Fiona in January

Fiona in January

Sunday, June 24, 2012

The Story of a Baby Named Knives

Tomorrow our little girl will be a whole week old - time is passing too fast already!  At 10:47pm, Monday June 18, Fiona Knives Rohrer was born...I look at her and still can't believe she's here and perfect and all ours.  Everyone told me I'd love her at first sight, bond with her instantly, etc...but until I held her in my arms that first time and looked into that tiny round face, I had no idea I could love anyone that much instantly.  My daughter is incredible - all 10 pounds of her!

The whole experience of labor and delivery wasn't what I expected - it started much more painfully than I was ready for (although how do you really prepare for that?!), contractions are no joke!  We went to the hospital at about 2am and they went ahead and admitted me.  After about an hour of walking around and trying to distract from the pain of the contractions, they started radiating around to my back and down to my knees.  Thank God for pain meds!

Labor slowly progressed and I got an epidural, which made the whole loooooong experience much better.  The hard part was only being able to have ice chips all day long - ugh.  I don't even want ice in my beverages for awhile!  I finally made it to 10cm around 9pm that night (yep - 19 hours!) and then the real work began.  After about an hour of pushing, I started to spike a slight fever and Baby Knives' heart rate was just starting to climb a little.  The doctor felt for her and realized she was much bigger than we originally thought and decided right away to do a c-section.

I honestly freaked out.  I've never had so much as a stitch or been admitted into a hospital before this and the thought of actual surgery was terrifying.  Tears kept leaking out of my eyes and dripping in my ears on the way to the OR.  Once I was in the OR and all prepped, Aaron sat right next to me the whole time, holding my hand and telling me I was doing great.  Finally (after what seemed like an eternity) they pulled Baby Knives out...which was the weirdest feeling EVER...and everyone in the room started exclaiming how big she was!  She cried right away and Aaron went to see her as she got cleaned up and measured.

 She was an extremely healthy 10.1 lbs. and 21" of baby girl with a ton of dark hair and the cutest little chin and chubby cheeks.  Aaron brought her over to me so I could see her and touch her little face while they worked on stitching me up.  At that point I was so exhausted I kept falling asleep on the table!

Recovery for me went really well, no problems and pretty quick too.  However, we weren't able to take Baby Knives home with us on Thursday because they were concerned she might have an infection and had her on IV meds...tiniest IV ever!  Thankfully she ended up being just fine and we got to bring her home on Saturday, so I could stop tearing up every 10 minutes missing her little self all snuggled up with me.

Last night was her first night at home with us and she decided she wasn't a fan of her bassinet and liked to sleep in her swing - I wish we had figured that out a few hours earlier, but at least we should probably get more sleep tonight (knock on wood!).