Oh Baby!

Our little girl is one month old! We had a little photo shoot on May 25 to commemorate this milestone and thankfully, she was very cooperative!

She had a little growth spurt over the weekend which meant she loudly demanded to be fed every 3 hours. This is our normal day schedule but she usually goes for a longer stretch at night but not this weekend. Hopefully, she'll sleep well over the holiday weekend since we're heading to the "big city" for a couple days and one night to have some fun outside of Enid. Our hotel has an indoor pool and we might even visit the Oklahoma City Zoo! One thing is for sure- we're doing some shopping! We'll hit up the stores that our little town doesn't have, including Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Babies R Us and the Home Depot.

In other baby news, our friends Nathan and Megan just found out that they're having a little boy! They had their 20 week ultrasound and the baby was cooperative in showing "his Y chromosome at work" according to Megan. It's so exciting to have friends going through a pregnancy so soon after our little girl arrived. And even though they live in Florida and we're out here in Oklahoma, we stay in touch via Facebook and talk about our babies through wall posts and photo comments.

Also in baby fashion news, I found some really cute Air Force related apparel at CafePress.com where they also have apparel for all military branches as well as just cute baby things!

Here's one of my favorites:

I love being a mommy!

As I sit here with Anna fast asleep on my chest, I still can't believe she's ours. She is so sweet and wonderful and Daniel and I can't get enough of her little noises and faces. She changes everyday and is growing big and strong. She's visited the pediatrician twice for her well-baby check ups. The first visit she was back to her birth weight (6lb. 3oz.) and on Friday, she weighed in at 7 pounds 1 ounce which means she averaged more than an ounce per day in between her visits! With this news, the doctor told us we don't have to wake her for feedings anymore- she'll let us know when she's hungry. And she certainly does! Her little cries come over the monitor and we're up and tending to our little princess.

She's met all of her baby friends and they (along with their wonderful mommies and more of my friends) welcomed her with an All Pink baby shower on Thursday. It was so much fun! Anna slept through a good part of it, but I enjoyed talking with my girlfriends, eating delicious food and playing shower games. We got so many beautiful gifts and Anna has been in a new outfit every day since then! She's so tiny that many of her 0-3month clothes are still too big but she has a lot to grow into and she'll be stylin' for a long time.

Anna Grace is Here!!

Our little miracle arrived at 7:32pm on April 25, 2010 weighing 6 pounds 3.4 ounces and measuring 20 inches long. Her debut into this world came after a long, hard labor for me but she is well worth all of it.

I went into labor Saturday afternoon during a game of Scrabble with my wonderful husband. My contractions became more regular by 5- just in time to go to church and I breathed through them every 20 minutes until it was time to go home. We ate some dinner (which happened to be a terrible idea on my part.) and got ready to go to the hospital. A little after midnight when I threw up my entire dinner, we decided it was time to go to the Birth Place at St. Mary's Hospital. With my contractions coming every 5 minutes we were sure that I had made some progress but was disappointed to find out that I was still only 1 cm dilated after the nurses had set up a room for me. They weren't sure if they were going to keep me but I'm so glad they eventually registered me as an in-patient the next morning- after a long night of contractions and no sleep for Daniel or me.

I was still only about 3 cm after lots of walking up and down, up and down the halls as well as laboring in the whirlpool tub they had in the room. With the contractions getting more painful and me getting more tired, I decided to get an epidural. After 16 hours of unmedicated labor, it was the right choice. Unfortunately, even with the epidural and some pitocin, I wasn't making much progress. To make matters worse the nurses had rolled me onto my right side to try to get the baby's heartbeat doing what it was supposed to be and none of the epidural was going to my left side- I felt everything for about 15 minutes (felt like an eternity) before the anesthesiologist came in to fix it. Shortly after that was corrected, Tonnya, one of my nurses, came in and told us that the doctor (not my doctor since he wasn't on call) had made the call to do a c-section. It was an extremely disappointing moment for us since I had labored more than 24 hours at this point. However, it was the best thing for the baby and we knew that a regular delivery was no longer an option. Dan called both sets of our parents to let them know and then changed into scrubs while they got me ready for surgery. Once I was all numbed up and scrubbed down, they started the surgery and after a few minutes, our little baby was born. Daniel saw her before I did since I was behind the big blue screen but after she was all cleaned up, he introduced me to our beautiful daughter. This is very fitting since he was the one who told me that the pregnancy test I took in August was positive.

We received excellent care while at the hospital and came home Wednesday afternoon. It's been wonderful having my mom, great-aunt and little sister here. They've taken good care of us and eating my mother's cooking has been fabulous! (She made us chicken parm last night. It was so yummy!) My Aunt B left for Pittsburgh this morning and my Dad is coming on Wednesday.
Thanks for all your prayers and well wishes. We are so happy to finally have our little angel.