The Best Birthday Present

Today is my birthday and I couldn't have asked for a better present than Baby Melody. She is adorable and DH and I are completely in love with her. She is developing so much each day. She turned a week old this week and is now opening her eyes and is pretty much wide awake during the day. We love the funny faces that she makes, especially when she forms a "O" with her mouth or purses her lips together. We call it the "O" face.
The above photo shows that Melody is wearing my hand knits. EZ's Surplice Baby Jacket (which is swimming on her) and the Simple Baby Blankie. Everything I knit for her is too big including the hats, but I am sure she will fit them soon. She came into this world, weighing 7lb o.7 oz, not bad since I am under 5 feet tall. The doctors had thought she would have weighed less.

We are just having a simple get together with my friends tonight at my place. It's a birthday party and baby debut all rolled into one. My mom has been here since Monday helping me recover and my sister just arrived last night and is staying for the weekend. They are both leaving Sunday night and I am already panicking. DH fell ill on Wednesday and he can't be around the baby, so he can't help with the night time feedings.

I am exhausted from taking care of a newborn and still recovering from the c-section, but I am starting to feel better. I can now lay down and get out of bed without feeling like my stomach is being torn apart. On the first night I was home, I had to sleep upright because it hurt too much to lay down. Someone mentioned in the comments about not laughing too hard and oh boy, was she right. No laughing, coughing or sneezing because it hurts so much! But all the pain goes away when I look at Melody because she is so worth it.

On the day of her birth, I had labored all morning and afternoon at the hospital, but only got 8cm dilated by 5pm. I was 4cm dilated when I got to the hospital in the morning and they had given me pitocin in the afternoon when I didn't make anymore progress on my own and they kept increasing the pitocin to try to speed things up. I was exhausted from the pain and was shaking from a fever by then. They even had me try pushing to try to get me to 10cm, but it didn't work. What I didn't know the whole time was that they had been worried about the baby's heart rate all day. It was high all day and kept increasing. They even had me breathing in extra oxygen to try to see if they could get her heart rate down, but nothing worked. The doctor said that she gave me as much time as she could and after speaking to a high risk specialist at 5:30pm, she had to make the call to bring me in for a c-section. After signing the consent form for the c-section, I burst into tears feeling like I failed. I was exhausted, scared about the health of my baby and about the c-section. We had never discussed the possibility of a c-section and the consent form had some scary stuff on there.

After they lowered the bed and started to wheel me into surgery, everything was a blur for me. Either the epidural or pitocin made me very nauseous and sick feeling, so all I could do was keep my eyes closed. Everyone kept talking to me during the surgery, but I can't really remember much. They kept asking me why I had my eyes closed and I was getting annoyed because I was trying to keep myself from throwing up! Another scary side affect was that my right arm went numb during the surgery. I couldn't hold my baby until the doctor was sure I had regained feeling in my right arm.

The surgery to get the baby out was fast, but putting me back together and sewing me up took much longer. DH held my hand during the whole time. And he cried so hard when Melody came into the world. I can still remember hearing her first cry when she emerged. It was sweet music to my ears.