The First Month

It's been sort of rough. We haven't found our rhythm quite yet. The first two weeks were not great and then I had to go back to the hospital for a D&C as I had retained part of my placenta - I then had to have a blood transfusion partly due to the birth and partly due to the D&C. We had wonderful friends visit while we were back in the hospital and a ton of other wonderful friends make us food so we wouldn't need to cook for a while! The last two weeks have had ups and downs. Lilli does not like the bassinet so our sleeping arrangements have been a bit random. She also doesn't like pacifiers so no help there. The swing has been moderately successful but I think she sees it as entertainment more often then some place to fall asleep. Mostly she falls asleep while eating and I fall asleep while holding her before I can try and get her in the bassinet. Most recently the three of us have had colds to deal with - Dan got it worse than Lilli or I but we're all still a bit congested. We're at the point where Dan and I are desperately waiting for that first really big smile at one of us - maybe with some giggles - we're pretty worn down with crying and staring, at this point and are really praying for some genuine happy interaction. We know it will come but we are essentially in the boot camp of parenthood and just trying to get through every day in one, halfway sane, piece.

Birth Story - Finally

So we went in to my prenatal appointment on the 1st. Of course everything looked fine but I hadn't made any further progress and we were trying to avoid induction with pitocin. So since Doc was getting sort of antsy we decided to go ahead and let her strip my membranes and see if that would get the ball rolling - it did, rather dramatically. My water broke in the office and at that point we were basically on our way. We went home to get our things together and relax for a couple hours then headed in to the birth center around 1pm. At that point we just hung out for a few hours hoping that labor would start on its own but nothing was happening. I think around four or five we all agreed it was time to start the pitocin (I don't have any prior experience to base this off of but it wasn't that bad). After a little bit contractions finally started - and this is where everything gets a bit fuzzy. I'm sure I made it through the first few centimeters just fine - we walked, used the tub, used the birth ball but after a while I started throwing up and this was the point that I sorta just blacked out and rode out the storm. Things cleared up for a little bit when I started feeling the need to push (I got the "you need to wait for the doctor to get here speech" - yeah right :p ). For a while the pushing was great but then the contractions started coming right on top of each other and I'd been at it for several hours and was exhausted. But after 23 hours of unmedicated labor - three of which I was pushing - Lilliara was born at 9:40 on 11/2. She wasn't a screamer and the doc was a little worried but she was "fine". We both had fevers for a short time and I was rather anemic (nearly passed out when they were transferring me to recovery) but after an extra day in the hospital we got to come home. Then 2 weeks later I got to go back and have a D&C as we had trouble getting the placenta out - the doc had to remove it manually and apparently some of it got left behind. Hopefully I'll get a clean bill of health at my appointment tomorrow and I can start feeling human again.

On our way...

So we went in for our check up this morning and I figured we may as well let the doc sweep the membranes - it would either work or not - and it ended up breaking my water. So now we're on the clock - we will have a baby by tomorrow at 10am at the absolute latest - but hopefully sooner ;) I haven't started contracting yet but we will be heading in to the hospital in about an hour so we'll see how things go from here... Dan is excited because if she comes by the end of the day then her 1st birthday will be 11/1/11 :D