The Story...

She's here! Our precious Rylee Grace arrived on July 15 at 7:10 pm. She arrived healthy and perfect in every way. She was 6 lbs, 6 oz, and 19 inches long. It is still hard to believe that she is finally here. Yesterday (Aug 2) marked Rylee's official due date. So she was still supposed to be inside until this week! Crazy! Yet here she is, going onto 3 weeks on Thursday.

I was scheduled to go in for my induction on the night of the 13th. However, late in the afternoon I got a call that the birthing center was incredibly busy and I needed to wait until morning. Grrr! Needless to say, I was a little upset as I had been working myself up for everything all day. But after a restless night of sleep we finally checked into the hospital at 7:00 Wednesday morning. The induction process started almost right away, but it was a long and slow process. I almost immediately started having contractions about 3 min. apart, but fortunately they were not very painful, just kind of annoying. On Thursday morning my doctor decided I was finally ready for the Pitocin and I started getting that around 9 am. Once again, it was a slow process and much did not happen until mid afternoon. They kept upping the dosage hoping it would kick things in gear. Well, if finally did around 3:30 pm. My water broke around then and contractions started getting intense. Around 6:30 pm I started to push and Rylee arrived at 7:10!

During the entire process the doctors were worried about Rylee's heartrate. It would drop with every contraction so I was stuck laying down on my left side the ENTIRE time. That got quite old. :) Near the end the doctor said it was a race whether Rylee would arrive first or they'd have to do a Cesarean. (Fortunately she won!) My doctor recommended an epidural to help me relax and to help stabilize Rylee's heartrate, but things started happening so fast there was never time! In the end they decided she had a short cord which was causing the problems. We are just so thankful and blessed that Rylee arrived healthy, and we are so in love with our little girl!

We went home from the hospital on Saturday morning. Then on Monday we had Rylee's 3-day check up. At the doctor's office we learned she had dropped more than the normal 7-10% of her birth weight and they wanted us to check back into the hospital. We knew she hadn't been eating well so it was almost a relief to go somewhere where we could get help.

At the hospital the nurses learned that she was not sucking correctly; she was tongue thrusting so it was impossible for her to drink. Apparently this is not uncommon for small and early babies. It only took a short while for the nurse to train Rylee how to suck properly. For a while we had to use a syringe to supplement her but we eventually got Rylee eating on her own. We went home on Tuesday with a very detailed feeding plan and a nervous mama...but we are starting to get things figured out. At her 2-week appointment Rylee had not only regained her birth weight but she was well past it! Yeah!

I think we are getting settled into a routine now. We don't have to go back to the doctor until her 6-week appointment. I am definitely done with doctors for while and sick of surprise check-in's to the hospital. :) Rylee is an amazing baby. She is very content and pretty much sleeps all the time. I still have to wake her up every 3 hours but she is just now starting to wake up hungry on her own which is a good sign. She is a precious bundle and she is quite a miracle!