Excerpts of the Craig Chronicles: Our baby Girl

It started out Thursday morning before Jake got home from work. I woke up thinking i just had to go to the bathroom so I did. But over the next hour the trickling never stopped. The assumption: my water had broke. We had a doctors appointment scheduled for 8:45 AM and so we went to the appointment.
The doctor checked to see if my water had broken and it had. I wasn't having any contractions at this time so i was kind of hoping the doctor would let us go home. I had a lot i had wanted to accomplish after the doctor appointment to get ready before my parents came down; but Sydney had other plans for me. So the doctor sent us straight to labor and delivery, where we got hooked up. I had an IV inserted into my hand (which was more painful than expected) and then had pitocin hooked up to the IV as well to get the contractions started.
The pitocin was increased by two every hour, so I started out at 6 and by the time Sydney came it was at 18. About 10:00 AM I was having contractions. By 12:15 PM I was given my epidural because I was dilated to 5 cm and it felt like i was having a contraction every 30 seconds and they are painful ( I give kudos to any woman who goes all natural). The only time I cried during this entire event was when the epidural was inserted. Its one of the strangest feelings to have the fluid pumped into my spine. We waited about 30 minutes and the epidural still wasn't very strong so I got another dose of the medication. After I had the epidural I was floating, no pain, I couldn't even feel when I was having a contraction because the nurse asked a couple times if i felt them.
The nurse then wanted me to sleep because it would help me better when it came time to push. My mother-in-law came to the hospital around noon (which I was surprised because she originally had planned to be there right after Sydney was born) and I chatted with her for an hour til I fell asleep. My poor husband hadn't had any sleep since Wednesday around 5 PM so he was asleep on the couch right up until I started pushing. I woke up around 2 PM and around 2:30 the nurse checked me and I was fully dilated. We woke Jake up and he and my mother-in-law helped me start pushing. I was a horrible pusher in the beginning trying to get a rhythm and the nurse had to joke with me that my laughter made more progress than my actual pushing.
I pushed for about an hour and a half. Doctor Gatherum showed up about 15 minutes before she came. It took a while because every time i would push her head would come out and then go back in and so the next contraction i was basically making as much progress as the previous one until finally the crown of her head stayed out. I had to have an episiotomy because she was facing up and so when she was born she had a bruised nose and head. Sydney Katherine Craig arrived July 14, 2011 at 4:01 PM, she weighed 7 lbs and 12 oz, and was 20.5 inches long and after 39 weeks and 1 day of waiting.
My parents left their house about 3 PM and arrived in town at about 8:30 PM. So they stopped by that night at about 9 PM, it was so good to see them, but they looked exhausted. They brought the trailer with them and parked out in front of my house, staying til Sunday.
We moved to the postpartum side of the hospital around 7:00 PM. which is could walk pretty well, i was a little shaky but after being in bed for so long the short little walk was wonderful.
The pediatrician got to the room at about 11:30 PM and checked her out and said everything was great. He even changed her first poopy diaper.
Jake and I wanted to leave the hospital as soon as we could, but we were having troubles with getting Sydney to breastfeed. So on Friday morning we had the lactation specialist come in, and we got a little farther with the feeding which was progress. Because she was slowly eating better we were able to leave the hospital Saturday morning.
My silly little girl has gone from good eating habits, to poor, to good, to poor again.

We even had to have a lactation specialist come on Sunday evening because i couldn't get her to eat for 8 hours, all she wanted to do was sleep and every time we woke her up we couldn't get more than 5 minutes out of her. So when the lactation specialist came on Sunday we got her to eat for 30 minutes, it was amazing and since then she will eat but it takes a half hour for her to stay latched on. My baby girl is one week old so hopefully her eating habits will start to improve drastically or we will have to supplement with formula.