The first....

SMILE!

7 weeks ago

We brought Lillie home. The first night was a rough one, no wonder insurance only pays for two nights - the nurses send you home before you know you really need them! This is what parenting's all about though right? Feeding every 2 hours, and by the way, remember that's counted from when you start feeding, not from when they finish. So in reality that could mean that mom only gets 15-30 minutes rest time.

We traded sleeping, holding, rocking, singing everything we could think of, if only we'd been parenting for more than 48 hours! Finally rescue came around 6 am when Lillie wore herself out. Just in time for us to take a quick nap, have a coffee and figure out how to load her up for the first pediatrician's appointment.

Lillie's here!

arriving 7 weeks ago today...pardon our tardiness but we've been so wrapped up with our dear daughter i forgot to post.

Since week 35 (May 22), Lillie had been making progress, during that visit we were already dialated 1cm and 70% effaced, and the baby's head was in position at the top of the birthing canal. The baby had been head down since at least week 32 (May 8). At each of the next weekly appointments I kept dialating and our doctor kept saying that the baby could arrive at any time. It felt like the baby was never going to get here and we thought she'd be early since every week there was more progress. To stay busy, I continued with pre-natal yoga, took long walks and worked.

At our 40 week visit on June 19, we were 2cm and 85% effaced and the baby was at 0 station, meaning the head was engaged in my pelvis and ready to descend whenever baby decided on a birthday. While we were excited, we'd been hearing these type of great news for weeks but figured we were in for the long haul and like most first borns, baby would arrive well after the due date. All along we hadn't gotten hung up about the DD anyhoo, but really thought squiggs would arrive early once we learned all that my body was doing to get ready.

Over the weekend Ryan and I did some house projects, took naps, watched movies and with the gorgeous summer weather on sunday took a long vigorous walk. After a scramble dinner we went to bed early to be rested for the work week.

FIRST LESSON OF PARENTING: nothing goes the way you think it will.

Speed ahead to 2:30 am. I get up as I often have to do late in pregnancy with a bladder the size of a penny. And, felt a contraction. Again not unusual at 40 weeks. Climbing back in bed I say to Ryan "i think we might have a baby today." Who immediately turns on the lights, leaps out of bed and is ready to go, meanwhile I'm trying to eek out a last few cozy minutes in bed. We agree to see how things go, and within two hours Ryan has coaxed me to head to Good Sam. Arriving at the hospital at 5:15a, we are shown to our room, vitals taken and examined. It's good news, we're 5cm, 100% effaced and baby's head is in great position.

Fighting off nausea and the contractions, Ryan convinces me to take the epidural which was so the right thing to do.