On Friday we got to go home! Despite her loosing 10% of her birth weight (dropping down to 4 lbs 15oz) everything else was looking great and we were both discharged.
Em was a champ on the way home, and slept the whole way. She didn’t enjoy the bumps though as every little slight bump sent her hands flying like she was riding a roller coaster.
Emerald’s birth day was such a blur as I described in another post. Because I had a c-section we expected to stay in the hospital from Tuesday-Friday. Days were filled with nurses checking in on us lots, feeding Emerald, getting rest and a few visitors.
The first evening the nurses had me up and walking and taking a few steps. The first time I got up I was so nauseous that I threw up 🙁 The next morning at about 6am they had me walking the halls and I felt so much better, granted I was on a lot of pain meds. Tuesday they also were able to remove the catheter, IV, and all the other machines that kept me tied to the bed. It was so great to get up and shower and feel like a human again. From there on out, the pain was minimal and I was moving pretty good, and was much improved as the days went on. I just had to remember to slow down a bit and take it easy.
Emerald had lots of visitors throughout our stay in the hospital as well as the first few days at home. Sometimes we remembered to get out our camera, sometimes we totally forgot. I blame sleep deprivation. Also, we tried to snap a few family photos the first few days…
We’re so excited to introduce our little gem, Emerald Joy, born on June 10th, 2014 at 10:11am, weighing 5lbs 8oz and 18.5 inches long. We seriously can not be more in love. I tell Drew all the time I’m so thankful he made this baby with me.
Emerald (who we’ll also call E, Em, and Emmy) was going to be born c-section since she has been breech for a very long time and it didn’t look like she was going to turn since she was sitting pretty comfy in there (well comfy to her, still not sure how sitting folded in half is comfy). Since an external version was not going to be successful with me being a first time mom, and since her butt was dropped too far into my pelvis, the next step was to pick out her birthday, so we decided on June 10th. It was so nice to have the date all set and know when we could expect her arrival and finish up our to-do list and start my maternity leave at work.
However she was going to come no matter what on the 10th since I started having contractions on Monday. They got to be 5 minutes apart so we went into labor & delivery only to be sent home because I wasn’t dilated since she was breech. I was hoping they would just move up the c-section but the on-call doctor didn’t want to come in. We went home at 1am knowing we’d have to be back at 8am the next morning. Contractions got worse and worse pain-wise and I wasn’t able to sleep at all, I was miserable and just so ready to have her and get rid of the pain.
We went in a few minutes and thankfully they were able to push up the c-section to 9:30am since I continued to dilate to 3+ centimeters and in an incredible amount of pain. They even offered to give me pains thru my IV, but there was a mixup at the hospital pharmacy and I ended up not getting anything. At this point I was soooo ready to get the spinal to get rid of the pain and meet our little girl.
The spinal was more painful than I thought it was, just felt really uncomfortable and he had to do it a few times since I was in so much pain and had a hard time arching my back out. Once it took effect it was amazing and I couldn’t feel anything from the chest down. Then they hung the curtain, prepped me for surgery and brought Drew in. I started getting pretty nervous, but it all went away when they started talking about how they were pulling her out and how such a little peanut she was.
They whisked her away to the warming station and I was pretty sad I didn’t get to see her quick, but they wanted to clear her airways. I could see in the direction of the warming bed, but the nurses were all surrounding it so I couldn’t see her. Drew went over then to check her out and take a few photos so he could show me them on the camera. It was such a crazy feeling, we were parents, but I could’t wait until they stitched me back up so we could hold her more in recovery.
In recovery both of our body temps were too low, so I had to wait a little bit to hold her and do skin to skin. Once we were warmed up, I got to hold her and I thought she was the tiniest little peanut ever, but so cute. We were wheeled back into our original room and pretty soon my family came to meet her.
Emerald had a hard time keeping her temp up the rest of the day so they waited to give her a bath until the evening. The rest of the day is a bit foggy due to the meds I was on and just the whole adrenaline rush. But it was an amazing day and we are so in love with our little girl!
More photos to come…
Hello 39 weeks!
This is officially my last weekly photo, can’t believe we are so close to meeting our baby girl. It hasn’t quite hit me yet, but I’m sure it will! It’s kind of crazy thinking this belly of mine that I’ve had for 9 months will soon be gone and we get to hold her on the outside.
Our next 48 hours are filled with last minute cleaning and finishing packing our hospital bags!
Baby girl is 38 weeks, less than 2 weeks to go!
Can’t believe in less than two weeks we’ll be holding our little girl! This week is my last week at work and I’ll be pretty busy wrapping up a bunch of projects. I also have my final doctors appointment this week and am going prepared with 100 questions about c-sections.
We’re also about done with our to-do list, finally! Just a few touch-ups and finishing cleaning our house really good and then relaxing.
Last Thursday night we finally got some maternity photos taken. To be totally honest, I was going to try to do them myself, and now I’m sooooo thankful I did not. Not only was it so nice not to have to worry about them and fitting in time with my never ending to-do list, I know our photographer did a way better job than I could ever have done. Sometimes you can’t just DIY and sometimes you just have to let go and trust other people… so glad I did!
So check out all these amazing shots from Theresa Hermus… we love them all!
And now I can’t wait until we can go back and do our newborn photo shoot with our little girl in tow 🙂
Last fall I had the opportunity to scoop up a ton of bulbs from work to fill our garden, but since that was hitting right at the first trimester and I was basically exhausted to the max I didn’t get the opportunity to plant much. And unfortunately our front yard doesn’t look as awesome as it did last spring. Boo.
These beauties are in bloom though and I had to grab a few shots. Can’t wait for my peonies to bloom next, hopefully they don’t bloom while I’m in the hospital!
Our baby girl is 37 weeks, only 3 more to go!
This little stinker of a girl is still breech. When my dr checked me at my last appointment she was so sure she flipped because she thought she felt her head, however she double checked with the ultrasound and we saw that nope, she’s just got a rather hard bottom. Because her butt is dropped and continues to drop, the dr gave us a 30% chance of the external version working, so we opted to pass.
As long as she continues to stay breech we’ll have a c-section sometime at 39 weeks. We’ll find out more as the last few weeks go on.
This week we also got our maternity photos done by Theresa Hermus. This was one of the things on my to-do list before baby. I was actually going to attempt them on our own with a tripod, but decided I needed to let some things “go” otherwise this baby was going to be here before it was done. We had so much fun and got to see this sneak peek… can’t wait to see the rest!
Last weekend, I got to go down to Joliet to meet my new niece Charleigh Mae who at the time was 3 days old. It wouldn’t be a complete weekend if we didn’t attempt to take some newborn photos of her. We tried, but we weren’t very successful because she wasn’t thrilled…
She even thru up the middle finger to show how she felt about these photos. 
The day after I left, my sister was able to take some of her own with her new lens after I showed her a few tricks and she got some great shots. I edited them for her….
Can’t wait until our little girl is here too and they can be BFFs!
This baby girl is 36 weeks… and only has 4 to go!
My doctor appointments are weekly now and she’s begun to “check me”. Not the most fun experience, but it’ll hopefully show some progress over time. This past doctors appointment on Tuesday, I was not dilated, and she was still breech. If she is still breech this week, my doctor will try to flip her on Friday. Not really looking forward to it since I’ll have to get an IV and I hear it’s painful and not always successful…
We’ve been making lots of progress on our to-do list this week in our bathroom (removed mirror, removed vanity top, sanded walls, texturized walls, started painting, and installed new vanity top). Hopefully this week we will get the faucet in, finish painting the walls and the cabinet doors rehung. Then it’s just a few cosmetic things like hanging hooks for towels and installing baseboards.
I also started packing the hospital bag and installed her carseat! Ah so close!
