The story of Alexis Noelle

Oh, how the time has flown by this year! My tiny, little baby isn't so tiny or little anymore. She is a "talking", walking, loving spitfire. She learns so much every week and it amazes me every time I look at her and look at pictures of where she started-it's especially hard to imagine that I carried her inside of me for 9-ish months.

I'm going to try to not get carried away with my pregnancy memories. So we begin...

On Friday, April 16, 2010, I took a pregnancy at about 8:00pm. Within 20 seconds of setting it down, the second "positive" line turned pink. I wasn't really expecting it to be positive considering I practically took a test every month, but there it was. I immediately started crying...not for any other reason except for "delivery was going to hurt!" Yep, that was my first thought when I found out-and I wasn't wrong ;-)

I remember the first time I felt the little "popcorn" flutters of movement. I was at Despicable Me with Jon and I felt it and almost started crying. I lived for those moments when Lexi would have hiccups or be moving around like she was on a mission. I checked weekly for what piece of produce she was similar to (from poppy seed to banana to a watermelon), I checked daily for what was developing on her body, I thought about her, dreamt about her constantly. Lots of weird and uncomfortable things happen when you're pregnant, it's not for the faint of heart, but I tried not to complain because I knew it was worth it.

My pregnancy was pretty routine, I had leg cramps, a tiny bladder, HORRIBLE heartburn, but nothing out of the norm until about 30 weeks or so. I had never received a complete review of my 20 week ultrasound (when we found out we were having an "Alexis"), so during one of my appointments I asked the doctor I was seeing if she could get me some details. She said that everything was fine except the ultrasound tech couldn't see both heart chambers clearly-nothing was necessarily wrong, they just didn't show up clearly because of Lexi's positioning, so she scheduled another ultrasound just to make sure. I went in for it, and we found out that the heart was just fine, but that the amniotic fluid level was lower than the doctor's preferred, so I had to take what is called a non-stress test just to make sure things were okay despite that fact. During the NST, I had to push a button each time I felt Lexi move so they could monitor whether or not her heart rate rose and dropped appropriately (the first time I did this, it took about an hour to get an appropriate number of movements, Lexi was already stubborn!), and based on those results, I had to go in 2 times a week for the remainder of my pregnancy, 2 NSTs and 1 ultrasound every week to monitor the fluid levels to make sure it didn't drop drastically. Then after 3 weeks of that, I had to have 2 NSTs and 2 ultrasounds each week. I did everything I was supposed to do-drank a TON of water, stayed off my feet when I wasn't at work, and didn't overstress about anything.

For several weeks, everything was just fine until the week Lexi was born. I went in on Tuesday, November 30th for my appointment and everything was fine, my fluid level was at 7 (they like it to be 10 or higher, but 7 isn't dangerously low), so they sent me on my merry way. Friday, December 3 (a day away from 37 weeks), I went in like always and took my NST, which I thought went really well, Lexi was super active and then I had my ultrasound. I knew right away that something was off because I didn't see the normal pockets of fluid that I normally did, and then the tech told me that she would be right back. I wasn't worried about Lexi because I could still feel her kicking up a storm, but I was extremely nervous that they would need an emergency c-section or something so I called Jon really quick before she got back in the room and told him what was going on. The tech came in with Dr. Reuter (my favorite!) and he took a look and then moved me into an exam room and told me he'd be right back. When he came back, he told me that the fluid level went down to 2mL and that he thought it was time to induce just to be safe.

I called work and called Jon to tell him to come over and walked over to Labor and Delivery where they began something to soften my cervix since I wasn't dilated or effaced at all (can I just say, when the nurse/doctor checks to see how far along you are in this process, it's extremely painful!). The nurses figured that it would take a couple of doses of the softener to get things going and you can have one every 4 hours, but by the 4 hour mark I was having fairly regular contractions so they started the pitocin. The doctor didn't want them to break my water manually (obviously, it was already low) but about an hour after he told them not to, it broke on its own while I was in the bathroom. Once that happened, the contractions got extremely painful and I asked for a pain medicine-not an epidural at this point. That worked for about 15 minutes and the contractions jumped from about an 8 in pain to a 20. I couldn't breathe, so I asked (maybe begged) for an epidural. My mom was in there with me while the anesthesiologist was prepping and I asked her "Why did you do this TWICE!?" and she said "you'll forget all about this pain when you hold your daughter" (I did).

Once I got the epidural, I was able to sleep a while, and at about 2am I asked the nurse if I could get an increase because I was feeling a bit of pressure. She checked my progress and said "No, you're at a 10. I'm going to call the doctor" I began "practice" pushing before he got there at about 2:30am and I remember saying that I would have her by 3:00. Once the doctor got there at 2:50 or so, everything went so fast, I think I pushed for real maybe 6 times and she was here and she was PERFECT at 3:08am on December 4, 2010! They had NICU in the room just in case since she was 3 weeks early, but she registered 9/9 on the APGAR scale. I remember crying from relief and because I just wanted to hold her. While the doctor finished up, he told me that he was extremely impressed that it didn't take me longer because Lexi was apparently "sunny side up" (face looking up instead of towards my back) and he said he'd seen mothers of several children push for hours in that instances, and that it usually resulted in a c-section. I'm glad I didn't know while I was laboring, I think I would have stressed myself out. He said I was the "talk of the floor" because it went so fast haha

Lexi weighed 6 pounds exactly (Dr. Reuter took bets as I was pushing, and my grandma was right on with her weight) and was 19 inches long and the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. In a little over a week, she is going to be 1 year old and I can still remember everything I was doing this time last year...She is the light of my life and I can't wait to see all the things she does and learns in the next year!