Our Little Aubrey

This morning we received the best early Christmas gift you could ever want. Our sweet baby girl, Aubrey Paige Foote was born at 5:15 am. She was 4 lbs 9 oz and 18.5 inches long. Despite being 5.5 weeks early, she is doing great, and will just require a few week stay in the NICU to grow and get stronger. Here is her story.....

Steven and I get kicked out of our Wymount apartment tomorrow (Monday.... yes we still have to move) because Steven just graduated Thursday. So we spent most of the day on Saturday packing up boxes with Jeremy and Kedra. I just pretty much "directed" everybody else's packing while laying there because being 8 months pregnant I was trying to take it easy.

After packing, we went out for dinner to the Pizza Pie Cafe with Jeremy and Kedra since we have no food left in our kitchen. We finished dinner around 6:00. I went home, showered, and was just getting settled in for a night on the couch in my pajamas, when whoosh...... the biggest shock of my life. My water broke. Having not even had a single braxton hicks contraction or anything, I literally was in complete shock.

We had no hospital bag packed. Nothing. So, I grabbed my purse and a towel since my water was still gushing and we headed to hospital arriving at about 7:25 pm. The doctor and nurse came in and said that 34 weekers do as well long-term as full-term infants and since I was already dilating and almost completely effaced, this baby was coming.... and coming tonight.

I got an epidural at about 10 and things started moving pretty good. The only problem with the epidural is that I just don't seem to "freeze" like most people do. Last May when I got a cavity at the dentist, I needed 6 shots to freeze instead of the usual 2. This is pretty much how things went with the epidural. Even though it took the edge off the pain, I could still feel a lot and by the end it completely wasn't working and I felt everything. Labor is painful.

I started pushing at 3:00 and after two hours of pushing, our little Aubrey was born. I am a little scared for future babies because it took me two hours to push her out and she was not quite 5 pounds. Yikes. I always knew I didn't have great birthing hips.

She came out crying and scored a 9 on her APGAR test, which is great even for a full-term infant. Steven was a champ through everything. He was my labor coach, he cut the cord, and he got to be with our little girl the whole time since they rushed her to the NICU away from me right after she was born.

She has been doing great in the NICU, is breathing completely on her own, and pretty much just needs to get bigger. The NICU nurses said that she is at the stage of most 35 to 36 weekers, which makes sense to me since my doctors moved my due date back 10 days at the beginning and so it is quite possible she was further along than we thought.

We love her so much and she is just the sweetest, most adorable little girl. Things still feel completely surreal, but life is definitely sweeter now that our little Aubrey is here.