Our sweet little baby is here! She was born on Monday, February 21st at 7:47am. She was 7lb 8.6oz, and 20 1/2 inches long.
This is one of the cute blankets that Aunt Marissa made for her. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the other one; she used it on her first car ride home from the hospital!
Such a sweet little face!
Wonderful, wonderful Daddy. She spent the majority of the first three days of life asleep on Daddy's chest, and Royce has just been beyond incredible throughout all of this. I tear up every time I think about how great he's been.
Emmaline loves little Marta so much. She loves to kiss her, and hold her, and she checks on her all the time, and makes sure Grandma changes her diaper right. She has been so good, and such a sweetheart. I knew she would do a good job, but I was still impressed with how great she's done, and just how mature she's been, and really selfless. We have been blessed with two sweet little girls!
This was in the hospital at 5am when we were waiting to fill out paperwork before they did the c-section. We didn't get a ton of sleep the night before despite the fact that everything was planned in advanced.
Here she is snuggling with Nana the day she was born. My mom flew in on the Saturday before, and Royce's parents and youngest sister Gina came out Sunday night, so they all got to be there when Marta was born, and Royce's family spent the day with us in the hospital on Monday, and Grandma's here until next Saturday, and it was really nice to be able to have everyone there.
After they got her out, they checked her a little and then cleaned her up, then I got to snuggle her face for just a little bit before they had to take her to the nursery, and then it was a couple of hours before I got to see her again because the operating room is too cold for the babies, and I had to spend at least an hour in the recovery room before I could be taken to my room, but Royce came back to check on me, and showed me a bunch of pictures.
They did cut her finger a little bit when they were doing the c-section, but it's healing really well.
The story! This is going to be really long, because I'm just going to write down everything I remember, mainly just so I have it down, and blogging seems to be my justification for not writing in a journal. :) So our c-section was scheduled for Monday morning at 7am, so we had to be there at 5, so we went up and got checked in, and Emmaline was not looking forward to Mommy and Daddy staying in the hospital for a few days, so she kind of had a hard time when we left her with Grandma in the parking lot, but we left her with hugs and kisses and told her that she'd get to hold her new baby sister soon, and then we had to leave. So we got there and got all of the paperwork filled out, and they took us upstairs and started to get us ready for the surgery. The nurse started my IV (and she got it the first time which was awesome because when I had Emmaline it took them 12 tries to try and get 2 IV's in. I'm not even exaggerating. It was insane.) And they asked me a ton of questions, and drew some blood, and checked all of my vitals and stuff, and about this point I was absolutely freaking out. It wasn't any kind of rational fear, and there wasn't anything specific I was afraid of, but I was just absolutely losing it, and there were multiple silent prayers said in my head for help to get through this next little while, and all this time Royce was just sitting beside me stroking my arm so I wouldn't completely break down. So then they took me into the operating room, and Royce had to wait in the hall while they got things ready, and once I got in there they worked really fast, so it was a little harder to freak out because I had to really focus to do what they were asking me. They put me up on the table, and then they started the spinal thing, and then they moved even faster, and got me laid down, and started my catheter and they kept putting all of these warm blankets on me, and hooked up these hoses that blew warm air into my gown. With Emmaline I got really sick from the anesthesia, which I guess is pretty common, but the Anesthesiologist told me that if I got sick at all to tell him right away, and as I was laying there I started getting sick, and my teeth started chattering, and my arms were shaking pretty bad, and I told him I was feeling sick, and he was there and in like two seconds he had a medicine shot into my IV, and the nausea totally went away, and I didn't get sick the whole rest of the time! It was awesome. Then around that time they let Royce came in, and he sat at a chair at my head, and the doctors came in and went to work. One thing that did make me relax a lot, is that while the doctors/nurses were working they were just chatting about random things, and talking about their weekend, and it just made it a lot more like a common thing, and not such a big deal. Anyway, they worked for a while, and then they said, okay Daddy, come on up, it's time to get a picture of this, at which point Royce's eyes got really big and he kind of froze. I learned while we were in the hospital with Emmaline that Royce does not like to watch medical procedures being done on me. (It's not so much that he's afraid of blood or needles or anything, but he doesn't like to watch that being done to me.) When they were trying to put the IV's in, he almost passed out, and for that reason didn't cut Emmaline's umbilical cord because he did not want to see any of that because he was afraid he was going to pass out. So with Marta again Royce planned on not cutting the umbilical cord, because he knew that I would completely freak out if he wasn't right there with me, and if he looked at anything, there was a good chance he'd end up passed out on the floor. So the doctor had to ask him again to stand up, and reluctantly he did, and he got a picture of just her head coming out, and then another one with the rest of her halfway out, and then he came back and sat down by my head until they got her all the way out, and they took her over to the scale and weighed her and cleaned her up a little, and she let out a few tiny little cries when she was first born, and then she just kind of laid there looking around, not really fussing or crying or anything. I was surprised at how much hair she had, and how dark it was, because Emmaline had a tiny bit of hair, and it was reddish/blonde. Anyway, they got her cleaned up and wrapped up a little, and then they brought her over and put her by my face, and I got to snuggle her face a little bit, and then they had to take her to the nursery, so Royce went with her, and the doctor finished sewing me up, and he said that I didn't have any scar tissue so we should be okay c-section wise to have more babies in the future. So then they took me to the recovery room, and at this point I was feeling pretty good; I mean, obviously pretty out of it, but so much better than last time, and we got there and they put more warm blankets on me and another heating thing, because I guess my temperature had gotten kind of low, but I wasn't feeling too bad, and was just kind of relaxed and resting, and after a while Royce came in to check on me, and he sat with me for a while, and showed me pictures that he had gotten of Marta. Apparently she was still just really calm in the nursery, until they gave her a bath, and that was when she started crying. So after about an hour and a half in the recovery room they took me to my room and I got to hold her, and try and nurse her and stuff. Anyway, she's such a sweet little girl and is so calm. Again we've had some troubles nuring, and she dropped a lot of weight in the first two days, so right now I nurse her, then we supplement with some formula, and I pump to get more milk. She's had a couple of rough nights, but has done a little better on soy formula, but is still such a sweetheart. And Emmaline is so excited and doing so well and we're all just excited to have her here now!
I tried to fix the red-eye with photoshop, but I'm not very good so her eyes look a little weird.
I think Marta had a big chunk of Emmaline's hair in her hand. :)
Look at how skinny our poor little girl got! She dropped a lot of weight the first day in the hospital (this picture is after we were home, after she was about a week old), and more the second, and by the third she had lost 9.9% of her body weight, and so we had to supplement with some formula, but we were still aggressively trying to breast feed, and by her two week check-up she still wasn't back up to birth weight, and so we focused a lot more on formula, and she did so much better. By her third week at her cardiologist appointment she had gained more than a pound, and has been doing really well since, as you can tell by the fact that her little cheeks are getting chubbier! So like with Emmaline, the breastfeeding didn't really work, but she's doing really well now, and I'm happy with the feeding situation now.
Emmaline's creation. (And picture.)
