Sleep

Drum roll, please!!! Last night Kylie slept from 10 o'clock to 5 o'clock this morning!!! And she is not quite a month old (Wednesday is the big day).  I know this probably won't last, but a girl can dream.  Perfect timing too because Rex just came back from a camping trip with his buds, and they about froze their butts off in the mountains.  Seriously, frost in August?  Any who, I'm glad to have my hubby back even if he does smell like a campfire :)

One of my close friends just found out she is going to have a little girl!!! I'm so excited for her and her fiancee.  So come January Kylie will have a little friend, and I'll have a fellow mommy to hang out with!!!  It kinda sucks right now because most of my friends are still single with no kids so they're not quite sure why I'm the crazy person that I am.  Needless to say, I was over the moon when my friend announced she was expecting!!!

And since y'all just met me, I'll let you know a little about myself.

1.  I'm 23 and in September I'll be married to my wonderful husband for three years (three years! How did time go by so fast?).

2.  I work at a pet store, which has caused the animal population at our house to raise significantly.  My pets include one German Sheperd, four Chihuahuas, one Guinea Pig, one Bearded Dragon, three Red Ear Slider Turtles, and one salt water fish tank.  And all of the animals except one chihuahua and the fish tank are rescues.  So needless to say, it is never quiet at our house. 

3.  I love to read, preferably romances and mysteries.  I absolutely love the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlene Harris. 

4.  I'm a country girl.  I love that I grew up in small town where everyone knew everyone.  And everyone especially knew who I was because both of my parents are teachers in town.  I love that I was able to grow up in a house that was on five acres and empty lots all around so I was never really fenced in.  I'm super excited that within a year my little family is going to move from the Southern California desert to a small farm town in Southeast Texas.

5.  When I was ten I joined 4-H and got my first horse for Christmas that year. I loved it.  I showed my horse, did the educational events, raised lambs for the fair, and served as the secretary and later president of my 4-H club.  I loved it because I was good at it, which was something I hadn't had yet.  I was able to travel to Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Sacramento to compete in horse judging.  With my second horse I won the Senior English Flat High Point at the State Championships.  I wouldn't trade any of it and am going to encourage my kids to join 4-H as well.

Popped My Blogging Cherry

Well, hi everyone!!!  I finally got around to starting my blog.  Throughout my pregnancy I kept meaning to start a blog, but I just never got around to it.  Now that my baby girl is almost a month old, here I am!!!  I'll start in the beginning of my motherhood with my birth story...

My pregnancy was unexpected to say the least.  My hubby and I are currently living with my parents to save money to buy a house, and we were not planning on starting a family till we were settled on our own.  Obviously, God had other plans for us.  It was confirmed that I was pregnant early last December and that my due date was July 27.  Luckily my pregnancy went fairly smoothly, we just had a scare when I had some bleeding right before Christmas.  In February we found out we were going to have a girl, and that kind of helped make the pregnancy seem more real.  The whole time my hubby was convinced we were going to have an August baby, and he was right, since she was born on August 4, her grandma's birthday.

So my due date came and went, and I was scheduled for an induction on August 3.  We checked in at 1:15 pm and I was taken to triage first so I could get undressed, they could ask me a million questions, and so a doctor could check to see if I had had any progress since my last appointment where I was 3 cm dialated and 70% effaced.  It turns out I was just about 5 cm dialated and 80% effaced and baby girl was at 0 station!!! I was so happy that I had made more progress in hopes that would mean a quicker labor.  Then they took us to the birthing suite and got me settled in and started on pitocin about 3:30 pm.  By 6 pm they had upped my dosage three times and I still was at 5 cm.  The contractions were getting stronger and closer together, but I just felt crampy, no pain yet... 

So at 8 pm the doctor checked me again and since I was still at 5 cm she decided to manually break my water.  Well, my water did NOT want to break.  It took the doctor almost a minute to do that, which was a tad uncomfortable to say the least.  Somebody with their arm and a big crochet hook all up in you is not the most pleasant feeling.  But breaking my water did the trick, my contractions got super strong and definitely more painful.  I was trying to make it as long as I could without an epi, and I gave in at 9:30 pm and requested it.  My pain level was probably at a 7 on a 1-10 scale.  The contractions felt like the worst constipation EVER!!!  So the anethesioligist came in at 10 pm and starts the process of putting the epi in, and it takes about 40 minutes!!! It didn't hurt when she was putting it in; it was just really uncomfortable hunching my back and trying to stay still during the contractions.  It was weird when she started the pain meds because I could feel the coldness running down my back.  Luckily the epi worked perfectly.  In about 10 minutes I couldn't feel any pain, just pressure, and I was still able to move my legs and butt.  The nurse then inserted the catheter and checked my progress, and I was at 8 cm!!! Yay!!!  My hubby got to come back in and we relaxed for a little while, since I was much more pleasant to talk to after the drugs.  At midnight I had made it to 9 cm, and my hubby and I were able to sleep on and off for awhile.  The contractions had slowed down even though they had upped the pitocin, so this part went really slowly.  And I have defintely watched enough Hannah Montana, iCarly, and Suite Life on Deck to last a lifetime, since the Disney channel was the best option of the channels the hospital had. 

At 4 am the doctor comes in and checks my progess, and is like, "You're fully dilated and effaced!!! Time to push!!!"  Now this through hubby and I for a loop because one minute we're sleeping and the next five people are in the room with us telling us we're having a baby!!!  I don't know how I got so lucky, but I had two super nice young women doctors, the head nurse, and a great pedi nurse in the room while I was giving birth.  So they have me start pushing after telling me that it could take a couple of hours since it's my first baby.  My hubby was great throughout the whole thing, holding on to my arm and holding up one of my legs the whole time. I hadn't thought that I would want anyone touching me, but it was so comforting knowing he was right there.  Throughout my pregnancy he had told me that he was going to watch the entire birth, but it turns out a couple glances were just fine with him.

Well, less than 20 minutes later at 4:38 am, Kylie Louise was born and put directly on my chest.  It was an out of body experience, seeing her there, realizing that this was the little person that was inside of me for 9 months.  She didn't cry right away so the nurse took her and cleared out her lungs and then she started this little squeaky cry and was quiet again.  She pooped three times right after she was born so obviously the output was working just fine.  My hubby was with her the whole time that she got weighed, measured, cleaned up, eye drops, and shots.  Kylie weighed 6 lbs 15 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long.  Meanwhile I delivered the placenta just fine, though it was really weird feeling, like this slimy thing slithering out of me.  I ended up have just two small stiches put in, the doctor said it was a small labial tear, not even considered a 1st degree tear so I looked out big time with that.   Then we were taken to our recovery room...

I feel truly blessed to have such a great birthing experience, such a great hubby, a wonderful medical staff, and a beautiful baby girl!!!

And if  you made it through this whole post, thank you!!!

My hubby Rex with Kylie right after she was born