Acacia Alexis is born!

Acacia Alexis has finally made her appearance. She was born yesterday evening, on her due date, (Sept. 24th) at 8:03. She weighed in at 7 lb 3.5 oz and measured at 19 1/4 in. Labor & delivery went well. After a week of waiting & getting my hopes up at every contraction, I finally had what seemed like the "real" thing yesterday afternoon. Although there was essentially no pain still, by 4:30 the contractions were consistently 3 min apart so I called the hospital & the nurse said that since I was already over 5 cm dilated that I should go ahead & come in. My parents had come up to stay with the girls so Russ & I came to the Birth Center & checked in. I was at 6 when I got here. Pain was minimal. Getting my IV was more painful than the contractions. (It took five pokes & four nurses before they finally were successful in getting it in place.) I was at 7 when my ob arrived. She broke my water & the contractions got a bit more intense but were still easily bearable. Around 7:45 the pain was VERY real and when the Dr checked on me at 8, I was hurting and ready to push. Three minutes of pushing and my little girl was born. I got to hold her on my chest for a couple minutes while we waited to clamp & cut the cord. This is the only chance I really had to look at her for three hours. Her oxygen saturation was low so they took her to the nursery to assess her more thoroughly. While Russ went with her, I stayed behind with the shakes just waiting until they gave me permission to get up and clean myself, after which I felt so much better! Russ stopped in briefly to tell me that the doctor order x-rays on her lungs to see if she had any fluid in there. I called my parents to let them know that their granddaughter was born & tell them what little I knew. (Most of our conversation went along the lines of "Russ thinks she was 7 lb 3 oz" "Russ didn't tell me that." "I don't know, I hardly got to see her." etc) A little bit later they moved me to my recovery room. At this point I was starting to get pretty anxious to see my baby. They were waiting on the x-ray results. Around 11:00 Russ came and took me to the NICU to see her finally! She did have fluid on her lungs & she was still having a hard time with her oxygen levels. After holding her awhile I had to go back to my room for my assessment. Soon thereafter the pediatrician had come in and looked at Acacia. He gave us a quick rundown of what was going on. He said that oftentimes when the delivery is that quick the baby doesn't always get all the fluid squeezed out and can take a big gulp of it down on the way out. He said that I should be able to nurse soon. That they'd be checking her blood for possible signs of infection & whatnot and those results would determine how things played out over the next few days. Sometime after midnight I went to the nursery to feed my baby and ended up observing an hour of late nights in the nursery before I got to do that. Russ went to bed, Acacia got blood drawn two or three times & I sat and watched & waited. The nurse said her breathing monitor had to stay below 70 before I could nurse. So I spent a lot of time staring at the numbers that represented her breathing & her oxygen absorption (which would set off an alarm if it fell below 87% for more than a few seconds.) Finally at a quarter after one (5 hrs after she was born) I got to feed her for the first time. It took a bit to get latched on but once she was she did great! I finally got to bed at 2 am.

Woke up today at 5:30 hungry & ready for some meds. I fed the baby, got a visit from my other girls & my parents. Eden was a bit wary at first but Jasmine was incredibly eager to see her baby sister, Acacia. While they were here the pediatrician told us that her white blood cell count was high enough that they were going to put her on anti-biotics. That was somewhat discouraging. It is so different being here without my baby in the room with me. We keep going to the nursery to visit & to nurse but the rockers in there are horribly uncomfortable to me so I can't stay with her for more than 40 min at a time anyway. Since noone can really see the baby & she's being cared for in the nursery, there is very little traffic in and out of my room. I'm thinking I may actually get some reading done while I'm here.

Anyway, just thought I'd spend part of this time updating my blog & writing some of the details down while they are fresh in my mind. There are more photos of her on my photosite--here. Keep us in your prayers. We are anxious to get our baby to ourselves!