Well for all those that have been waiting to see pictures of my beautiful baby girl, I'm really sorry for how long it's taken me to finally post some on here. I'll start out with the picture of her that they took at the hospital the day she was born. Isn't she adorable? She's already lost some of the chubbiness of her cheeks, and I can't believe she's already four weeks old today!
I'll briefly tell of my birthing experience with her...mostly just for me so I have recorded what happened. I was due on the 6th of August, but at my doctor's visit that day I hadn't made any progress really from the previous week's visit. As you can tell from my post that day, I was very frustrated and depressed about this. Partly because I had lots of people tell me either that they thought I would come early, or they were telling me about how they or their spouse came early. I just wanted that to be me too. I was so done being pregnant! Mostly I was upset though because Andrew's parents and sister were going out of town two days after I was due and they were going to be gone for a week. I was sad that they were not going to be able to see their grandchild/niece for a week after she was born...from when I was hoping that she'd be born anyway. Then four days after I was due, my sister, Robyn, and her family who had been in town from Ohio left and went home. I was sad that they too were going to miss the birth of my baby. She just didn't want to come yet. Well I had a doctor's appointment a week after my due date, and the doctor decided that I would be induced the next morning. He sent me into the hospital that night for them to apply some gel on me to make me more effaced. I had to go in twice that night for them to give me the gel, and both times I had to lay flat on my back for about an hour so that my body had time to absorb the gel. The next morning when I went into the hospital to be induced, they checked me to see how far I was dilated. The nurse stretched me to be dilated to a 3...and after 8 hours of pitocin and two doses of this other stuff they gave me after the pitocin wasn't working and having contractions with all of that stuff, I was still only dilated to a 3. We had gone into the hospital at 6:30 Friday morning, and by the time we were done with all of that it was about 3am on Saturday. I was exhausted, having only slept about half an hour all day, being allowed to eat only a few clear liquid things, and having contractions all day long. The doctor was going to have the nurse administer another dose of the second medicine they were trying to get me to progress, when I told her that I just couldn't take any more. She went and got the doctor and we discussed all of my options. I told him that even if they would be able to finally get me dilated to a 10, I didn't think I would even have the strength to push out the baby, so after talking it over with Andrew, we decided that the best thing to do at that point would be for me to get a c-section. After that was decided, everything happened really quickly. They got me all prepped, then took me into the operating room where they gave me an epidural, then they brought Andrew in and our baby girl was born at 5:48am Saturday morning, August 15th.
I've been really blessed to be able to heal really quickly from having the c-section. I've never done it the other way, so I don't know how quickly I would heal from that, but after just about a week, I barely even noticed my incision. And Daphne is such a good baby she makes it easy to be a parent. She just has us wrapped around her long, perfect little fingers. She's so fun, and Andrew and I feel so blessed to have her in our lives.
Now that I'm finally caught up with posting about this, maybe I'll catch up on the other things that happened just before she was born. Until then, here are just a few of the many pictures that have been taken of our little Daphne. Enjoy! :)
Sorry this one is a bit blurry...I took it with my phone, but I love this picture of Andrew and Daphne
After her baby blessing in the beautiful dress Andrew's mom made for her
I love her face in this one
With her namesake, Grandma Hill
Our cute little family
Her cute little shoes and socks under her blessing dress
Sleeping on her grandma's shoulder at the luncheon after her blessing. Such a hard day for her!
She was smiling a lot right before I took this picture, but I just missed it. I know she's really too young to be smiling at us, but she totally does already. It just melts my heart. So cute!
One of her favorite sleeping positions
