office commented that I must be doing well since I was dressed in something other than sweats, my hair and makeup were done, and both my children were dressed and looking great! Now I just hope it continues to go like this and it's not just a fluke thing! We'll see.
Anyway, I am going to now go into all the details of Nahla's birth for those that are interested, and to those that are not, you might want to stop here.
I went to the hospital on Wednesday morning at 8:00am to be induced and truly thinking I would have a baby on the 27th. Well, as you will read, not everything (I mean, NOTHING) went according to plan. I gave my nurse my birth plan which is basically a list of things you would like to happen during and after the birth and I did tell her I was flexible and that I already had to cross off the one that says "Would like labor to start naturally". That should have been my clue as to how things were going to go!
I started receiving Pitocin to start my labor at 9:30am and at that time I was about 1 1/2cm dilated. I went until 3:30 with just mild contractions and made it to 3cm . At that point, the midwife went ahead and broke my water, which instantly started my contractions to become pretty intense.
I labored on until about 6:30 with severe contractions that were less than 1 minute apart and they never came down from their peaks. The midwife wanted to see a nice wave pattern with peaks and valleys, and I guess the high level of Pitocin I was being given caused me essentially to have one sharp contraction after another with no break in between. So I decided to get checked again and thought if I had progressed a bit, I would still continue to try to go without pain meds, but I was told that I was still at 3cm. She also noticed that I had a lot of scar tissue around my cervix (apparently from all the procedures I'd had from my miscarriages) that she didn't think I would progress any more on my own, so I decided to get an epidural. What a relief! Other than the fact that my left leg felt like a beached whale, it was nice to get a break from the pain for a bit....and little did I know I would need it later!
I finally dilated to 10cm around 10:30pm and I didn't get the urge to push until about midnight, so my Doula suggested I do some small pushes to try to get her to descend. Finally around 12:15 (there went May 27th!) I was able to officially start pushing and was told it could take just a few tries, or it sometimes take hours....well, you guessed it, I had to push for 3 hours! At about 2:15am, the midwife found that Nahla was face up and on a diagonal, which meant that once again, I was not going to be able to do this by myself, so she called my doctor in for assistance. He arrived about 3:00 and after several more pushes with the help of a vacuum extractor, Nahla Eveliese was born at 3:24am. My poor girl had a big purple lump on the right side of her head and only now it is back to normal in color and getting smaller everyday.
We had a pretty easy time the first day in the hospital, except for the fact that she started refusing to eat. (I was starting to think that this wasn't my daughter, if she doesn't want to eat! :) So throughout Thursday and Friday, I had all of the doctors, nurses and lactation consultants trying to help me get her to eat. She lost over 7oz the first day and if she lost much more, she wouldn't be able to come home on Sat. Also, her not eating caused her to develop mild jaundice so we had to put her on a lighted bed overnight Friday in hopes that her levels would drop so we could take her home the next day. Friday night in the nursery, she took several bottles and her levels did drop along with another 3oz, but she was still able to come home at 8lb 4oz.
Ever since we've come home, she is eating well and she had her first check-up on Monday. The doctor says she is on her way back up in weight and that everything is perfect so far. Ursula has her 2 year check-up tomorrow, 6/4 and I'm going to take Nahla too to get her weighed to make sure she is gaining what she's supposed to.
She is such a good baby, she sleeps and eats all the time and rarely cries. If she does, it's only for a couple of minutes and it's usually if she's getting a bath or I can't feed her fast enough (now that's more like my daughter :)
Ursula is a huge help, getting out diapers and wipes and cream and she gives her sissy kisses all the time. She's so into baby mode that for the last 2 days, her Mr. Potato head and stuffed duck needed diapers because they poo pooed. The first day it was cute when she took off the diaper and insisted that it needed to be thrown away since it was yuck yuck, but I quickly nipped that in the bud after realizing that we would go through a ton of diapers that way!
Nahla wakes up about once or twice at night, which isn't bad, except she wants to be awake then, so we need to get her little schedule changed a bit so I can get some sleep eventually....other than that, she is a great baby and Ursula is a great big sister. Life is good!
Ok, so I just previewed this post and found that I repeated things, there are 2 different fonts used and some of it might not make sense. Life as a sleepless mother of 2...need I say more???
