The one about the baby

So I didn't want to just bust up in here and overload you guys with all that's been going on the past 4 or 5 months all at once. I figured I should start small. Then you wouldn't get so bored with one giant post and maybe you'd come back to read more later on. :o)

I figured I should probably start with Ella. I'm sure that's who you're most interested in anyway, am I right?

You know, I'm not quite sure where in my pregnancy I left off from blogging, but the last about 2 months I started getting high blood pressure and lots of swelling. While my doctor never actually diagnosed me as having pre-eclampsia, it was bad enough in the end that she decided if Ella hadn't made her debut by 40 weeks, we were going to induce. At my last appointment, we scheduled the induction for 6am on Thursday October 7.

You can imagine my surprise when I was awakened at 2am on the 7th by contractions! At first, I didn't know they were contractions, but after I had 3 in a row, almost exactly 10min apart, I was sure. I decided I should go ahead and take a shower, wake up John, then we'd get our stuff and maybe head to the hospital. Well, by the time I got in the shower (was only about 2:40am now), my contractions jumped all the way to 3 minutes apart! So I had a quickie shower and John woke up as I was starting to get dressed and I told him we needed to go already! He jumps up and gets dressed and gets the rest of our stuff together, feeds the dogs and puts them outside and finally helps me get in the car. The contractions were pretty rough by this point and I had to stop and breathe through them...still about 2-3min apart.

We left the house around 3:45am and got to the hospital about 4:15am. Once I got all checked in and changed and in bed, they checked me at about 5am and I was already 7cm! I went in hoping to not need an epidural and they basically said it's now or never after my first check, so I said no. Sure, it was painful, but it definitely wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I opted for a shot of an IV drug, but that mostly just made me a little loopy...didn't seem to ease the pain too much. The contractions continued to get stronger. My parents and sister got there around 6am and John's mom showed up shortly after. By 7am, I was more than ready to start pushing and after about an hour, Ella Renee was born at 8:14am, weighing in at just 6lb 5oz and 18.5" long. She was so little!

My first baby and I only had to endure a 6 hour labor and an hour of pushing...all without an epidural. It was so much easier than I was anticipating! I did, however, end up with full blown pre-eclampsia post delivery. I was on a magnesium drip for 24 hours which made my head feel like it was floating in a bowl of water. And because I was still hooked up to the darn IV, I had to call for a nurse every single time I had to pee. That sucked. But after a day and a half, I finally got off the IV and got an oral blood pressure medicine. That was helping enough that by Saturday morning, I was cleared to go home. As was Ella, who was doing just fantastically!

There you have her story...now I'll share some pictures of her first 3 1/2 months so far. :o)

Newborn...obviously...



Going home from the hospital



One week old



Halloween



One month old



Two months old



3 months old, but we didn't have any good pictures of her in one of her Christmas outfits



3 months old