I'm A Mommy: Meeting Lilianah Rae!

As some of you may have noticed, I've been gone from Gather for a while and boy have we been busy during that time! Happily, we are now parents to a one day old little girl named Lilianah Rae. :)

The Backstory

I'm sure it seems pretty sudden to some of my Gather friends as I haven't really posted much about it, but the pregnancy was pretty typical up until a couple weeks ago. They were worried about pre-eclampsia and I suddenly presented with excessive weight gain (6 lbs in 4 days!), swelling, and high blood pressure all at the same time. So they said guess what? You're having your baby in four days. You're being induced. You can imagine my surprise! But, at 38 weeks, she was a good size (6 lbs at 35 weeks) and healthy and ready to go.

The Induction

We went into the hospital on Valentine's Day at 6pm to get all ready to be induced the next day. I was already 1 1/2 cm dilated and 50% effaced, so the process had already started to some extent anyway! I got a Cervadil that night to soften my cervix and another thing in the morning to finish the job. By noon I was 3 cm and they broke my water and started me on Plutocin. And boy did those contractions start!

I had wanted to go without an epidural, so around 4 cm I opted for some Stadol to take the edge off a little, which lasted until about 5pm and around 5 cm when they told me it would likely be another 5 hours before I can push (1 cm an hour) and at that point it was hard enough to breathe through the contractions without even imaging doing it for another 5 hours! So I caved. I admit it. They gave me the epidural during a contraction, so I didn't even notice a thing and everything went very smoothly after that.

At 8pm we called the nurse because I felt like I needed to push! Unfortunately, I was only 9 cm and they said I had to wait another half an hour until I hit 10 cm. I didn't think I was going to make it since the baby had decided to push whether I was going to or not! Finally, I was able to start pushing at 8:45.

Delivery

Pushing was the easy part. :) It was such a relief to be able to push and the contractions didn't hurt at all and neither did pushing. Jake wasn't going to watch any of the birth, but he ended up getting a front row view because there was no divider or anything (though he did admit it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be). After pushing for an hour, our "little" girl was finally born! My mother got to cut the umbilical cord.

The Stats

Remember that 6 lb baby at 35 weeks? Well, by 38 weeks when she was born she was 8lbs 6 oz! Talk about growing fast. The doctor said if they had waited until her due date or if she was a little late I could have had a baby that was around 10 lbs.

Name: Lilianah Rae

Height: 19 1/2 inches

Weight: 8 lbs 6 oz

Born: February 15 at 9:41 pm

The Aftermath

We're all doing great now. It's a little strange thinking that the little baby that's been beating me up from the inside is now here. She looks almost identical to how I looked when I was just born (and we've got both newborn pictures to prove it).

Jake was so nervous to be a new Daddy, he didn't even know how to hold her or pick her up! But she's just a little over a day old now and he can do all that good stuff and feed her and change her and burp her. ^_^ Plus, after only a day of being alive she managed to poop on Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma (just not at the same time, of course).

I tore a little, so I've got about 4 stitches, but I'm healing just fine, and the baby's healthy, so we'll be released tonight around 9:30. It'll be so nice to get home to our own house and our own bed and start our little family routine.

So now, after all this excitement, you should be hearing more from me around Gather, I hope, once we get settled!