Introducing Grace Lynn

We are so very happy to finally introduce you to Grace Lynn Myers, our sweet baby girl.  She was born Tuesday, April 17th at 4:56pm.  She weighed in at 7lbs 1.3ozs and was 21" long.  Needless to say, since then she has lost a little bit of weight, but only 4 ounces which the pediatrician said was actually best out of all the other babies in the nursery at that time.  He called her his little rockstar because she was so good and such a cutie.  Maybe he was just being nice, but I don't think so, because she is pretty darn cute!  Grace has blonde hair and beautiful dark blue eyes.  We still aren't sure where all her hair came from.  We thought for sure she'd be bald, but nope, she proved us wrong.

2 days old; Love those eyes!

In a matter of a week, we are already seeing our baby girl smile (with a cute little dimple on her left cheek), hiccup (a LOT!), and show so many expressions.  Her eye focus is also so good!  She is already looking at us and looks around the room, etc.  She rarely is cross eyed if ever.  She also has a vary strong grip and is already trying to hold her head up.  Other things; I have been breastfeeding and Grace has taken to it quite well.  She loves to eat, lol... she eats so fast that she almost always gets the hiccups right after.  It is too cute, but at the same time I feel bad for her for getting them so often.

4 days old; look at that cute dimple!

2 days old; Love our little family of three!

Well, all in all, it has been wonderful having Grace at home with us since Thursday evening.  I don't know what we would've done without having my mama over these last couple days since Garrett has had to go back to work.  She has stayed with us and helped any way she could since I haven't been able to move around too too much.  She is the BEST!  Thanks mama!!    I am starting to feel a little bit better today and am able to get around a little better.  I am still taking percocet, but only as needed.  I would not trade anything of this whole experience though.  It was all definitely worth it for the beautiful baby girl that God has gifted us with.  Today she is 1 week old.  HAPPY 1 WEEK BIRTHDAY GRACE LYNN! :)

The Delivery: skip this if you don't want to know any details of the delivery, lol.

Garrett, my mother, and I made it to the hospital at 11:45pm on Monday the 16th.  I was given fluids at about 2am and then was put on the Pitocin at about 2:30am.  Before putting me on petocin, they monitored my heart rate, the baby's heart rate, and any contractions I may have.  To my surprise, the nurse said that I was actually already having contractions, but I was just unaware of them.  Shortly after this, the nurses came running back in and asked me to turn over because Grace's heartbeat had dropped.  As soon as I turned, I felt a lovely gush of something and that's when I realized my water had broke.  Grace's heartbeat then quickly came back up to a healthy beat.  She was doing great.  Once I hit about 2cm, I asked when I could get the epidural and they said whenever I wanted, so I went ahead and asked for it.  Because I was only about 1-2cm dilated, they did not give me the full epidural.  However, the contractions started coming stronger and I was in pain.  So, they came in and checked me out.  To their surprise I had dilated to 4cm in a matter of just an hour or maybe even less than that.  So, they immediately bumped the dosage up and I started to feel MUCH BETTER!

From this point on, it was just a waiting game.  Once I hit 7cm, I made it 10cm in only an hour.  So, I began to start pushing.  This was where things started to really take their time and got really hard.  The pressure hurt so bad (one reason being my pea-size bladder; so they put a catheter in and released it); it got a little bit better, but soon thereafter starting hurting again really bad.  This is because Grace had finally made her way down and was "RIGHT THERE".  However, the nurse and doctor both confirmed that Grace was coming out OP (Occiput Posterior), which means she was coming out face up, as opposed to the normal "face down" position.  They tried several different pushing positions with me to try and help, but she was not turning.  So, two and a half hours later, they decided to get the vacuum since the pushing was not proving successful.  I begged to not have a C-section, so they did all they could to get her out  However, the vacuum wasn't really helping too much either.  That's when the doctor decided that I needed to have an episiotomy.  After that, they started the vacuum again.  Finally, to much of our joy, Grace made her arrival!

When Grace came out, her head was sooo cone shaped from being in the canal so long and the vacuum.  The nurses and doctor all said that she would very likely have at least one black eye and bruises on her face from the pelvic bone.  But, she was a trooper and showed no sign of bruising on her face the next day.  She was BEAUTIFUL!!  She did however still have a nice big circular bruise on her head from the vacuum.  It has finally started to go away though and today you can hardly see it.  She really is a "rockstar" and I love her so stinkin' much!!  Because I had the episiotomy, they had to keep me at the hospital an extra day.  It was wonderful though because it just gave us more time to ask questions and more time for me to somewhat recuperate.

Garrett and I and my mama were so impressed with our nurse Jessica and of course we loved Dr. Bevitz.  They were the absolute best and I only hope to have just as wonderful of a labor experience for any future children.  They both made the delivery so wonderful and their encouragement really kept our hopes high and helped to encourage me to continue pushing as hard as I possibly could, through the pain and troubles.  She was a stubborn little one, but certainly beautiful and worth every minute of labor.