There's a brand new baby in our house!

Monday, Jan. 3 2011 will go down as one of the most memorable days of my life.  Our daughter Payton was brought into this world at 7:30 p.m. tipping the scales at 7 lbs 5 oz, and 19 inches long.  She is a beautiful baby!  It was love at first site! 

Without going into the gory details of child birth, yes it hurt, yes it took all day and yes I would do it again in a hearbeat.  I was induced at 6:30 in the morning, and my water was broken at 11:00 am.  But I didn't begin pushing until 6:00 pm.  After going through this, I've concluded that epidurals are the best thing ever invented.

Having Payton has started a whole new chapter in our lives.  We have this little person who we're responsible for, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  She's the most beautiful baby I've seen.  Many of the hospital staff told us the same thing, and I'm sure they say that to most of the parents who come through their facility, but in our case it's 100% true. :)

When people tell you that you don't get much sleep while you're in the hospital for labor & delivery, they're not lying.  I thought the reason I wasn't going to get much sleep was because I was in pain.  Boy was I wrong!  Hospital staff is constantly coming into your room to check your vitals and to give you pain pills.  The pills I loved!  The only time I was happy to see hospital staff enter my room at 4 am was so that I could feed Payton.  Heath and I kicked her out to sleep into the nursery both nights so that we could try and get a decent night's sleep.  And we did for the most part.  It was our first night home with her that was exhausting. 

We were trying to establish a routine with her, when we didn't have an idea of how to have a routine with a baby!  So far we've got the feeding schedule down, which is every three hours.  At this point we have to wake her up to eat, rather than her waking us up to eat.  She lost quite a bit of weight after she was born because my body wasn't capable of producing what she needed right away.  Atleast we  got to bring her home after a normal hospital stay.  We're on a regimine of breastfeeding what I can, Heath then feeding her about 1 to 1.5 oz of formula.  Then as he feeds her formula, I try and pump what I can.  Once my milk comes in we can say adios to the formula.  We had our first check up with the pediatrician today and we were able to maintain Payton's weight as to what it was when we left the hospital, which is good cause it means she hasn't lost any more.  We have a follow-up appointment tomorrow to see if her weight has increased within 24 hrs.  I'm hoping it has. 

Tonight we're off to a good start.  Payton has been fed and put down for bed, all before 10:30.  Much better than last night considering everytime we put her down last night she would cry.  We were afraid she was spoiled from all of her visitors holding her while we were still in the hospital.   As of right now, she's been asleep for the past hour.  Hopefully it all continues.

I leave this post with a song that pretty much sums up the feel good feeling of having Payton home. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTWsP-jynN4