Week 1 with Ellery!

Fair warning:

This is a very long post! I'll spare a lot of the gross and boring details, but there are some in this post, so feel free to skip to the pictures if you want.

Baby Girl Ellery Jean Shurtliff was born Thursday, October 13th, 2011 in Dallas, Texas at 5:00 pm. She weighed 7 lbs. 7 ozs. and was 18 inches long.

I was scheduled to be induced on Thursday at 6 am. Coincidentally though, my water broke at 3:20 am, so baby would have been born that day either way! I guess she knew it was her birthday. I'm glad too because I was feeling kind of guilty thinking she might not really be ready, and this of course, assured me that she was. So we only arrived at the hospital 2 hours before we were supposed to anyway. This was definitely exciting for me. I woke up in a huge pool of water and could not stop leaking, even after we arrived at the hospital. I made sure we hurried FAST because I had no idea how soon she would be coming. However, when they checked me at the hospital I wasn't even dilated at all! So I definitely still needed to be induced. They gave me Pitocin to get the labor going. I hadn't felt any contractions until this point. I started feeling them almost right away and they got increasingly more painful. I decided to take the epidural after a few hours even when the contractions were still bearable. After quite a while they checked me again and I was only dilated to a 4. (Oh and by the way, when checking me, the doctor popped a second bag of water. Yes, some people have two! I had no idea haha). I was worried I'd be there forever, but they said that it takes a long time to get to 4 and then after that it speeds up. They were right! The next time they checked me I was a 10! They got everything ready quickly and the pushing began. First of all, I just have to say, labor was not at all how I expected. I thought it was going to be this awful, painful, horrible experience (I mean, pretty much everyone that told me their labor experience said that either something went wrong or it hurt horribly bad, or something like that!). I have never been more relaxed and comfortable in my life. I definitely recommend an epidural. I even slept for a bit while we waited. I never felt any pain or discomfort (after the epidural) and even the epidural wasn't bad (I had heard horror stories about this giant needle they use, etc....it felt like a normal shot to me!). This was a blessing to have a smooth, comfortable delivery after 9 months of misery. I literally threw up until the day she was born. In fact, I threw up twice in the hospital before they gave me the epidural (I knew I would. They blamed it on the Pitocin, but that was nothing new to me. That was just a daily occurrence). But I'm proud to say I haven't thrown up once since then! My morning sickness is GONE! yay! Anyway, I pushed for a total of one hour and 15 minutes. Not bad for a first baby! It was pretty invigorating. I'm stronger than I thought! Clay was an excellent pushing couch. I was very glad to have him there by my side.  I was expecting her to be funny looking when she came out (probably because my Mom thought we were all funny looking haha), but my very first thought was "Wow! She's beautiful!" She was born with a ton of dark hair! We can't quite figure out who she looks like. The only trait I can see in her that resembles someone else in our family is her chin. She has her grandpa's chin. I suppose she will look more like us later on? She's sure a cutie pie though. We absolutely love her. We stayed in the hospital till Saturday afternoon. Clay had to work on Friday, but fortunately he only works a couple of floors below where I delivered, so he came upstairs to visit baby and me on all his breaks. Plus, my mom and dad arrived Friday, so I had some company. Oh, I guess I should mention that there were a couple of complications during labor, but they were minor, fortunately. She was born with the cord wrapped around her neck, but it was only wrapped around once and the doctor quickly fixed it. Also, I had to wear an oxygen mask most of the time because she wasn't getting enough oxygen, and her little heart beat got pretty low, so instead of monitoring it on my stomach like normal, they went in and put a monitor under her scalp for a more accurate reading. They took it out right after she was born. But other than that, she was, and still is perfectly healthy! I have had a little bit of a rough time with the recovery. I won't go into details there, but basically it hurts...in several places. Baby is a great eater though and she sleeps a lot, and she's fun when she's awake. She makes the cutest and funniest faces. One second she'll have a huge frown on her face and then the next she'll be smiling (I know she has no control over this and isn't REALLY smiling, but it's sure fun to watch). At her four day old doctor's appointment she was down to 6 lbs. 13 ozs, which is normal. She does have the tiniest bit of jaundice, but nothing to worry about. She passes gas, burps, poops and spits up all the time. She's a messy little thing! She LOVES to suck. She loves her pacifier. It's fun to dress her up in cute clothes, but she doesn't wear them long before she destroys them with spit up or poop, plus we have to keep her so bundled up that you can't see the clothes haha. But that will probably change soon. I am not getting a lot of sleep, but I think I'm probably getting more than most brand new moms because my mother has been wonderful in helping me with Ellery. I broke out with Mastitis (a breast infection) a couple of nights ago. I had a horrible fever and violent chills. I quickly got on an antibiotic, and I'm breast feeding my way through it (yeah, ouch!), so I'm feeling quite a bit better now. The night that I broke out with it my mom stayed up with baby all night long! I had pumped milk, so baby only had to have one bottle of formula and the rest was breast milk. Clay has been wonderful in helping a lot too, but I didn't want him to do the night shift that night because he's had an intense work schedule. I think I'm kind of rambling now. Basically everything is great. I'm recovering and baby is healthy and beautiful. Now for the fun part:

 Waiting for baby to come! I look so big! haha

 Ellery's first picture!

 This one is hilarious! I think she liked it better inside my womb.

 She is so swollen! She looks big in these pictures.

 Happy new dad!

 Proud grandparents

 She loves to be bundled up! The doctor did this though. We're not that good!

 She scratched up her poor little face. We were eager to get home and cut her nails.

After her first bath in the hospital. How cute is her hair?!

 Baby girl at home.

 Ellery on her first walk!

 We do lots of burping around here.

 Scared of her bath.

 Happy once she has her paci.

All clean!