Our first church adventure!

Today we decided that Ellie and I would go to sacrament meeting. I let Steven go to all 3 meetings thinking that it wouldn't be too difficult to get Ellie ready and then to hurry and get ready myself. Well, I was pretty wrong about that! Ellie had woken up more last night than she normally does. For some reason she has only been having 1 Bowel movement a day for the past 3 days. Because of this I think that she had a tummy ache. Anyway, this morning I changed her wet diaper and got her dressed all cute for church. After changing her diaper I fed her. She was happy for a little while and then started acting hungry again. I fed her again and held her for a while. Finally I felt a little rumble and she had a small B.M.!! Who ever knew I'd be so excited to change a poopy diaper! After changing her diaper she fell asleep so I strategically put her in her car seat so that I wouldn't have to wake her up to put her in it later. I had 15 minutes to take a quick shower, get ready for church, and to get to church by then. I took a quick shower, got dressed and did my hair then Ellie woke up and started crying. I picked her up and fed her a little more. She had fallen asleep again, but I could tell that she really needed her diaper changed. She was very messy this time! I almost got her cleaned and was getting her a new diaper when she started urinating. Now there was urine all over the place so I had to do her laundry. As I was doing that she started crying again. I took her out to the rocking chair, finished feeding her and she happily fell asleep. Finally we were ready to go! I looked up at the clock and it was 11:30. Church had just ended. Maybe next week we will actually make it to church.

Elizabeth Mae

On Wednesday, May 12 at 8:11 P.M. our adorable little girl was born!!! She weighed in at 7 lbs. and 4 oz. She is such a sweet little baby!

I went in to be induced that day. I think that was a great choice for me. We were scheduled to go in at 7:00 that morning, but got a call at 6 saying to call them back later on in the morning to see if they still had room for us. We were pretty scared that we were going to have to wait to have her another day. We were already prepared to go in that day. We would have had to wait until next week if that happened. When we called them a little later, they said to come on in at 9:00. We were pretty excited about that. When we got there the nurse took us to our room and got things started! She had a hard time finding a good vein to put the IV in. She had to poke me twice. Once she did that she was able to hook me up to the pitocin. It didn't take long for that to start working. My doctor came in shortly after that and broke my water. That is a weird feeling. The nurse had to keep coming in to up the amount of pitocin because I wasn't feeling enough pain at first. My doctor said that I could start my epidural whenever I wanted to. I wanted to see how the labor contractions felt first. That didn't last too long when they really started to hurt. I was a little nervous about the epidural because I heard that the needle is really big. Getting the epidural put in was nothing compared to the contractions. It is also the best thing ever invented. After it started to work I didn't feel any pain. I actually hadn't felt that good in months. I went through that part of labor until about 7:00 P.M. when I was finally allowed to start pushing. I was determined to get my baby out and I only had to push for close to 45 minutes. The pushing part was the hardest part of labor with the epidural. It did hurt when she was almost out. Everything was better when she was completely out though. I was so happy to see her. They handed her right to me and wiped her off. She was very alert. She didn't seem to want to cry at first. I don't think she really started crying until they put her little hat on :) She still doesn't cry a lot today. Hopefully it stays that way!
Having a little baby is so wonderful, but it is both emotionally and physically draining. Ellie was very good with feeding when we were at the hospital. Everyone was so impressed. When we got home she ate twice and then she suddenly stopped. She wouldn't even open her mouth. I decided that we should at least try feeding her with a bottle. She still wasn't having it. We took her to see the pediatrician the next morning and they had a tough time figuring out what was going on. Finally the nurse put her finger in her mouth, pushed down on her tongue and Ellie started sucking. It was like she forgot how to suck. It was weird. When they weighed her she was 6 lbs and 12 oz. We have been on quite the feeding schedule since then. She had a hard time eating enough at first. We really had to work at getting her to eat 1 oz every 2 hours. The goal is 2 oz every 3-4 hours though. I got her to down 2 oz one night, but she puked that all up. She is improving though. She is even ready to be breastfed again. It was weird because she suddenly started looking for it again yesterday.

It is hard to sleep at night too. Even when she is sleeping well. I am always so nervous that something will happen to her. Hopefully I will learn to sleep a little better soon. I really need to learn to take naps during the day. It is really hard to stay awake when feeding her in the evenings.Well other than the stressful things that have happened, she has really been fun to have here. She is the prettiest and sweetest little girl ever! I am so lucky to have her as my daughter. Steven is also a great daddy! She is lucky to have him for a father.

39 week appointment!!

I went to the Dr. today. It went well. It hurt pretty bad when he checked my cervix this time. I guess I am pretty swollen. I started spotting right away. It was okay though. When the nurse took my blood pressure I was kind of nervous because it was higher than normal. My urine sample was good though. My Dr. said that at this point in pregnancy the blood pressure gets higher easier and that it is nothing to worry about.

So... Here is the best part of today's appointment. I will be induced on WEDNESDAY!! I am pretty excited about it! I will go in at 7 A.M. and they will get things started! My Dr. said that I am a good candidate for being induced since everything is going great. My baby's heartbeat is right where it is supposed to be for a full term baby. My cervix is still 2cm. dilated, but he said that it is also soft. I'm assuming that means that it has softened all of the way. He didn't give me a percentage this time. Well that is all for now!

Getting Nervous!

So it's getting close to time for me to have Ellie and there are some issues that I have thought about that are kind of making me nervous. I hope I'm not going to sound like a mean person with this post, but I was up really late worrying about this last night so here I go... Right now our apartment is very quiet and peaceful and usually Steven and I are the only ones here. We are both somewhat private people and like our peace and quiet. I really do like to have visitors occasionally, and I would probably like to have people over a little more than we do now, but I am scared that after I have our baby everybody is going to want to be here ALL OF THE TIME! The only extra person I really want here for a while is my mom. She will come and help me with things that I need help with, but I don't know if I'd like the stress of having everyone over everyday expecting me to entertain them. I especially don't want them to take my baby from me all of the time. I think I am going to be one of those mom's that wants to hold her baby a lot. I understand that she is the first grandchild and great grandchild... but nobody comes to see me now. I know that I am probably being selfish for thinking this way, but it kind of hurts a little. Hopefully it wont be all bad and everybody will know their limits. I could just be freaking out about nothing, but I can see this stuff happening. I am really glad that everyone is so excited for her to come and that she is going to be so loved. I just hope that it doesn't turn into a stressful situation. Well I don't know if what I wrote makes any sense because I am just rambling on! I just needed to get this out. Hopefully things will turn out great and I can avoid a lot of stress. I don't want to cause any problems with my family. I really want them to be a part of her life. I'm just hoping that they will respect us.

8 days left!

This picture was taken when I was 38 weeks 4 days pregnant

Today Steven told me that he wants Ellie to be born now, so we decided to run A LOT of errands. Lets just say I did a lot of walking today. I have been told that walking helps things move along for labor. Lets hope that all of that walking will pay off! I am sure going to be sore tonight.

In a past post on this blog I had talked about a car seat/stroller combo. that I bought at Kidz again. Just as a refresher, the car seat was on the recall list and we had lost the receipt. I didn't think we were going to do anything about it so it had just been sitting in our garage for the last couple of months. Well today Steven decided that we should try to take it back and explain what had happened. They were awesome about it. They found the car seat on the recall list and apologized over and over again. They said that they normally look stuff up and make sure that they don't sell bad stuff, but somehow that car seat got skipped. They then gave us a complete refund! I was thinking that if they were going to do anything they would give us store credit or something. They kept the stroller too. It feels really good to have that taken care of. I am really glad that they were so willing to take care of the problem too, especially since we didn't have any proof that we had bought it there. We went over to babies R Us afterward and found a stroller that matches our car seat and are thinking about buying it.

We have decided that we will schedule a day to be induced if Ellie doesn't come on her own by my Dr. appointment on Monday. We have decided on Thursday. I talked to some people and I don't see anything wrong with getting my labor induced. I will only be 2 days short of my due date, so it's not like she will be coming extremely early. I am already dilated and my cervix has already thinned enough for everything to work out okay. I think one of the main concerns is that the mothers cervix isn't ready for labor, but mine is already doing what it is supposed to. I have heard about people who had to get induced really early because of medical problems and there main problem was that their cervix wouldn't do what it was supposed to. I've heard of one person being in labor for over 24 hours and her cervix only dilated to a 1, after being induced. She ended up needing a C-section. I think that my situation is completely different, so I don't think that mine will go that way. My Dr. wouldn't have even mentioned it if he didn't think it would work.

38 week Dr. Appointment

This morning I had my Dr. appointment again. It went well like always. I was pretty much measuring the same as last week, which is a good thing. My Dr. said that he thinks that I might have my baby within this week. I sure hope so! He also said that if I don't have her by next week I have the option of choosing a day to have her. I wanted to say that I was ready now, but Steven has his last two finals tomorrow and my mom has a busy week this week too. I guess that it will be good to wait if I can. I haven't heard a whole lot about getting induced so I don't really know the pro's and cons. It seems like some people have no problems with it and some people are completely against it. Everybody that I know who had their labor induced had perfectly healthy babies. I guess I should learn a little about it before making a decision to just get it done next week. If anyone knows anything about it feel free to let me know what you know!