Back to This Century

Well, it's been a crazy week! We were without power from Sunday night at 5:00 pm until Thursday afternoon around noon! But, we can now see at all hours of the day and night and have a newly stocked refrigerator full of food! Here are some of the highlights of the past week:

Monday night - Wednesday night: Stay at a hotel with Grandma and Grandpa Stotts, get spoiled by constant attention and Grandma's willingness to rock or walk with her at all hours of the day and night

Thursday dinner: Eats out with the family at Olive Garden. Marvelously well-behaved the entire meal!

Thursday night: Misses Grandma and cries for 2 hours straight during the middle of the night, Mom finally consoles her and we can all go back to bed

Friday - Saturday nights: Grandma and Grandpa Stotts have a sleepover since they STILL didn't have power! Sadie goes back to full-on spoil mode!

Friday night: Took a trip out to the tailgate at Mommy's school. Enjoyed being fussed over by Mommy's co-workers.

Sunday: Take a trip to Easton to enjoy some sunshine and shopping. Cries when we initially arrive, but then calms down and sleeps peacefully while being wheeled around.

Monday: Currently sleeping in her swing! Yeah! Mommy and Daddy both got to take showers while she was swinging. Daddy is working from home today!

And now for the best part, here are some new pictures of Sadie. Even though they might just be accidents, she has started to smile. She's also enjoying the luxury of sleeping in between Mommy and Daddy, at least when she's not sleeping somewhere else! :)

Adventures in the World of No Electricity

Seeing the title of this post, you may be wondering - if she has no electricity, how is she posting? Well, I'm at a hotel. Let's start from the beginning, though.

On Sunday morning we woke up to a hot day that was rather windy. Throughout the day it kept getting more and more windy. Then, around 3:00 pm, Adam and I decided that we would try and venture out and go to Babies 'R' Us and pick up some food for dinner. Unfortunately, this was the point in the day where the wind was really picking up. We made it about 5 blocks from our house and then were attacked by an orange barrel that was flying through the air. We decided that we would keep going, but we were getting a little scared. Branches were starting to fly around and lights were dangling perilously from the stoplight wires. We headed to the grocery store to buy some gift cards (we get gas points when we shop at the grocery) and the grocery had no electricity. My parents' electricity was already out, so we really weren't sure what to do. Adam decided that he really wanted some salad from Buca di Beppo's though, so we headed in that direction to get some take out. I stayed in the car while Adam ran in to get dinner. The gutter on the side of Buca's was barely hanging on to the side of the building and was quite creaky. Finally, Adam came back with the food and we headed back home. By the time we were heading home, many more stoplights were not working and people had NOT mastered the idea of the 4 way stop. We got back home and had lots of branches down in our yard. At that point, they were mainly small branches. We flipped on the TV and decided we would go ahead and eat dinner. We had no sooner begun to eat, than the lights flickered and then went off completely. That was about 5:00 pm on Sunday night. We have not had power since. Sunday night was INCREDIBLY long! We found candles and a flashlight. We even managed to find a radio that would take batteries. But, we had winds blowing up to 70 mph and as time passed some HUGE branches started to fall from our trees. We have a GIANT branch down from our big tree in the back yard and one of the smaller trees split in half and is now dangling dangerously over our power lines. Adam kept running in and out while there was still light to assess the damage. This was making me nervous because I was worried about his safety as well and just simply worried about how the house and trees were going to stand up to all of this. Sadie had spent much of Sunday sleeping, so she was not all about the sleeping on Sunday night. This only made things worse, since Adam and I were worried about what was going on, didn't have electricity, and were already running on less than great amounts of sleep. But, we survived.

Adam did have to report for work yesterday. Only IT's were allowed in to Cardinal Health because all power was being run by back up generators. Adam spent his day moving servers around to make sure that the essentials were going to be taken care of. I spent the day with my parents. No one in Central Ohio has had school because no one has power. This has been nice for me because I have more people to help me with the baby. But, the stinky part of this is that even though I am "losing" these days as part of my maternity leave, I will get to be the one who has to make them up at the end of the year. Grrrrrrrr! It does not seem quite fair!

My parents decided to get a hotel room last night because they both use CPAP machines to keep them breathing regularly at night. Obviously, with no power the CPAP machines will not work. They ended up getting a Hawthorne Suites hotel room. It actually has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a full kitchen. They graciously invited Adam, Sadie, and I to stay with them. This was great because it meant that we had electricity and could move around much easier with the baby during the night time hours.

Adam had to go in to work again today, but he got an e-mail last night saying that Cardinal had power back up. It's kind of funny to me that they sent an e-mail since you would have had to have had power in order to get the e-mail, but anyways...

So, that's the story from here. AEP, our power company, is saying that it may be Sunday before we all get power back again. CRAZY! It's certainly going to make for some long days ahead. Hopefully they will get things back up sooner, but this may be my last post for a while.

On a final note, Adam and I spent this day two years ago with many of you faithful readers. It's our second anniversary today. I hadn't even realized it until Adam mentioned it last night. Neither of us even had a card to give the other this morning, but I guess we're both quite content with the gift of our beautiful baby girl. :) Hope you are all doing well!

1 Week and 1 Day Old

Well, Sadie has officially been a part of the "real" world for one week and one day. It's really quite hard to believe that it's been that long already. The week has really flown by. Here's a quick summary of Sadie's adventures during her first week.

Thursday September 4:
* Born at 7:50 am
* Nurses within first hour
* Nurses multiple times throughout the day
* Receives first bath in hospital room in front of Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma and Grandpa Stotts
* Immediately begins filling diapers with lots of sticky-icky meconium
* Watches first episodes of "Law and Order"
* Stays up much of the night and cries

Friday September 5:
* Seen by the doctor for the first time
* Seen by the lactation consultant who lets Mommy know that Sadie has one of the strongest latches she's ever felt (no wonder Mommy is sore!)
* Visited by Mommy's doctor who comments again and again about what a good team Mommy and Sadie make
* Visited by Aunt Holly
* Visited by Jackie Haworth, Mommy's friend from school
* Watches "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" and already responds well! ;)

Saturday September 6:
* Visited by a couple from Mommy and Daddy's baby birthing class
* Visited by Daddy's friends Johan and Kristy, who are on a tour of Labor and Delivery for when they deliver in December
* Gets to take first ride in the car and go home!
* Spends the day getting acclimated and getting to know the kitties
* Enjoys being held or rocked while Mommy and Daddy eat sloppy joes

Here are some pictures of her grandparents holding her:






Sunday September 7:
* Visited by Grandma and Grandpa Brinkley
* Visited by Uncle Tim and cousins Codey and Noah
* Takes first bath at home
* Shows everyone how well she can already hold up her own head
* Still rather confused about her days and nights

Here's a picture of her first bath at home with Mom and Dad:


Monday September 8:
* Gets to take a trip to the doctor's office after the doctor "loses" Mommy's records when they put in Sadie's information
* Gets to take first ride in the stroller when Mommy goes to purchase some more nursing bras and tanks
* Visited by Great Uncle Kevin
* Continues to show off her amazing abilities to hold up her own head and do push-ups on anyone that's holding her

Tuesday September 9:
* Visited by Daddy's cousin, Dianne
* Sleeping improves slightly during the night time hours
* Spends a big chunk of time alone with Mommy while Daddy runs some errands
* Takes first ride in Baby Bjorn when Mommy takes her out on the back porch to enjoy the nice weather

Wednesday September 10:
* Feels very sad when Daddy has to return to work
* Excited that Grandma Stotts gets to spend the day with her
* Takes a trip to the pet store

Thursday September 11:
* Gets to visit the doctor for her first check-up
* Is up to 9 lbs, 2 oz - one ounce up from birth and 6 ounces up from when we left the hospital
* Pees all over the exam table - nurse comments on how well hydrated she is. :)
* Takes another stroller ride to help Mommy return the rented breast pump
* Enjoys afternoon in the stroller while Mommy, Sadie, and Grandma meet Daddy for lunch at La Chatelaine for an al fresco dining experience
* Waits anxiously for news that her friend Parker has been born
* Sleeps in 3 hour spurts during the night!
* Prefers sleeping on her side rather than flat on her back
* Tries her best to go through as many diapers as possible while she's on the changing table

Friday September 12:
* Hangs out at the house while the electrician noisily continues to work on finishing up several unfinished electrical projects
* Spends afternoon time fussing - maybe an indication that she'll sleep better tonight?
* Enjoys being held by anyone willing to hold her - but spent a good amount of time asleep on Grandpa

Our plans for this weekend include attending the Worthington Market Days celebration in downtown Worthington and letting Mommy and Daddy catch up on their sleep. Mommy will be preparing for spending her first day completely alone with Sadie on Monday.

I am feeling pretty good overall. I'm definitely still sore and expect that I will continue to be for at least a few weeks. After all, my body has been through the ringer and with my little barracuda latching on so strongly, it may take even longer than a few weeks for me to get back to feeling "great." I am loving being a mom and Adam is doing a FANTASTIC job as a new dad. I really have no idea how he's been able to go back to work, though I also know that he's had a really hard time leaving us in the morning. And, he texts us or calls several times throughout the day to make sure we're doing well and to tell us that he loves us both.

Well, I'm feeling pretty sleepy and it won't be too long before it's time for another feeding. So, I'm going to go and get ready for bed and in turn get ready for Sadie to go to bed. Hopefully it will be a good sleeping night.

Sadie Emerson Smith

Well, the last post's title was a lie. September 3, 2008 is NOT Sadie's birthday. She was a long time in coming and did not arrive until 7:50 am on Thursday September 4, 2008. I did arrive at the hospital at 7:00 am on Wednesday for the induction. But, we had a bit of a problem from the get-go. I have very deep veins in my wrists and the first time that they stuck me to try to get my IV going, things did not go well. The nurse kept digging around and trying to find something, but the only thing she found, in my opinion, was lots of pain for me. So, another nurse came and stuck me on my other hand. Basically, the day did not start off that well for me.

By 9:00 am, they finally had started me on the pitocin and things began to move along. I also had a follet (sp?) that was basically inserted into me to get my body to dilate with the need for prostaglandins. The follet was supposed to get my body to start making its own prostaglandins. Anyways, the follet usually takes 4-6 hours to fall out. Mine came out within 2 hours, but at the end I was only a little over 2 cm dilated and still not effacing much faster with the pitocin. So, they upped my pitocin. By 3:00 pm, I was up to 4 cm dilated, but they had to have a resident come to break my water and all of the on-call residents were working on C-sections. It was after 5:00 pm before they finally came to break my water. I had heard that this was not an altogether great feeling, but I actually didn't think it was that bad. I was more disturbed by the fact that the doctor got my socks all wet with amniotic fluid and then took them off of me. I didn' t have another pair of socks with me that I wanted to put on, so I was just more irritated than anything.

Unfortunately, breaking my water did little to get my dilated or effaced much faster. So, I did end up asking for an epidural when I was not much past 4 cm. I decided that it was silly to be in pain, particularly knowing that if it took as long to get anesthesia there as it did to get the residents to break my water, I probably wanted to get moving. Anesthesia actually got there really quickly and I had just had some nubain right before they put in the epidural. This was great because the nubain completely calmed me down. They went over with my all of the risks and such for epidurals, including that it's possible, though, rare that the first epidural will not take. Again, remember that September 3 was not my lucky day. :) The epidural did not take. It made me very itchy, but that was about it. So, about an hour to an hour and a half after the first epidural, anesthesia came back, removed epidural number one and started epidural number two. Epidural number two was great. It had me numb up to right underneath my breasts and down to right above my ankles. I could still feel pressure, but much less pain.

Many, many, many more hours went by and around 6:00 am, my nurse told me that my doctor had called and that if I did not make some serious progress fast, that she would be taking me to have a c-section for lack of progress. By this point I was 100% effaced and a little bit more than 9 cm dilated. And, I was darned sure not going to have a C-Section after all that I had already been through. So, my great and wonderful nurse got me into this position where I boosted by butt up into the air and did some pelvic thrusting. Then I laid on my side with my bottom leg straight and my top leg up like a flamingo. The nurse kept coming back and checking me. No progress after the butt in the air position. I started crying and basically mentally yelling at Sadie to please get moving. She FINALLY listened! When the nurse checked me one last time, I had come down to zero station and was fully dilated and effaced. Yeah! She called my doctor immediately and said we could begin to push with the next contraction. My doctor lives about 20 minutes away. My goal was to push for as short a time as possible. After all, we were nearing 22 hours of this actual laboring process by now and I was ready to go. I was completly out of epidural medication by this point, but I figured that it wasn't really going to make much difference at that point anyways. I was going to feel pain and I was going to have to deal with it. I just wanted this all over with and done! Within 3 cyles of pushing, you could see Sadie's head. The nurses actually made me slow down and do half-cycles because my doctor wasn't there yet. This, of course, irritated me further. Half-way through my second set of half-pushing, my doctor arrived and I finished the set pushing for the full 10 seconds. Within 4 more push cycles, Sadie was out! Her head was 15 cm in diameter. She weighed 9 lbs 1 oz (11 oz less than myself and my crazy mother didn't have an epidural!) and 20.5 inches long. Her first APGAR score was an 8 and the second was a 9. She has lots of REALLY dark hair. She has very chubby cheeks and is quite the beautiful little girl, if I do say so myself.

I did require about a half-hour of stitching up, but my mom tells me that the whole process took as long as it did because my doctor was very careful in her stitching and I should actually be pleased with this because there's much less chance of an infection with the thorough job she did.

As soon as possible, I got some breakfast in me and immediately started feeling better. Life was good! Here are a few pictures of Sadie:







The first two were taken yesterday shortly after she was born. The last one was taken this morning after she had had her professional picture taken here at the hospital.

You will be able to view more pictures of Sadie at the hospital's website. I can't give you a link yet, because I don't have it myself. But, I can tell you to go to Google and type in "Ohio Health". It will be the first web page to come up. Next click on Riverside Hospital. Then on the left side will be a link for the Peakaboo Nursery. Click on that link. Then you'll need to change the date so that it reads September 4, 2008. Then Sadie's name will come up as "Sadie S". Click on that and you'll be able to view the professional pictures.

Well, it's taken me nearly 2 hours to write this because of all of the people that have come in and out of the room in that time. So, I'm going to go and start filling out some of the millions of forms that are requried for us to go home tomorrow. Please send your glowing comments! :)

Today IS the day!

Well, it's almost 1:00 am and here I sit at my computer, instead of sleeping in my bed. I laid down around 9:00 pm and slept fairly restlessly until about 12:15 am. So, I've had 3 or so hours of not so great sleep. I woke up having some pretty intense contractions and decided that I would come and sit on my exercise ball instead of continuing to lay in my bed. This is a MUCH more comfortable position at this point in time.

Adam and I have to be at the hospital at 7:00 am to officially be induced. After talking to my good friend, Amy, I'm feeling a lot less anxious about the induction than I have been. Amy has two daughters and was induced both times. Things turned out quite well for her in the end, so there is hope and reason to believe that they will turn out well for me too! Both my doctor and my mother seem to think that once Sadie FINALLY descends into my pelvic bone that things will move fairly quickly. I'm very hopeful that they are both correct. My guess is that by the time most of you read this, I will have already ventured into the world of induction and things will be moving along. Then, Adam will likely be posting something later on in the day to give everyone an update and hopefully a picture. :)

To "enjoy" our final day as non-parents, Adam took a work-from-home day on Tuesday. He actually got called in on Sunday night/Monday morning and had to work on fixing a pretty big problem for about 6 hours, so he figured that working from home on Tuesday wouldn't be such a bad thing. But, since everyone knew that he wasn't going to be at work for the remainder of the week, not a whole lot got thrown at him yesterday. This is really a good thing, I suppose, but it left him a little bored. I, on the other hand, spent much of my day either playing on-line solitaire or lounging around in bed. I did actually get to talk with my sub. He seems like a very nice guy. He didn't have a ton of questions for me, so I'm hoping that's because my awesome team did an awesome job of explaining how things kind of work in my room and in theirs. He said he'd send me an e-mail at the end of the week to kind of give me an update. I hope to actually get out to school towards the end of next week and at least meet this man (and show off Sadie), but we'll see how well I'm actually feeling by that point. Anyways, Adam and I did actually venture out to Babies 'R' Us to make a few last minute purchases. We also decided to have one final dinner out without the baby and without needing a babysitter. We went to Bravo. I had a really yummy salad and cheese ravioli. This seemed to make me feel good and has sat amazingly well, despite my rather nervous stomach. On our way home from dinner, we stopped over at my parents for a final pre-baby visit and then headed home.

Well, I'm actually feeling a bit sleepy again and the contractions seemed to have died down a bit. Hopefully there will be at least a few more hours of sleep in my future, because I know it will be awhile before I get a REALLY good night's sleep again! :) Keep checking the blog throughout the day and hopefully sooner rather than later there will be official baby news! :)