Heading Home

Charleigh drew a picture for Adalyn, and wanted to show it to her in the picture.

Hold my hand

Two little hands......

Sisters

Getting ready to take Adalyn home.

Our Little Helper.

The nurses at the hospital were wonderful! It was such a great experience, they let our entire family back into the delivery room right after her birth. Everyone went out of their way to make us comfortable. They all said hello to Charleigh as she came and went. A couple of the nurses were there to deliver Charleigh which made even more special. The day we were leaving the nurses even let Chareigh take Adalyn's first photo for the internet.

A visit with Grace.

Melissa and Grace came to visit as soon as they could. It was so nice seing them both. Melissa went a bit crazy and gave us way too many gifts. Thanks Melissa for EVERYTHING!!!

On the Monday I was going in to the hospital Charleigh kept asking me if today was the day her baby sister was going to be "Boring" what she meant was born.


Today she asked if her sister was acting bossy, I was confused. I had to ask her several questions to get to what she meant. She meant fussy. I sure hope she isn't bossy, I can only handle one kid who thinks she is the boss.





She kept giving her kisses, and it had to be on the lips.

She got slobber on her from her little sister.

Daddy's Girls

Hanging out. Just the four of us, our first day together as a family. I couldn't be happier! I told Ben that I was happier than I had ever been, he said "You said that on our wedding day." I laughed, I guess in Ben's world you are only allowed to say this phrase once in a life time. Ben, Ben, Ben........



Charleigh was giving her sister some of her stickers.
















Still enough room in Daddy's lap for his 2 girls.

The first night. She kept grabbing onto things, in this picture it was her tongue.

Ben giving Adalyn her first diaper change(well by us at least) just like he did with Charleigh.














My Grandma the day after she was born.












My Mom holding her the first full day of her life!

Adalyn's Visitors

Charity didn't get a chance to hold her because she had to go back under the oxygen.

More of Adalyn's visitors

So proud

She was so excited to hold her and Dr Lee was excited to let her. Dr Lee told her she was the very first one to hold her.
I am proud to say that Charleigh is still in love with her little sister. She has been so good with her. I love how happy she is in these pictures! Charleigh told my family that she was so proud of her Momma for having the baby, she is too funny.















So this isn't a great picture of me ( if I wait to post one that I like there would never be a picture of me up here) I just love how proud Ben isin this picture. Now when he calls home to check on us he asks how his 3 girls doing. Hearing it always makes me smile.

FINALLY!!!!!

So the labor and delivery story is just as complicated as the end of the pregnancy was. I will do my best at condensing it down into a cliff note. On Thursday 5-14-09 I went into see Dr. Lee as usual (I had been going 2 times a week for NST tests, ultrasounds and then over to Dr Lee for a check up). I had the NST first it would have been good but every time Adalyn moved her heart rate went down too much after it went up. Strike one. Then my ultrasound showed that my amniotic fluid was up AGAIN! On Monday it was at a 6 by Thursday it had went back up to a 27.(5-25 is normal) It was terrible but with my placenta also looking worse it was strike two. I went over to Dr. Lee and she decided to induce labor on Monday night, well actually Tuesday morning at midnight. This would give her 4, almost 5 days to let her lungs mature more. I still had to go in on Monday for another NST and ultrasound then over to Dr. Lee. The NST was great but when I went to Dr Lee I was measuring 3 weeks behind where I should have been, which concerned Dr. Lee that she might not be growing like she should and that her lungs might not be developed so she said we might cancel the induction for that night and wait to see in a few more days how things were going. She had me go get an ultrasound which showed my amniotic fluid was now at a 39! She said we were back on and that she would see us that night. We went in at 12:00 and they started the pitocin at 1:00. I thought it was going to move fast since I was already dilated to a 3 and 90% effaced, Ben and I laid in the hospital beds next to each other talking and we bet on the time we thought she would be here. I said 1:30p.m. on Tuesday and Ben guessed 3:45. Boy were we wrong! I stayed at a 4 for forever! At 1:30 she said if I wasn't to a 5 in the next few hours she would have to send me home, because the baby was find and just let me progress on my own. "EXCUSE ME?" ...... "Wait, wha wha what?" "FOR A SECOND I THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SAY YOU WERE GOING TO SEND ME HOME!" Oh but she did. I was distraught to say the least, by this point at I had been at this for a little over 12 hours and on the max amount of pitocin for several hours, my contractions felt VERY CONVINCING every if they weren't doing a bit of good. So I did what any emotional exhausted person would do. I was understanding(or in shock) for the first 5 minutes and then came the tears. I kept thinking can they really do that? Can they really send me home after all of this? But by the time she came back at 5:45 I had dilated to a 5 and she broke my water. There were extra nurses in the room to see the freak show amount of fluid I had when it broke. And there was the meconium in the fluid, which showed the baby was in some distress. Her heartrate also kept dropping after every contraction. and, by that point her head had dropped and it was time to let the PAIN BEGIN! I had an epidural , took a short nap and then everyone stopped by. (it is now like 8:00 or so) I was beginning to feel some pain and since my experiance to the epidural not working with Charleigh I thought it wasn't going to work with this baby either. I suggested that my Grandma, Charity, Lacy, Clementine and Charleigh go wait it out at home, it was getting late and Charleigh and my Grandma couldn't bear to see me in pain. Plus I thought it would still be awhile, when they checked me an hour and 10 minutes before, I was basically still not progressing anymore. It turns out the reason I was hurting so bad was beacuse I was ready to push! So before everyone even got home we were calling them to tell them I was ready to push. By this point Ben's parents had also arrived from Jefferson City (we had to have them turn around and go back home earlier that day) By 8:59 Adalyn was here! It was such a relief! I was overwhelmed with joy seeing her for the first time. With Charleigh I was so out of it, it was like it wasn't really me. She was perfect, her lungs were good but she had inhaled some of the fluid and her O2 stayed low for a while but other than that things were wonderful. Charity and Lacy came back up with Charleigh, Clementine and my Grandma and I was sooooo excited to hear that they, along with my Dad and Ben's parents were all out there waiting to see her. My dad had been in Montana and flew in late Monday and was sick with a nasty cold so he was sleeping in the car, I didn't know Ben's parents were going to come over and I thought everyone else was at our house so I thought there wasn't anyone to spead the news to, so I was super excited to hear everyone was there to welcome her. I was so thankful Charleigh was able to come in and see her right away, it was the most special part of the night. DR LEE!