More Pictures...

Kalea guarding the nursery

Trying to wake Emma up for some playtime

"It's a Girl" balloons on the mailbox to welcome us home!

My little strawberry shortcake!

She looks like her daddy

Allen was able to get some more pictures downloaded to the computer, so I figured while I had the energy to do so I would put some more up of what we've been up to the last few days. Unlike what you can probably see from the pictures, I have managed to return upon the living somewhat and actually do something with my hair and put on some make-up. Unfortunately, that is not really reflected in the pictures, but we did get some cute ones of Emma today.

Our Little Bundle of Joy Has Arrived!

Emma Grace is finally here! I know that others have posted updates in the last week since things have obviously been so busy and I haven't been able to post anything until now. All I can say is that it has been a long week, but one that I will always remember! The induction early last Monday went well and for most of that day we didn't know if she was going to have a 19th or 20th of January birthday. My labor took a lot longer than expected - I was hoping to get through it without the epidural, but after 9 hours of intense pitocin injection and labor contractions, I received an epidural around 6:30pm and was able to successfully dilate and deliver her by 1am the next morning on January 20th. Both Allen and my mom were in the delivery room and I would not have been able to get through it without them or the support of the nurses and my doctor - I was very lucky and blessed to have people there to help me and experience our miracle. Our stay in the hospital lasted until Wednesday afternoon and we have spent the rest of the week adjusting to our new arrival here at home. Kalea took very well to Emma from the start and hopefully will continue to do well with her - we are extremely mindful to give her enough love and attention. My mom will be here until about mid-February to help with things, Allen has a business trip for a week early next month so it will be nice to have the extra hands while he is gone. We are still debating on how and when we are going to get the rest of the family to see her whether it be them coming down here to visit or us going home while I am still on maternity leave. I start back up the first week in March.

The pictures below are starting from the hospital and the first few days at home, some of these you may have already seen from Allen's Facebook page.
Anyways, all is well here and hopefully I'll be able to keep posting pictures as much as possible over these next few weeks!

Emma Update

Today is Emma's due date and just as I had expected, she's not here yet! We had a doctor's appointment this morning and turns out that she is not quite ready to make her grand entrance into the world. I am still only 1 centimeter dilated and my effacement percentage has not changed (70%) so not much progress again in the last week, the only thing that the midwife did say was that she has definitely dropped more since last week. It's possible that I could still go into labor this weekend, but we went ahead and scheduled an induction for Monday, 1/19, so either way she'll be here soon - we're getting excited!

Last Day of Work!

Tomorrow I will be 39 weeks! It's crazy to think that Emma's due date is one week away and pretty much all week I've been wondering if she's going to come early, be right on time, or be stubborn and arrive late. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, but at the most recent appointment I had last week I was 1 centimeter dilated and about 70% effaced - we'll be interested to see how much I have progressed in the last week!

Thankfully today was my last day at work so I am now officially on maternity leave and it has certainly been a long work week - it's funny how things can suddenly pile up from your coworkers when they realize that you only have a few days left in the office and you're going to be gone for a while. I did however leave today really feeling like I was able to get everything accomplished off of my what seemed like a never ending "to do" list that I've had going for about two weeks! My feet and ankles have certainly paid for it because once I've been able to finally put my feet up at night they are so majorly swollen that you can't even tell that I have ankles, my legs just look like tree trunks! One nice reprieve that I had this week was that my office did have a little baby shower for me yesterday after work. They were so cute and decorated one of the conference rooms with a banner hanging that said "Welcome Baby Emma!" It was a nice hour's worth of good conversation, really good ice cream cake, punch, and very thoughtful gifts. They had actually made it a "book shower" where each person gave me a favorite book that they either had from their childhood or read to their children - such a great idea and it even provided me with a trip down memory lane getting some of the books that I had growing up that I will now get to read and share with my daughter. Just to name a few, some of the books I received were I'll Love you Forever, Goodnight Moon, The Little Engine That Could, Curious George, and many more! Tomorrow, on my first day off, I have another shower to go to - the ladies that Allen works with and the spouses of the guys he works with are throwing me a shower at his office tomorrow afternoon. I know that I am due to get some pictures up so I'll make sure I do that this weekend; they'll probably be some of the last pictures of me before I burst!

While I am super excited to finally meet our little girl I am hoping that she'll give me a few days before she makes her grand entrance to get some extra sleep and do a little relaxing now that I don't have to do my daily commute and work a long day. My mom is in town, she and my dad and brother came down for New Year's. Dad and Thomas left on Monday and mom's going to be staying until we're pretty much ready to kick her out! She has been super helpful this week already and I'm just so blessed that she'll be here to help us out once Emma gets here.