To start off, I am need to tell Allie's birth story since it's the beginning of our year.
Allie was born on January 13 (a Friday!) at 1:09 PM. She weighed 6 lbs 6 ounces and was 19" long. My pregnancy with Allie was pretty easy. I didn't have much morning sickness in the beginning, so everyone thought she was going to be a boy except for me. The whole time I figured she was a girl, but she was trying to be tricky and make us all think she was a boy. During the gender ultrasound, the tech told us we were having a girl and Grayson was pretty shocked. She asked Grayson if we at least had a boy dog. We told her yes and she asked what breed. When we answered she said, "I'm not sure if that counts..." Haha! She's probably right about that. Grayson is destined to live a life surrounded by women. Poor guy. (But also lucky guy!)
I felt pretty good during the majority of my pregnancy. Allie would wake up around 10:00 every night and keep me awake until 11:30. It was fun to sit and watch her wiggle around in my belly in the evenings.
I was scheduled to be induced, so we were able to make a set plan for Zoey. We dropped her off at my dad's house on Thursday evening for a sleepover. She was nervous for a few weeks before the big sleepover. We packed a little bag for her and she would move it around and check it several times a day as a way of coping with her anxiety. She's not my kid at all...HA. When we walked into my dad's, I thought for sure she would cry or hang onto me and ask us to stay. Not the case! She waltzed right in, grabbed my dad's hand and called "Bye Mommy!" She wouldn't even come back to give me a hug. It was a relief that she was so happy to be spending the night with Papa and Gigi. Grayson and I went out for dinner before heading home. We ate at the Olive Garden and had a fun time talking to each other. I'm glad we got to have some alone time before Allie got here because that won't be happening again for a while. Gray offered to take me to see "La La Land" at the movie theater, but I declined because I had wayyy too much nervous energy to sit through a movie. We ended up going home and watching an episode of a TV show about a scary prison in Colombia. That's a normal thing to do the night before you give birth, right?
The next morning, we woke up at 6:00 to call into the hospital to find out what our check in time would be. They gave us a 7:15 check in, so we got up and got going pretty quickly. The hospital is only five minutes away, which was very convenient. We showed up and the nurses showed me to my delivery room. I changed out of my normal clothes into the hospital gown and got ready for the nurse to come in and get me all set up. She couldn't get my IV in properly and it was the worst part of the whole labor/delivery. My vein kept rolling when she tried to get the needle in and it was making blood pool under my skin. The first time the blood was only the size of a marble, but the second time she let it go until it was a golf ball. They were super painful! My arm was so achy afterward. Grayson asked if she could get a different nurse to come do it because I was about to lose it. I was nice to the nurse, but he knew that I was dying! Another nurse came in and she popped it in first try. After that they started me on pitocin.
Dr. Merrill came in to say hello, and tell me about my options as far as getting an epidural. He suggested that I do it before 10 AM. I was pretty nervous about getting an epidural since I couldn't remember much about it from Zoey's birth. It was about 9:30 at that point and I had figured I had three or four hours before I was going to need an epidural, so it caught me off guard. We decided to go ahead and get it at that point since the anesthesiologist had to do epidurals for scheduled C-sections from 10-1 and I didn't want to risk giving birth without it. The anesthesiologist was so funny and made me feel at ease. The worst part was the numbing shots, which did hurt more than I thought it would. Right after that, I couldn't feel any of it and it wasn't so bad. When he was feeding the tube in, I felt a zing in my left hip that surprised me, but it was over really quickly and then I started feeling reaaaally good. I laid in bed for a bit while Grayson watched a movie. After a while I decided to take a little nap. It lasted for about an hour and when I woke up, the nurse came to check me and gave me the head's up that I was going to be ready to start pushing in about half an hour. She told me to push the call button if I felt pressure before then. Five minutes later I thought I might be feeling the pressure she was talking about, but I wasn't sure. Grayson told me to go ahead and push it just to be safe. The nurse came back in and checked me and sure enough, it was time. She made me cross my legs so the baby couldn't move down while she ran to get my OB. He came in and I pushed through two contractions and there she was! Her cord was wrapped around her pretty tight, so he had to untangle her before she could come all the way out. Allie came out screaming like a banshee and didn't stop for the first 20 minutes of her life. Her Apgar score was a 3, so the NICU nurse had to come into check on her and make sure she was looking okay. We got the thumbs up even though she had swallowed a bunch of fluid on her way out.
Holding her the first time felt so good! It was surreal, almost like a dream. I couldn't believe it was over. I expected both my labor and delivery to last much longer than it did. I didn't even have time to process what was going on. After getting me all unhooked from the machines and getting Allie all set they moved me into my recovery room. We got there and opened the door and my mom was already there waiting for us. Katie showed up soon after. They sat and talked to us for a bit and then my dad brought Zoey over. We had a whole plan for how to introduce her to the baby and it didn't happen, so when she was suddenly walking into the room we were nervous. We had read a bunch of stuff about how it's better for the kid to come in and just see the mom first before seeing the baby, but I was holding Allie when she walked in. Oops! Zoey ran over to the bed, climbed up, asked to see her and immediately said, "Yup. I wanna hold her." I handed the baby over and Zoey snuggled her for a minute before asking if we could "keep her forever." Our hearts totally melted.
The hospital stay went well. We got to go home on Saturday afternoon. It was so good to go home! We had a couple days to hang out before Grayson had to go back to work and it was like a mini vacation to have him home for so long. It flew by and I was nervous to have two girls by myself all day, but we've done just fine so far.
Allie was not a great sleeper at first, but she's figured it out now and sleeps for about four hours, wakes up to eat, and then sleeps another two hours. It's been hard getting acclimated to sleep deprivation, but we're surviving. Allie is the most snuggly little girl and sleeps much better in my arms than she does in a bed. We are letting her co-sleep with us even though it wasn't the original plan. Oops!
Zoey has struggled a little with having to share attention with Allie and it's made her behavior a little unpredictable and naughty. We are working through it with her and I'm hoping to have her back to normal soon. :) She's such a smart and sweet girl and I am so glad she's going to be Allie's big sister forever.
Our family wasn't complete without Allie. She's such a sweet little baby and I am pretty much obsessed with her. Her little face KILLS ME. KILLS ME!!! We are so lucky to have two little ladies. They are the best girls!
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