Auria's 1st Week

On July 23rd we were so blessed to have our baby come six days before her actual due date. I was discouraged just the day before when my doctor told me I was still at 2 cm 80% effaced which I had been for the past three appointments. It didn't seem like she was coming anytime soon and we set a date for Aug 8th to be induced, a week and a half after my due date! I did not want to wait two and a half weeks and lucky for us neither did our little girl.

At 4:00 am I woke up with contractions that were harder than normal (I had had contractions since I was 24 weeks pregnant and had thought many times I was getting close to going into labor.) At 4:30 I realized they were getting really close and I needed to start timing them. They ranged from 2-8 minutes and when Casey woke up at 5:50 to get ready for work I asked him, "are you ready to go to the hospital?" Which he didn't believe me since I had been convinced it was coming so many times. We waited until about 6:45 and when I started having more contractions that were only 2 minutes apart we decided to be safe and go into the hospital. Lucky for me my aunt Kathryn who is a delivery nurse was working that day. She's the reason they even kept us at the hospital. They monitored me for an hour and I only progressed to a 2.5 cm 85% effaced so Kathryn stripped my membranes and had me walk around the hospital for an hour which got me to a little over a 3. They probably would have sent me home since I was slowly progressing but since Kathryn was there as my nurse I was able to stay and try lots of things to get my labor going a little faster. My doctor was at the hospital that day but he had a couple surgeries and wanted to be there for my delivery so he wouldn't break my water or give me pitocin to speed things along. After I was dilated to a 4 at around 2:15 I got the epidural and it was smooth sailing from there! I was worried about the epidural but a lovely hard contraction came on while he was giving it to me and I didn't even feel the needle going in. My contractions were every 5 minutes which wasn't very close but they were super long. They are supposed to go up and down in 60 seconds or so and mine would last long and slowly slowly decline but as soon as I got that epidural they got closer together and a little more regular and I was in heaven not feeling them at all! Crazy natural birth people is all I gotta say. Doctor Skinner was supposed to come break my water between surgeries around 2:30 but never came in and around 3:30 (we think because I never actually felt it break) it broke on its own. When I was at a 6 it was almost time for my aunt to get off work and we were pretty upset the doctor had never come in to break my water or let me have pitocin because we really wanted her to be there for the delivery. Finally at a 6 though he agreed to let me have the pitocin and before I knew it I was at a 10 and ready to push! Doctor Skinner joined us and I pushed for a whopping 15 minutes and she was out. Apparently I had been bleeding a lot more than most people but everything went smoothly with me and the only thing was that when Auria came out, they had to suction a lot of blood out of her lungs that she had swallowed from me bleeding. Our baby girl has been so healthy since then and passed every single thing they tested on her! She did have to have her blood sugar tested a lot at the hospital because at 6lbs 9ounces she was a little small for her age but it never was a problem, she just had lots of pricks on her heels:(. I had two places tear which is no fun and a cervical prolapse where my cervix came out which they never said has been a problem since so I guess it's all good!

We spent all of Wednesday in the hospital and left at 2:30 on Thursday. In the hospital Auria did fantastic. She latched on right after delivery and we thought it was going to be smooth sailing from there. She hated my other side though and never would latch on. We had to use a nipple guard on that side and we even tried a syringe with sugar water in it to try to get her to suck on that side. Before we left she had finally latched on to it but it didn't last for long. At nights we did send her to the nursery and the first night they brought her in three times to feed which wasn't too bad and the next night I sent her to the nursery with a syringe of colostrum and they only had to bring her in once but I was up every hour anticipating them bringing her in so it didn't help me sleep too much. We had lots of visitors on Wednesday which was so wonderful but we didn't get any naps in and it was hard to find time in between to feed her. We have such great family's with lots of love and support for us!

Car ride home was a bit stressful. I think everyone is nervous about the first car ride and the hospital scares you pretty bad and tells you not to leave them in their car seat for longer than 30 minutes or it could cut off their airway. I kept thinking her head was too slouched and it was going to cut it off but of course she made it there just fine. Our nieces we live with greeted us at the fence with a welcome home Auria sign and some balloons and Heather my sister in law gave us a bag of groceries which was so nice of her. We had some tears shed when we got home because I really didn't want to use the nipple guard because I didn't want to cause lots of nipple confusion so I kept trying to go without it but my milk had already come in after two days and she couldn't latch on while I was rock solid. So after her not eating for 5 hours and lots of crying I finally gave in and used the nipple guard and have used it ever since. Today (the 30th) is the first day that I got her to latch on without it and I'm hoping its going to stay that way! First night sleeping we had an angel baby. We went to bed at 9 and woke her up every 3-4 hours to eat. She didn't wake up crying once and we thought this is going to be easy.

The next day was great and fun to have her home to ourselves. She slept lots and when Casey's parents and Cyd came to visit we tried hard to wake her up but she likes to choose when she is awake and when she is sleeping! The second and third nights were a little more rough just because she decided to be awake starting at 9 and not going to sleep until twelve and one which isn't that late but when you have to wake up every three hours to feed it is hard to go to sleep that late! The fourth night was the worst though. I think her tummy was hurting her because she was grunting and sounding close to crying until five in the morning. I got an hour of sleep between 11-6 and after that she finally peacefully went to sleep. Now I know not to eat broccoli and cauliflower anymore while breast feeding. It was Casey's first day back to work the next day so I was up taking care of her the whole night. Silly girl likes to keep us on our toys and shake things up a bit!

On Saturday we tried her in her swing, and her bouncer for the first time. She just kind of sat there with her eyes open in the swing and it seemed like she really liked the music that played from it. We will have to try it when she's really upset sometime to see if she really likes it. Right now she doesn't show to much emotion to things. The bouncer she was crying a bit in it, but the next time we tried it she again just sat there staring off. Oh we love our little munchkin, she is a pretty easy baby! We also tried tummy time for the first time. She does not like it. She kept pushing up with her legs instead of pushing up with her arms. We had me lay on one side of her and Casey on the other and just talked to her for her to move her head. she eventualy turned her head towards Casey and then we let her get up from it. She loves laying on her tummy on my legs and chest but not on the floor!

Monday the 29th was Casey's last day off of work. We are so grateful he got so much time to spend at home with us! For his last day we gave Auria her first bath which she cried while I was washing her body (which was possibly because the water wasn't warm enough, I was worried about burning her) but as soon as we started washing her hair she stopped squirming and crying and just stared off. Baby girl likes her hair done, she always likes it when we softly rub her head to calm her down too. We also took a quick trip to Wal-Mart with her and tried to get out of there really quickly and kept her covered with her car seat cover the whole time. After that we headed to my mom's to take her newborn pictures. She was six days old that day and stayed asleep basically the whole time. Casey and I had fun pretending to be photographers and we had some cute things to work with at my mom's, my favorite being an old buggie that she has that we got some of my favorite pictures in. As soon as we tried getting completely naked photos in an old fashioned cradle my mom has, Auria did not cooperate. She still doesn't like tummy time and we wanted pictures of her bum but she wouldn't stay in a cuddle position, she kept lifting her bum up with her legs. So we didn't get all the pictures we wanted but we still got plenty of cute ones! I think we did pretty good for our first "photo shoot" with our new camera. 

We are still trying to get the hang of breast feeding without the nipple guard. She latches onto the left side but for some reason does not like the right side at all and without the guard she just cries and cries even if she latches on and sucks for a second, she then pulls away and cries. I don't know if we will ever get off of the guard, but I sure hope we do! I sure wish we could figure out an awake and sleeping schedule but I guess that won't happen until she is a lot older, we never know what she's going to do and not many people have come to visit when she's actually been awake. We are so grateful for family and neighbors bringing us dinners it has helped out a lot, and we love getting visitors to show off our little girl! I would love to take her out to show her off but we are staying at home for a while longer. We've loved our first week with her and can't wait to watch her grow and develop!

More pictures of Auria!

Sleepin on the couch

We took her out for a little sun and it put her right to sleep

1st bath

snuggling between photo shoots

Naked girl, didn't like it for long!

Just pulling a funny face