Happy Girls!

Happy Girls!
April 2019

Thursday, December 15, 2011

2 Months Old!

SLEEPING
Addy is doing pretty good during the night.  She usually goes down for bed around 9pm.  Sometimes she is quick to fall asleep sometimes she needs help falling asleep.  At this point it is all about the 3 B’s: Bath, Bottle, and Bed.  I have gotten her into a routine which I think makes for a better evening.  I usually start with her bath around 8 which leads into her bottle around 8:30 and then lights out by 9.
EATING
She eats like a champ.  During the day I like to give her a bottle, then play for a bit then put her down for a nap.  This routine seems to work pretty good on most days.  If she acts hungry when it isn’t “time” for a bottle, I obviously give the girl what she wants!  She is averaging anywhere from 20 – 25 ounces of formula a day.
CLOTHING
My little baby doesn’t fit in NB clothes anymore!  She pretty much wears 3 month old clothing all the time now.  I feel like I didn’t even have time for her to wear all of her cute NB outfits!
STATS
Weight: 12lbs 2oz (70th percentile)
Height: 23 inches (75th percentile)
Head: 50th percentile
Loves: Bathtime, watching Brinkley, cuddling, being held, swinging in her swing, listening to daddy talk on his phone, lying on her changing table, chilling in her Boppy.
Hates: Laying flat on her back for too long a period of time, not preparing her bottle quick enough in the middle of the night when she is ravenously hungry!
OTHER
Addy is super chatty lately!  Listening to her chat away makes me want to cry because I think it is just the prettiest sound ever!  She likes to stick her tongue out a lot and has started to blow bubbles.  She hasn’t quite mastered getting her hands to stay in her mouth, but she is always attempting this.  She holds her head up really well and likes to be in a sit up position.  She smiles all the time and I have heard a few giggles…they are very soft so I am looking forward when she will really gets into it.
I just went back to work this past Monday and the week has been interesting.  I have to wake up around 6:30 still so I can get my shower in before Justin leaves for work and Addy wakes up.  I have from about 7am to 12:30pm to fit in 3 hours of work.  Some of the days, Addy was an angel and took a long nap allowing me to work without interruption.  Other days she took short hour naps here and there which meant me fitting in work here and there.  My mom then heads to my house so I can go into the office from 1:30pm to 4:30pm.  This is just a temporary schedule because in January Justin’s mom will be moving in with us for about 6 weeks to be our “nanny”.  Once that 6 weeks is up, back to the drawing board!  It looks like Addy will go to daycare for about 25 hours a week and my mother and I will work our schedules out to make sure one of us has her because we will both have to clock 30 hours at work.  It might be a little crazy, but we are willing to be crazy for her!


Sunday, December 11, 2011

Welcome to the World Addison!

Where do I even start?  It has been several weeks since I've been able to blog, but here I am!
I guess I have to go back all the way to Thursday October 13th when Justin & I went to the doctor's office for another check-up.  I had been getting headaches and the doctor had said they wanted me to let them know if this happened.  Once again nothing much came of this appointment.  They still wanted to monitor me and keep my induction scheduled for Monday October 17th.  So Justin drove me home, dropped me off and he went back to work.  Less then an hour later, the doctor called and said she'd been thinking about me and decided to bring me in that night to start the induction process!  She felt that things wouldn't get any better from that point and could possibly just get worse.  I immediately called Justin and told him the good news...he had just gotten back to work, but thankfully his boss had told him to head home again knowing he'd just be thinking about the things to come. 

The doctor's office said that someone from the hospital would call and let us know when to come in.  Sure enough, I got a call and they said that they'd call later between 7 - 10 pm to tell us to come in.  At this point it was probably only 2pm so we had a long day of waiting around!  I of course decided to change and wash the sheets on our bed so I could come home to them being clean.  I finished up packing our hospital bags, took a bath and generally just sat around being nervous.
Justin's parents decided to leave ASAP from Endicott so they could get to Raleigh in time for the delivery.  They had already had their bags packed, so they were ready to roll.  They drove through the night and arrived in Raleigh around 4 am.  My mom decided to have us over for one last dinner before the baby arrived.  We got Brinkley all packed up because she was going to be staying with Grandma, Grandpa and Abbey while we were in the hospital.  We had a wonderful steak dinner with the family, said goodbye to Brinkley and went home to wait for the hospital call.

We hadn't been home too long, when someone from the hospital called and said to head in at 9:30pm. 
Justin & I waited patiently and watched a few of our Thursday night shows until we left.  Once we got to the hospital we were sent to the waiting room while they prepared a room for us.  We were probably in this small little waiting room for an hour until a room was ready for us.  Apparently it was a busy night and at one point I was terrified that they were going to send us home because there wasn't enough room!  Luckily, they finally took us to our room where we met our first nurse.  Justin & I got situated while the nurse started to hook me up to various machines.  Once I was hooked up to the machines, the nurse noticed I was having slight contractions although I wasn't really feeling anything.  We also had to wait to see the doctor to see how they wanted to proceed with the inducement because there are several ways to go about it.  The doctor came in and said I was dilated 1 cm!  This sounded good to me and it sounded like we were well on our way to having a baby!  Little did I know that Addison was not interested in joining us anytime soon.
The doctor decided to go with the Foley ball inducement method. The balloon portion of the Foley, used to keep the bladder empty, is inserted, deflated, into the uterus.  The balloon is then inflated with saline solution and left in place.  The goal of this induction is to cause the cervix to mechanically open. Sometimes this will start labor spontaneously and sometimes it will simply make the cervix more favorable for a Pitocin, other drug induction or amniotomy (breaking the bag of waters).  They decided to also start my Pitocin drip at the same time as well as a sleep agent.  I was pretty comfortable at this point while Justin had a squeaky, small leather pull out chair.  He didn’t do a lot of sleeping that night!  We had our nurse coming in and out through the night to check on my progress, but nothing noticeable was going on.  The night came and went with no baby.  The Foley ball eventually fell out late Friday morning.  At that point I was about 4 cm dilated, so I still had a ton of work to do.  They cranked up the Pitocin and the contractions started to come on strong!  I immediately asked for the epidural because I knew it’d be a little bit of a wait before the doctor could give it to me.  I ended up getting sick to my stomach, but it was basically just bile coming up.  I was surprised at how well Justin handled it!  He usually has a bad gag reflex, but he was super helpful in holding my bucket while pulling my hair back.  Every once in awhile I would get sick again…I just couldn’t help myself!  The doctor came in to give me my epidural probably about 45 minutes after I asked for it.  It wasn’t a bad process at all; the anticipation was the worst part.  I was pretty numb from the waist down, but it was a welcomed feeling.  I continued to have contractions and could feel when they were coming but the intensity wasn’t bad at all.  I continued to labor during the day with no real progress.  Finally we told all the family members to head home because it didn’t look like Addison was joining us anytime soon.  Justin promised he’d call everyone if and when I started to make some real progress. 
I finally made some real progress around 3am Saturday morning.  Justin called both moms to tell them we were going to start to push soon.  Everyone came back to the hospital around 4 am with the anticipation that there would be a baby soon.  At about 4 am they started to have me push…and push…and push.  About 3 hours later the doctor decided Addison was not going to come the conventional way and a c-section was needed.  I was exhausted from pushing, Justin was exhausted from no sleep and we both so badly just wanted to meet this little one.  We had about an hour wait for the c-section because the emergency room was currently full.  I dozed off and on for this hour and I can honestly say I have no idea what Justin did!  The nurse finally came in to wheel me to the emergency room.  Justin went into a different room to get all dressed up in hospital clothing while I went in to the emergency room for my spinal and to get situated.  The spinal wasn’t too bad either, I just wish someone had warned me that the numb feeling would not only go to the lower portion of my body, but also up to my chest.  I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe and it felt like a large bear was sitting on my chest.  The nurse reassured me that my breathing was being monitored and everything looked good, but it was a horrible feeling.  I felt completely drugged and Justin still hadn’t appeared which was making me nervous.  Eventually Justin did join me and I felt so much better knowing he was right next to me.  It felt like in no time at all Addison was finally delivered!  She joined us on October 15, 2011 at 8:27 am weighing in at 8lbs 11oz and 22 inches long.  I was able to see her slightly but I was so out of it still.  The nurses whisked her away to the room right next to mine, but Justin was able to go with them to video tape everything.  I could hear her crying and I just couldn’t believe she was finally here.  It seemed like it took forever, but she was so worth it!
Justin was able to show her off to all the family members who had been patiently waiting for her arrival while I was getting closed up.  This is the only part of the story that bums me out.  I wasn’t able to see everyone’s expressions when she was introduced to Justin’s parents, my parents & sisters.  The hospital did have a policy that mommy gets to hold the baby before everyone else does though, so that made me happy.  Once I was all stapled together, I was sent to the recovery room where I met back up with Justin & Addison.  She was so perfect and I finally was able to hold her and get acquainted!  I watched as a nurse gave her her first bath and she promptly returned her back to me.  Life couldn’t have been better!  It took forever for her to join us, but she was well worth the wait!!
Love at first sight!



Meeting the families!

The Crooks Family