maybe tomorrow...

well, we don't get to go home today. Alexis' biliruben numbers have gone way down (from 25 to 14) and are now at an acceptable amount. But when they did tests on her urine yesterday there were some indicators of a urinary tract infection, so the dr. wants to keep her here one more night and test her urine again in the morning. She said if Alexis developed a uti after she was sent home, so would run a really high fever and we'd have to bring her back to the emergency room, so rather than risk that we have to stay one more night.

Hopefully her urine is clean in the morning and they'll discharge us. Luckily Alexis really likes it under those lights, so she's not crying at all. She just wiggles around when she's awake, but sleeps most of the time. Andrew and I both agree that they need to sell these incubators for home use! She has only cried when being poked/prodded by the nurses. Normally at home she hates not being held, so we were worried she'd be crying the whole time and we wouldn't be able to hold her.

On a side note, we're very proud of her motor skills at a week old. In her wiggling around she keeps rolling from her back to her side. I told Alexis that I was impressed, but she needed to stay on her back! haha... but we keep putting her on her back and she keeps rolling to her side, apparently she prefers to sleep on her side :)

Alexis is in the hospital :(

We had our first doctor's appointment this morning, and obviously it didn't go very well. The dr. said she looked a little jaundiced, nothing too bad, but she still wanted to have blood work done. So we went over to the hospital to get the blood drawn and they told us they'd call us with the results.

We then went over to the mall to see my AE coworkers and to stop by Toys R Us to get some baby stuff we needed. We first stopped in the nursing center so I could feed Alexis, and by the time we were done there Andrew had received a voicemail from the dr's office saying to call them right back and have the answering service page them (it was their lunch hour). So of course this worried us and we called right back.

The dr. said her jaundice level was really high and she needed to be admitted to stay in the hospital overnight under a bili-lite. So now we're in the hospital, fortunately they set up the incubator in a room, so Andrew and I are able to stay with her.

I'm praying we're able to come home tomorrow, but from the answers the nurses keep giving us, it's not looking good. Hopefully we won't have to stay too long. It's terrible to not be able to hold her all day like I'm used to, but of course I just want her to get better.

Fortunately we can still hold her for a little while when she gets fed. Right now we're having to give her formula that's suppose to help her get better faster, but I'm pumping to keep my supply up, so I can keep breastfeeding when we get home.

Anyway, that's the update... keep little Alexis in your prayers.

First day by ourselves

So far today has gone pretty well. It's the first day of being by ourselves for a whole day. Alexis is still sleeping a lot, so that helps. She slept better last night, we got a good 3 hours of sleep toward the end of the night/early morning.
She also had her first bath at home, just a washcloth bath, but still a milestone :) Alexis isn't a big fan of being naked, wet and cold... but she was a trooper and now is nice and clean!

She likes to hang out with daddy while he plays video games, he sits in his video game chair and she lays on his chest... it's cute :)

Tomorrow we're scheduling our doctor's appointments. Alexis will see her pediatrician on Tuesday or Wednesday for a checkup and I'll see my doctor in 6 weeks to make sure everything healed ok.

Oh, and for everyone wondering about our animals... we boarded the dogs for the weekend, so we're picking them up tomorrow. Still keeping our fingers crossed about how Mayer's going to react. The cats are pretty indifferent to the new addition to the family. All of them have come and sniffed Alexis, but other than that haven't shown much interest. I will say though that the cats do NOT like being kicked out of the bedroom at night... lots of meows at the door last night, but they'll get over it. They all seem to think the pack and play, crib and changing pad are new beds for them, so they can't sleep in our room with us anymore.

I'll try to keep everyone posted, we're taking lots of pictures, so eventually I'll get some posted on a picture hosting site and post the link :)

Alexis is here!

She was born yesterday at 7:05pm. 8lbs 7 oz. and 21 inches :)

here's the whole, long story:
I woke up at 3:40 am on Thursday, July 24th to go to the bathroom. I got to the bathroom (fortunately) and had a gush of liquid run down my leg. I didn’t really feel the “gush” feeling though, it just came out. I was thinking it was my water breaking, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up!

So I went to the bathroom and it was then that I realized my water had blood in it. So even if it wasn’t my water breaking, I still needed to call my doctor. So I went to another room (didn’t want to wake Andrew) and called the doctor. I got the after hours operator and told her what happened. She paged the on call doctor, who called me back about 2 minutes later. She asked if I was having contractions, which I said I wasn’t sure. But I was pretty sure it was my water breaking because I could still feel it dribbling out (and that I had put a pad on). The dr. told me I needed to go to L&D and they would check me to see if it was my water that broke and if I was having contractions.

I went and woke up Andrew, who of course was a little out of it, since it was 3:50am. He went and took a shower while I got all the last minute stuff together for the hospital. At this point I was getting excited, but I still didn’t really want to get my hopes up too high! After we packed up the last minute stuff in the bags, Andrew got everything in the car while I got food and water full for our cats and dogs (the dogs we later had Andrew's mom take to a boarder, but the cats are roaming around at home). As soon as we were sure we had everything ready, we left for the hospital which is only about 5 minutes away. When we got there we went to the emergency room, and they had someone from L&D come get me. By that time my pad had pretty much soaked through, so the triage nurses could tell that it was my water. But they checked me anyway(it was about 5am at this point), and checked my dilation. I was 1cm and thick (2 days before at my dr’s appointment I was a fingertip). I was admitted and had all the paperwork signed, my IV (fluids) hooked up, and the monitors hooked up. By this time I was having contractions every 2-4 minutes, but they weren’t that bad... 4 ½ hours later I was still having contractions about every 2 minutes and was STILL only 1cm, so they started pitocin. By 11:20am I had gone to 2cm and got some stadol to help with the contractions, that were starting to get stronger. The stadol didn’t help that much with the contractions, but it helped me relax more in between… kinda made me a little drunk feeling.

By the time 3:20pm came around, the contractions were getting terrible and I was practically begging for an epidural! Being a ftm I can’t say for sure, but I think the pitocin was making the contractions just terrible… I could hardly stand it. And in 4 hours I had only progressed 1 cm, even on pitocin. So at 3:20 the guy came in to do my epi, which was great because it let me relax and let the pitocin do its job. However, it wasn’t what I expected because there was a “hotspot” that it didn’t work in, so there was a spot that I felt everything, and that still hurt really really bad.

But, like I said the epi helped the pitocin work… by 4:35 (a little over an hour later) I was already at 6cm. And by 6:15pm I just had a little lip left. I started pushing at 6:45pm and pushed for 50 minutes. Pushing was hard… I could feel when to push because I could still feel the contractions in the “hot spot”, but I didn’t feel that pressure that I’ve heard people talk about. About ½ way through pushing they gave me an oxygen mask to help me breath after pushing… it’s a lot of work! Haha

I had a little tear and a small episiotomy… I didn’t really want one, but by that point I didn’t care, I just wanted her out! When she was born, she had some fluid in her lungs, so that had to be suctioned out, but other than that she was great… scored a 7.9 on her apgars. I was glad she decided to come early though, she would’ve been a BIG baby is she went over her due date!

update

I went to the doctor today, and so far no progress. She said at my appointment next week we can set an induction date... so that's exciting! At the latest, Alexis should be here by the end of next week :)

I'm still hoping that she'll come on her own soon, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high. I'm just trying to keep myself entertained until my little girl finally makes her debut :)

it's been a while

It's been a while since I last posted, so I thought I'd write an update :)

Since I last posted, my due date has actually been moved up to July 29th. It really wasn't moved... turns out I had 3 different due dates in my file, and we decided that July 29th was the most accurate, so now I only have 11 more days until I'm due! Alexis could come any day now :) I doubt she'll come until some time in August, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.

We've got everything ready for her, everything's washed and sanitized, the carseat is installed... I still need to prewash the cloth diapers we just got in, but she'll probably wear disposables for the first month or so, so I still have lots of time for that.

Andrew is playing a big airsoft game this weekend, it's a 24 hour game that starts on Saturday morning and ends Sunday morning, so of course he's hoping Alexis waits until after this weekend to make her debut. He also has to work on Sunday night and then again at 5am on Monday, so he's hoping she waits until Tuesday after he's had a chance to rest.

I personally just want her here! :)