Aubrey Rose

It all started on Monday, April 6th at 2 a.m. when my water broke. I had only been sleeping for about an hour when it woke me up. I woke Rob up and told him that I thought my water had broken and a few hours later (after showering and drying my hair of course...) we headed off to the hospital. We must have gotten there around 4 or 4:30 a.m. when I was checked out my a nurse and hooked up to some antibiotics and an I.V. It was my first time getting an I.V. so I wasn't really looking forward to it, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. After a few minutes of waiting, we walked down to my room where I got all hooked up and sat for a while to wait for the Dr. to come in and see what we should do. At this point I wasn't noticing any contractions and I was still only dilated about 3 cm so the doctor decided to start me on pitocin to get things moving. After a few hours of the pitocin my contractions were getting to be a bit painful so I decided to get a dose of nubain to take the edge off of the contractions (it worked! but also made me really loopy feeling) That dose lasted a little over an hour but I wanted to wait and see what I could handle before getting another or having an epidural. Well, around 12:30 or so my contractions were getting worse and I wanted to see how much I had dilated before getting any more pain medication. The doctor came in and checked me and said I was about 3 1/2 centimeters and suggested me getting the epidural because I was progressing so slowly. It took a little while for the anesthesiologist come in and get started and by the time he did start to put the epidural in my contractions were getting really bad. (It didn't help that it took him 3 tries and over 20 minutes to get the epidural in). So at about 1:40 he was finally done and said that my contractions would start to feel less intense...that never happened...they just kept getting worse and I began to feel like this babies head was going to pop out any second. I started to feel like I needed to push and so the nurse went and got a doctor again and when she checked me I was 10 centimeters! So I basically went from 3 1/2 to 10 cm in about 40 minutes. At this point things got a little crazy in the delivery room as they quickly set up and got everyone in the room they needed and I started to push. 40 minutes later, at 2:47 p.m. Rob told me that we had a little girl. I will never forget the look on his face and tears in his eyes when he saw her for the first time and then told me what we had. Rob then cut the umbilical cord and they took Aubrey over to the warmers to check her out and heat her up (she came out looking very blue). They stitched me up and I was soon able to hold my daughter for the first time. She felt so perfect in my arms and was wide awake just looking at Rob and I - I will never forget that moment.

Today Aubrey is 8 days old and I cannot believe how blessed I am to have this sweet girl in my life. She is such a good baby. She eats and sleeps really well and I don't even mind having to get up with her in the night to cuddle her and feed her. I never get tired of looking at her and snuggling with her - she is a great snuggler already! Rob and I are just so in love with her and can't believe that she's actually here and is actually ours.

I'll leave you with some pictures of our sweet Aubrey Rose.

False Alarm

It looks like we'll have to wait a little longer before this baby enters the world. On Wednesday I had my 39 week appointment and my doctor said that I was almost 3 cm dilated and about 75-80% effaced so she decided to strip my membranes (yes, that sounds about as pleasant as it feels) which is really just trying to thin out my cervix to get this baby to come sooner. I think she secretly wanted it to put me into labor because she was on call the next day and really wants to deliver this baby - we want that too! She told me it would be common for me to have cramps or spot after the exam and so for the next 6 hours I ignored the cramps I was feeling. Finally around 11:30 p.m. I decided to time the "cramps" to see if they could actually be contractions and they were 10 minutes apart for a little over an hour and a half. Because they were so consistent ant I figured that they must be contractions, not just cramps, but they didn't really hurt as much as I thought they would. I was somehow able to fall asleep from around 1 to 3 a.m. when I woke up to more contractions but they felt a bit closer together than they did a few hours before. I tried to ignore them and fall back asleep because I just didn't really think this was it but they wouldn't go away. I finally woke Rob up around 4 a.m. and we decided to time the contractions, though they still didn't hurt that badly. We timed for an hour and they were all between 3 and 5 minutes apart and lasted for an average of a minute and a half each. Now, in our birthing classes they told us that we should be going into the hospital when contractions are 5 minutes apart, lasting for 1 minute a piece for an hour. We decided to call the on-call Dr. to see what we should do. She told us that we should get our things together and come in because it was most likely the "real deal". So at 5:30 a.m. we were getting ready to go to the hospital and possibly meet our little bundle of joy in a matter of hours! We got to the hospital around 6:30 a.m. on Thursday morning and I sat with a monitor on my belly for a little over 20 minutes to check to babies heart rate and then the Dr. came in to check my cervix. It was so neat to be able to listen to his or her heart beat for that long - usually it's only about a minute that we hear at my regular check-ups, so this was a real treat. At this point I knew for sure that I was having real contractions because every time I had one it's little heart rate would shoot up and then slowly go back down- too cute! But anyways...the Dr. came in to check my cervix and she said I hadn't changed at all since my appointment the afternoon before so we should walk the halls for an hour and then come back to be checked again to see if I would dilate more. We walked the 3rd floor of Strong for an hour (which does get rather boring because we had to stay in the birthing center area) and when we got back to be checked again, there was no change. The Dr. told me that I looked ready because the baby's head is all lined up and everything is "ready to go" except I wasn't dilating anymore. At this point they sent us home and told us not to come back until the contractions were stronger and even closer together. So now we wait. I came home yesterday morning, caught up on some sleep and when I woke up the contractions were gone. They came back last night when we were at a show and lasted through the night but they're really not very strong and definitely not regular. I keep trying to think of anything I can do to get this baby to come sooner but nothing has worked so far. Maybe I'll deep-clean the apartment to see if that will help (I just won't tell Rob until I'm finished!) Hopefully this little bundle of joy will decided to come soon, but if not we'll be ready for him or her whenever he or she wants to meet us! Hopefully the next post will be our birth story and some pictures of this sweet baby!