a new little one

So, we're driving to the hospital early tuesday morning for my scheduled elective induction.

We are five days out from the due date and I am already measuring 42 weeks. These dinosaur children have seriously aged me five years too fast. We are thrilled to be having a baby under somewhat controllable circumstances compared to no control and no nurses available with halle's birth. We get there, they check me in, they hook me up, and at about 8:30 they start the pitocin. Halle is safe with the Bells so mom could be in the delivery room.

At this point I have barely felt any contractions and am already dilated to a 5.

I get my epidural. the anesthesiologist was in a hurry to get to a c-section. That scared me. He did the deed and I start to go numb and am incredibly happy I have felt almost zero pain. 11:30 the nurse comes to check me and asks Wes to guess what I am dilated to. He says probably a 6. She checks and says I am now a 10 and it is time to get the doctor and push. Whoa baby, we are going to have a baby before lunch. My doctor had joked that we could have a baby before lunch, but had no idea just how true that statement would be. I am feeling amazing and think every birth should be like this.

I start to push.

Soon miss lily's head makes her debut.

The details of this birth from this point on were unknown to me until much later. No one let on that anything was wrong, so the whole time I am in a drugged happy place thinking everything is going great. How Wes kept a straight face I will never know.

So the head is out, but it comes out with the cord wrapped around the neck. No biggie, just get the rest of the body out and everything is fine. Except that her shoulder is stuck behind my pubic bone. Apparently this is a delivery complication that doctors train for called shoulder dystocia. I suspected something was up when they were having me push even when I wasn't contracting and then when they really started almost to get on my case about pushing and they were inverting the bed so my head was below my legs I figured something was not right. Finally the shoulders were delivered and luckily they didn't have to break any collar bones. Head delivered at 11:44 and the rest delivered at 11:46.

She was huge.

And beautiful.

And wouldn't cry.

She made the tiniest little whining noise and it was hard for her to even do that. The nurses kept trying to rough her up to get her to open her lungs and scream, but she wouldn't. She was working way too hard to breathe, so they decided to take her to a nursery and put her on oxygen. She weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 5oz. I now know why I was measuring 42 weeks!

They let me hold sweet Lily for about 47 seconds before they took her away.

It is a weird feeling to have your baby taken away without knowing what is wrong with her. So they stitched me back up and made sure I was fine and then took me in a wheel chair down to the nursery. If it is weird to have your new baby taken away from you it is even weirder to see them hooked up to all kinds of cords, monitors, and machines.

They took me to a recovery room while they took Lily off of oxygen to see if they had opened up her lungs. Halle actually got to see Lily through the glass at this point. The little sweetheart looked in there and asked if she could put a blanket on Lily. I think they bonded right there.

Bad news came, she was still holding her breath and working too hard so they decided to do a chest x-ray. The chest x-ray showed some haze in her lungs but nothing that jumped out at them. It was awful waiting in my room with Wes, worrying, while they tried to figure out what was going on. Wes and Gary gave little Lily a blessing and the next time they tried to take her off oxygen she was breathing fine! They cleaned her up and several hours after she was born she was all ours in my room. Halle got to hold her for the first time and is the sweetest big sister. Grandma Nimer and Uncle Ryan also came to visit. The Bells had to head off to New York so they didn't get to hold her until a few days later, but I am so grateful they took care of Halle all morning. Mom spent the night with me in the hospital and it seemed like everything was okay

That lasted about 10 hours.

Because she was such a big baby they kept monitoring her blood sugar. It was on the low normal side. It didn't help that I wasn't allowed to give her that first feeding for several hours. And then it turns out she wasn't a fan of eating and doing the whole suck and swallow thing. She barely ate anything and her blood sugar kept getting lower and lower. Finally at midnight it was dangerously low and she was taken back to the nursery to be put on an IV. Oh I hated it. By this time my epidural is wearing off and I am noticing something is not right. There is terrible shooting pain every time I try to move, lift, or put pressure on my right leg. I can't walk without a lot of assistance and something to lean on. We figure the pain will go away quickly as my body recovers and don't pay too much attention to it. I pump and visit Lily every couple hours. She finally figures out how to suck because I made them give me a binky to try to get her to learn. Halle had the same issue. She eventually learns to eat through a syringe and has to be fed formula so they can get her blood sugar up in the next few days so she can hopefully come home with me.

My second day in the hospital was something I will never forget. They kept Lily in the nursery all day. Wes stayed with me all day while Halle was at home with Grandma Nimer. Because of the pain in my leg I literally could not even get to the bathroom without Wes helping me. He did EVERYTHING for me that day. He ordered my food, got me water, started my shower, absolutely everything. I don't think you really know how much someone loves you until you can't help yourself and the other person has to step up and pick up the slack in a big way. I didn't know it was possible but my love for Wes grew so much that day. I don't think we realize how great our husbands are until we give them a chance to be great. Our relationship was strengthened as we spent so much time together laughing at office episodes and holding our beautiful baby as she struggled to eat.

My favorite times when I was in the hospital were when they brought Halle to visit me. I loved snuggling with her on my bed watching movies. There is something about that girl that brightens up any room she is in. And I really needed her when things were hard with Lily. The hardest part about staying near Lily was being away from Halle.

During that second day Lily started to keep her blood sugar up so they started to wean her off the IV to see if she could keep it up on her own and so I could hopefully bring her home with me. She did great throughout the night and the next morning I was able to check out with my new baby in tow. Halle was so excited to bring her home.

We had to go back for jaundice checkups and my doctor sent me to the ER because apparently it is not normal to be unable to walk due to pain after giving birth. The ER couldn't decide if it was a damaged nerve, a severely pulled muscle, or a bruised bone that was causing so much pain. They sent me home with crutches and no diagnosis. We have been to that hospital way too many times now. So at least the no walking thing was fixed. I couldn't put any pressure on my right leg and no one could tell me what was going on. Nothing changed for a whole week and I was starting to get nervous about my mom heading home and Wes going back to work. I couldn't even carry my baby around, how was I supposed to do this alone? Miraculously, the day my mom left the pain improved so much I could walk and now I am basically normal just sore if I walk a lot. I truly believe my prayers and the prayers of so many family members were answered in the hour that I needed them to be.

Lily is a wonderful addition to our family, but oh it was a little bit of a rough start getting her here. She sleeps like an angel, eats dainty little portions, thinks she is all that, and spits up like there is no tomorrow.

Halle adores her and is so helpful. She bounces her when she starts to whine and tells me I need to feed her if she starts to cry. I sometimes feel so guilty about the time with Halle I have had to give up to take care of Lily. But I know there are so many things Lily can teach Halle that I never could

one week old

We are so happy to have little Lily be a part of our world.