Hiccups

Our beautiful baby girl, Alasyn Hillary Becker, is one week old today. And thus, this post is a week overdue. I hope you can forgive me for this small hiccup in keeping the world posted, but at least I got pictures up on Facebook in a timely manner. :)

Our adventure began last Tuesday, September 28. Since my pregnancy had extended almost a week past my due date, I was scheduled for an induction on Thursday the 30th. I had planned for Tuesday to be my last day at work, enabling me to take all of Wednesday to rest up for the big day. We experienced a large hiccup in that plan, though. I was in a meeting with my principal after school on Tuesday when I began to notice my contractions. Contractions had been pretty common place for me, but these definitely got my attention. They weren't super painful, but they were definitely noticeable. By the time I made it home, they were uncomfortable. I couldn't even stay seated at the dinner table when one would hit - I had to get up and walk it off. We started timing my contractions, and while they were all approximately a minute long, they were sporatic in frequency. Everyone tells you that your contractions should be consistently 4-5 minutes apart and should be lasting about a minute each before going to the hospital, so we waited. They were getting stronger, but were still sporatic. 3 minutes apart, 4 minutes apart, 2 minutes apart, then 5, then back to back with a few seconds in between. Soon I found that getting on the floor on my hands and knees and breathing through the contractions was the only way to make it through, so David called the hospital and told them what was going on. Their response? "Give her some tylenol and if that doesn't ease the pain, bring her by in 30 minutes." My response? "TYLENOL!?!?!" We only waited 20 minutes.

When the nurses checked me I had dilated to nearly 5 cm, which was impressive since I was at 1 cm at my doctor's visit the day before. I immediately requested an epidural, but by the time I got one I had dilated to an 8. Let me just say that epidurals are wonderful. I know I was "almost there", but I'm still so glad I got one. It allowed me to really relax and save energy for pushing later. It was a much needed relief and helped me to really enjoy the rest of my experience.

Around 11:15 p.m. I had fully dilated and was ready to begin pushing. For a while, we didn't know if our baby girl would be born on Tuesday or Wednesday, but in the end she held out for Wednesday.

Now she's a week old. Time has flown by SO fast, and I'm already beginning to realize how quickly they grow up. I'm already prematurely missing this newborn phase. I know that she won't be a newborn forever and I know that I will miss all the newborn faces, the crossed-eyes, the movements she makes as she figures out her muscles, and so on. The only comfort is knowing that there is so much more to come and that it will keep getting better.

I decided to pull out the video camera (ok - cell phone) to capture some of her newborn cuteness. I hope you don't mind the personal touches I couldn't help but throw in there as I narrated!