Baby Love

Jeff's mom has been here to help out this week, and she brought her computer with her, so I am squeezing in one more post before we are pcless once again.

Still loving being a mom. That's not to say we haven't had our challenges...learning to read and understand Emery Claire's cues and signals is a slow process. She really only cries when she is hungry, tired or gassy, but thus far the only cry I can distinguish for certain is her hungry cry. It's still a big guessing game with the others at this point, and as I'm sure most parents can relate, it is agonizing for me to sit and listen to her cry.

We took our little sailor on her inaugural boat ride this week. You can see in the pictures above that her lifevest was a tad bit too big, and I was laughing so hard at her I could hardly stand up. She was a good sport about it all though, hardly fussed at all, and ended up passing out in Mama Li's lap once we got underway.

Nursing is going okay, but it is still excruciating everytime she latches on. Her latch is not great, but she seems to be getting enough to eat, so we'll just keep working on it for now. I'm hoping once her little mouth gets a little bigger it will solve most of our problems.

We went on our first post baby date last night. I had a hard time finding something to wear - I'm afraid I'm going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe now! My stomach is still not back down yet, but it's my hips I am most worried about. I can't even get close to buttoning my pre-pregnancy pants. When I had a huge stomach, it wasn't as obvious that I'd grown in other areas. Now it's plain and clear. I told Jeff last night that I felt self conscious out without the baby. At least when she's with us, people see her and think oh she just had a baby. Without her I just look pudgy. I have not weighed myself since I had her, but I think my total pregnancy weight gain was 43lbs.

I think Jeff is enjoying this time as much as I am. It's so cute to watch him interact with her - he is such a good daddy already. It melts my heart to see them together!

Hope everyone is doing well!

Emery Claire Smith

Sorry for the delay in posting. We don't have a computer at the house, and haven't exactly been out much this past week. I'm over at my neighbor's writing this update.

Emery Claire was born on 7.7.10 at 12:43am, and we are 100% head over heels in love with her already. I fully anticipated having to have an induction, when she didn't arrive on her due date despite our best efforts, but little miss had other plans. I woke up on Tuesday at 330am having contractions. They say you'll know when it's the real thing, but honestly I did not until about 5am. By the time Jeff rolled out of bed at 6am (we were both planning to go to work that day) I was pretty sure Emery was on her way.

We wanted to delay going to the hospital as long as possible, so waited until around noon when my contractions were 3-4 minutes apart before heading in. They were intense at that point, but not unbearable. However, my water broke as we were pulling into the hospital, and by the time I was admitted to the OBR things were starting to get very uncomfortable. I'd considered not getting an epidural depending on how far along I was, but when I found out I was only 2cm dialated said sign me up at around 230pm. However, because of staff shortages and the time it takes to get admitted, did not end up getting it until 530pm, and those last 3 hours were MISERABLE!! By that time my contractions were hitting every 1-2 minutes, and I was deathly afraid I wouldn't be able to sit still for the procedure. As scared as I was it ended up being fine, and I felt much better after the procedure.

We were so blessed to have Katie Rachel as our nurse for most of the afternoon/evening. She had worked the day before, and came in just to be our nurse. But at 9pm, despite the fact that I had been contracting regularly, I was only 4cm, so she had to hand us off thinking we wouldn't be delivering until 6am the next morning. My new nurse checked me at 10pm, and I was 6cm, so they were still thinking it would be awhile. Jeff and I had just settled down to get some rest when Emery's heart rate dropped to next to nothing. Before I could move the nurse was running in yelling for the doctor, and they had me rolled over onto my side with the oxygen on and were trying to reposition her to get her heart rate back up. I've never been so scared in my life...I seriously thought we were going to lose our baby right there. Both Jeff and I were crying, but after 5 or 6 minutes they were able to get her heart rate back up. Apparently in 30 minutes my labor had progressed so quickly that she wasn't able to tolerate it. At that point I was 8cm. They called my doctor (who had to arrange childcare and drive in from brandon to deliver me - LOVE her) and by the time she arrived at 11pm I was ready to go. We started pushing around 11:15pm, and out she popped at 12:45 am. And my infamous first words to my daughter - not anything sweet mind you. They were "She's HUGE!" And she was/is, at least for me, at 8.3lbs 21.5 inches. That would explain why she was stuck for 20 minutes. I won't lie - I do believe pushing her out was the hardest thing I've ever done. I had what is called a walking epidural - so I could feel all of the pressure and some pain. I could definitely feel that she was stuck. I thought I would never get her out, and I can't IMAGINE going through all of that without an epidural.

But as they always say, it was so worth it. She is such a little doll. We are both totally in love. She is sweet, sweet baby (except when she gets hungry!) and it already bringing us so much joy. We are just eating this sweet time up with her. Jeff is off this whole month, and we're spent the past week just bonding together as a family and watching lots of episodes of 24. Our SS class has hooked us up with meals, so we've been able to focus more on taking care of baby. It's been great! You know before I had her I'd heard people say they could sit and stare at their baby all day, and I always thought that sounded so ridiculous. But now I know what they mean - I really could stare at her all day long!!

Sorry if this is kind of running together - I'm trying to rush so we can get home for our next feeding. I'm not even going to try to label the pictures, but you can probably piece most of them together. The belly shot is the last one we took at 39 weeks and 5 days. As big as I thought my stomach was, now that she's out it's hard to believe she ever fit in there!!

That's all for now. Hope everyone is well! If I haven't returned your phone calls please forgive me - I haven't forgotten about you! Take care!