What a week!!

Let me preface this by saying that our camera was accidentally dropped during the hospital stay and is now broken. So i will have better pics later...

Well, Miss Alexander Anne Cougle made her unexpected arrival last Tuesday at 11:55 AM. She has been PERFECT!! We cannot complain one iota about her eating and sleeping habits thus far! She is eating about every 3 hours during the day and sleeping about four hours at night between feedings, so no complaints here :) So...here is what happened...

BJ and I went to the MD Monday morning for my check-up, and we had a sonogram. It showed two interesting things. First, that i only had a small pocket of amniotic fluid left. oops. So we knew we would be going back to the md alot more often over the coming weeks. Secondly, it showed Alex was weighing in at 8lbs 14oz. So needless to say, with 3 weeks left to go, I thought i was carrying a giant :) So, we see the MD, I get "checked" - nothing really happening. I go back to work. That afternoon around 1 or 2pm, I started cramping. I thought absolutely nothing about it because he had checked me, and I knew that was a common side effect. We were pretty steady at work, so I wasn't paying attention to the fact that they were getting worse and closer together. I didn't realized something was up until I was walking to my car and had to stop halfway there. I called Courtney, who is a nurse at the women's clinic, for advice. I took her advice and said I would call her back. So i am laid out on the couch willing the pain to go away. Mind you, it really hasn't occured to me that I could actually be in labor -- that was the farthest thing from my mind!! At this point, thankfully, Lauren had this weird feeling she should come check on me. She walked in, took one look at me, and said you are in labor. I vehemently denied this claim. So we called Courtney back, and she called up to L&D. Luckily my doctor was on call, and he said to send me straight in. I forgot to mention...BJ is working at Walgreens until 10pm. So, LJ takes me to the hospital -- luckily i had actually packed my bag the night before. I call BJ, and we both think MD will send me right back home because I couldn't possibly be in labor. We get to the hospital , the hook me up to the monitors, check me, and MD says..."you are definitley in labor, you are being admitted". I was having strong contractions every two minutes. I am pretty sure I just sat there in shock. All I could think was that my procrastination was really shining at this moment. The nursery wasn't finished, heck, most things weren't finished. We were going to be doing this on the fly. So, then the really funny phone calls to my husband and family ensued. BJ just kept saying...."really?" over and over. Lauren stayed with me in the hospital until Laura Merrill arrived at about 10pm. BJ finally got there around 11pm -- he had to go home a get a bag (remember we are procrastinators). So we were in L&D all night, and at 4am they started pitocin to speed things up. I was 2cm. At 7 they broke my water....still 2cm. At 8:30, I finally got some pain meds (stadol and phenergan) and proceeded into a coma-like state until about 11am. All my family had arrived while I was comatose, and there was a small party in the room when I woke up. Let me tell you, that is how you endure labor...sleep thru it! The only problem was I continued to fall asleep in the middle of conversations for the rest of the day...oops! Well, the doctor checks me at 11:30 thinking I can get an epidural now. Well...you guessed it...still 2cm!!!! So we decide that after being in labor in the hospital for 16 hours and not progressing AT ALL, that it was time for a c-section. I am pretty sure he could have suggested anything at that point and i would have been gung-ho. I go in for the section to get my spinal, and the poor doctor had a hard time getting it because I kept falling asleep...oops again. Finally, I had more drugs running thru me and Bj was allowed to come in. I don't remember much from here because I kept falling asleep. But I do remember (vaguely)the first time I saw Alex. The MD said "look to your left and you can see your daughter". I did, and my first thougth was ....black hair...seriously? i'm blaming that on the drugs too. Soon afterwards, BJ and Alex were wisked away for the weigh-in (7lbs 3oz....slightly off from the 8lbs 14oz estimation), the foot stamping, and the first bath. I was then wisked away to recovery for the next three hours.

So...she is here, she is perfect, and she is everything BJ and I have hoped and prayed for for so many years. Neither one of us could feel more blessed right now! We finally got home from the hospital on Friday. My mom has been with us ever since (BJ had to go back to work on Saturday). Things are going great!! Here are more pics from the past week, and I will definitely update soon!!


well...tried to upload pics for about an hour...will try later :)