A Year Ago Today

Well, I can't believe that today Emmie is ONE YEAR OLD!  How did she get so big so fast!  It's hard to believe that a year ago today we were just diving into the world of parenthood! 
As I've been thinking about how things were a year ago I keep thinking about the days around her birth.  I worked on Monday, December 14 and when I got to work I had Brittney check my blood pressure.  My blood pressure had been going up the past few weeks (although it had been a little high the whole time) and I had instructions from the doctor to call if it was over 160/90.  So anyway, I had started feeling bad Sunday and wasn't feeling great on Monday morning.  So Brittney checked it and it was like 150s/80s...like high 150s I think.  I probably should have called the doctor then (insert note here that Stacy is a bad patient...but not as bad as Christa...haha) but we were having a super slow day and Shannon, my orientee was with me and she was super self-sufficient, and I had a doctor's appt the next day anyway.  I figured I'd prop my feet up on a chair, chill out all day, and go to the doctor in the morning.  Of course, as things often do on a  Monday morning at the hosptial, it got CRAZY that afternoon and I ended up not leaving work until 9:30 at night...did I mention my doctor's appt the next morning was early...like at 8:30 or something crazy like that.  So I went to the doctor the next morning where they took my blood pressure...165/103...or something like that...way too high...and I got fussed at by my doctor (Dr. Goode who's my normal doctor saw me that day and she knows how I roll) for not calling the day before and then she told me there was no reason for me to wait any longer to have Emmie and I could pick a day that week to have our baby!  Talk about pressure!  I decided on Thursday...I still had quite a few things to do before I was ready to go to the hosptial (at which point I was told that I was supposed to be taking it easy.  So Wednesday night, after I had maybe, possibly run around a good bit of the day getting things done, Paul's brother, Blake, got to our house to keep Franklin and Paul and I headed to the hospital.  Paul was so nervous in the car on the way there...I was fine until we got to the hospital...at which point I wondered if maybe I could wait another month or two to have the baby!  Paul and I decided the doctor would probably frown on that so we headed on in!  I got my bloodwork done and my IV put in and hooked up to the monitors and then we sat around and waited until they came in to do the cervidil.  After that we settled in for the night and ate some California dreaming.  The next morning they took the cervidil out about 6:30 and I was 2 cm dilated...a big improvement from nothing!  They started the induction at about 8:30 and all was good until it started to hurt...really bad.  My nurse had told me that most of "her girls" get their epidurals around lunchtime and here it was just after 9 and I was in pain!  However, I was NOT going to be wimpy patient they talk about at the nurses station (next time however, I will have NO problem being the wimpy patient...I might be the wimpy patient before there's anything to be wimpy about).  Luckily, Joan, my super nurse, came in a few minutes later and looked at me and asked if I was ready for the epidural...YES YES YES!  I had to wait for the anesthesiologist to come in because he was doing a c-section block but they gave me some nubain to tide me over and then my dear friend the anesthesiologist came in.  He.was.da.bomb.  I had the BEST epidural ever and I didn't even feel anything after the lidocaine.  I told Paul he should carry around a tip jar...Paul was glad he didn't...we might have been broke after I got done tipping him!  They made Paul leave the room while they put the epidural in and he was gone so long I was worried he'd wimped out and run for the hills!  Apparently someone in the hall told him it would take 45 min so that's why he was gone so long. 

Anyway, Dr. Risinger came in around 11:45 and I was 4cm dilated...she changed her estimate of the baby's arrival from 8pm to 3pm.  After she left we called our families to tell them to go ahead and head to Columbia!  Around 12:15 I started having a lot of pain and despite hitting my epidural button like a mad woman it wasn't getting any better.  My nurse came in and said it was probably just Emmie moving down but she decided to go ahead and check me (luckily!) and I was 9 cm!  What a shock that was!  All of a sudden, as everyone was running around the room, Paul and I got really nervous...this was it!  I pushed for about 10 minutes and Emmie was born at 1:03!  We were sooo excited!  Once she got here all the nervousness went away.  The only family that had made it in time was Blake so he got to be the first one to meet Emmie.  Over the next few hours everyone trickled in and I got moved to my new room.  It's so hard to describe the feelings I felt as I held our new baby but it was simply amazing and nothing I had ever felt before. 

So...that's the story of Emmie's birth and now here we are a year later with this little person who has changed sooo much in a year...I can't wait to see what next year brings!

Before I finish I want to mention this one last thing.  A few weeks before Emmie was born Dr. Ferguson preached a sermon about Mary.  He spoke about the faith that this young teenager had...so much more faith than we have as adults!  It was a beautiful sermon and at the end of the sermon he said wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if your daughter had the faith that Mary had.  That meant so much to me as I prepared to welcome a little girl into the world and everyday I have prayed that as Emmie grows up she will have the faith that Mary had.


PS. I'll do Emmie's 1 year post with all her accomplishments for this month on Dec. 27th when she has her doctor's appointment.