Emerald Joy is Here!

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…

2 thoughts on “Emerald Joy is Here!

  1. Pingback: Bittersweet Trip Home to Wisconsin | reidmore

  2. Congratulations! She is adorable. I especially like the picture where she is waving at her great aunt Brenda (and I am a great aunt!) Who took the photos since the photographer had the baby? Em is definitely a gem.