Savannah-- January 22, 2010

Two kids. Wow. They told me that Jack would want to rock when I fed Savannah and he does. He jumps up quite often.


Finally a sister!


Look how big he is!


So cute.


Precious.

She's here!! Finally... after 11 months of trying and 9 months of pregnancy, I finally have my girl. Her birth was quite the adventure... As I said, in my last pregnancy post, my blood pressure was acting up so my doctor decided to induce me at 37 weeks. We were scheduled to be first on the list so we got to the hospital at 5am. It took about two hours to figure out what my doctor wanted to do, but finally they put me on a cervix ripening agent. We were going to do that for 3 hours and see if there was any progress and then start Pitocin after that. They started me on that at about 7am. I was dilated 1cm and not effaced at all. At 9am, I was still on dilated about 1, but I was starting to efface. My doctor decided to break my water at this point. I thought it was a little early, especially since they hadn't started me on the Pitocin yet. But, they broke it anyway and I geared up for some pain. It actually wasn't that bad. They started me on Pitocin at about 11am. I was still not dilated very much, but I was effaced maybe 60%. Jason was a trooper and hung out with me all day (like he wouldn't). He left right after this to go get a movie. He got "Baby Mama." It was really funny, but my contractions started getting pretty bad at this point so I couldn't laugh very effectively. :) I made it about an hour without an epidural and when I asked for one I had it in about 5 minutes. I LOVE the epidural. It was wonderful! I was able to enjoy the movie after that. The rest of the day was spent watching TV and dozing on and off. At 4pm, they checked me again and I was STILL at a 1... maybe a 2. AUGH! Jason left at this point to go see Jack for a bit and get him back over to my parents. We figured at this point it would be a long night. I slept and watched Oprah... My doctor was going to come see me sometime around 5pm. She was delivering a baby so she didn't make it until around 630pm. By that point, I hadn't been checked in 2+ hours and I was beginning to feel like it was never going to happen! She came in and checked me and cheered!! I was at a 5. YEAH. Finally some progress. She and the nurse started saying that I would have this baby by 10pm. I was just happy to finally be doing something. My epidural started wearing off on one side of my body. I could feel her descend into my pelvis a little bit. The doctor had told me that might happen and to up the dose if I wanted. The pain wasn't that bad so I let it be... good thing, because she was coming fast. By 7pm, I was a 9. After waiting all day I went from a 5 to a 9 in about 30 min. I was so excited!! I finally got to pushing around 815pm and she was born at 834pm. I did four sets of pushes... and out she came. She was 6.8lbs, 19in. She is beautiful! I have to say that I enjoyed this birth (not the waiting part, but the actual birth) more than Jack. I think that with the first one you are so unsure and your body is in such shock you can't really enjoy it. With her, I was totally present. Because my epidural was wearing off a bit I knew exactly when to push. I felt the rush of adrenaline and the rush of happiness, whereas with Jack I didn't know enough to expect that. It was a wonderful feeling!!

They handed her to me and we snuggled for a bit. They started talking about her breathing and saying that it sounded funny, but they didn't really make a huge deal out of it. Because it was about 930pm by the time I got to my room and everything, I had decided to have her go to the nursery for the night so that I could sleep. I sent Jason down to give her the bath etc. He came back at about 1030 and we hung out for a bit. He then headed home to sleep himself. Jack was staying the night at my parents. He had just barely left when the nursery poked in and told me that they had sent Savannah to the NICU because she was having trouble keeping her oxygen levels up. They were in the 80's and they like them to be in the 90's. I pretty much freaked out and called Jason. He promptly came back and slept with me that night. In the morning, we headed down to the NICU to see what was going on. She looked pretty bad. They had her hooked up to oxygen and had a bunch of other monitors on her. We were able to sit in on rounds and they said that based on her white blood cell levels etc. it looked like she was working pretty hard to fight off some infection. They did an Xray and they said it looked like pneumonia and because she is a baby it was possible that it could have spread into something like mengitis. Luckily they had started her on antibiotics the night before as a precaution... but they still wanted to do a lumbar puncture to rule out mengitis. Talk about scary. Jason and I totally freaked out. Saturday was a rough day. They came in at 3pm to do the puncture and at that point, there was nothing we could do but wait. By Sunday, she was looking much better and the puncture had turned out negative so it wasn't mengitis. What they finally decided was that it was just some kind of infection picked up during delivery and it was luckily not spread. They decided to treat her with 7 days of antibiotics, which meant she had to spend her whole first week of life in the NICU. They took her off oxygen on Sunday and she never had to go back on it and every day she looked a little better. I was pumping and bringing it in and by Tuesday she was eating pretty well. She also had a little bit of jaundice so was under the lights for a few days. It was really weird for me to be checked out of the hospital on Sunday without my baby and then to spend the whole week without her at home. I was pretty freaked out at first, but after it was said that she would be fine and it would cause nothing serious in the future, I began to notice the blessings of the NICU.
--All the nurses were fabulous!! They totally got her on a 3 hour schedule for me.
-- I was able to sleep one more week without interuptions.
-- We didn't have to cart her back and forth for her jaundice during that first week like we did with Jack.
-- We were able to go everyday for lots of hours and do nothing but be together (Jason and I) and just hold her.
-- She was given extraordinary care and I think she was healthier than other babies by the time she left.
-- I was able to rest and heal so that when she came home I was no longer in pain or anything. My recovery has been FANTASTIC. I could not be more pleased with how it is progressing. I am fitting into my prepregnancy jeans... and am down about 20 lbs. I only gained 32 so I don't have much more to lose. I think that helps A LOT with the baby blues. I feel pretty normal and pretty good about how I look. It makes a huge difference.

To name a few... anyway, we were able to bring her home on Saturday the 30th. Since being home with her we have become used to lack of sleep. Jack has done really well and enjoys being a super helper. I picked him up from school on Tuesday and she was crying in the seat and he leaned over and said, "It's OK Savannah, I'm back!" He seemed to freak out a bit the first night so Jason and I spent the night running back and forth between the two kids. She is a great baby and so far has been really easy. I hope that continues. We have been so blessed with dinner every night for TWO weeks by our neighbors and that has been a huge help. I want to join a club so people bring me dinner every night. Our families have been great and so supportive. It was wonderful to share all of this with Jason. We watched our 7th wedding anniversary pass by without much mention.. except cheesecake in bed. :) Really romantic. We are so thankful to our Heavenly Father for this sweet girl and her health. It was after Jason and my dad gave her a blessing that she improved. We are so blessed and so happy to have Savannah home with us. Let's get her sleeping through the night and it will be perfect!!