And then there were 3!

This is a long post about Lilly's birth. If you don't want to read the whole birth story you can skip down to the pictures.

It all started Sunday June 19th which was my due date. Around 8pm I started feeling contractions and they continued through the night so Lee and I went to the hospital the next day around 10am. They checked us in and monitored me for almost 2 hours but I wasn't dilating any further so they send us home. After nearly 20 hours of mild contractions, they stopped. On Tuesday I had a doctor appointment and decided to have my doctor strip my membranes to help labor begin. I also had set up to be induced on Thursday is my baby hadn't come by then. That night my contractions started again around 9pm. I took a bath then around 11pm I told Lee that we should try to get some rest because I thought labor was going to start soon. The contractions were getting stronger so around midnight we headed out to the hospital. By 1:16am in and I was dilated to a 4. Then it was time to get the IV in. After what happened with Terra I was worried. Luckily it wasn't as bad, but I was still put on oxygen for a little bit. They had first tried my hand and when that didn't work they brought in a different nurse who quickly got the IV in my right wrist. All that was done by 1:50am. I wanted to watch a movie like I did with my other labors so I started up Guardians of the Galaxy but I quickly decided to get in the bath instead. I'm not entirely sure how long I was int eh bath because I kept dozing off, because I needed sleep, but it must have been about an hour or two. I know that by 4:30am I was out and dilated to a 6-7. At 4:49am the doctor broke my water. By 4:58am I was getting my second dose of medicine. At 5:18am I was dilated to an 8-9. By 5:33am I was ready to push and couldn't really stop myself even though the nurses kept telling me to wait.  At 5:38am Lillia Emrys Allen was born. I did have to pause my pushing for a little while because her umbilical cord was around her neck. Initially the nurse said she was 8lbs 8oz which surprised all of us because she didn't look that big. Lee corrected the mistake and turns out she was 7lbs 6oz and 20 inches.

Later that day Grammy and Papa brought Ty and Terra to meet their new sister. They were very excited to see their baby and have a chance to hold her.

Ty really loved the Waddle Dee amiibo he got from Lilly.

Ty and Terra got Big Brother and Big Sister bracelets.

That night my nurse came in to tell me that Lilly needed to be moved to the NICU. I knew it was in Lilly's best interest but I couldn't help crying. At 8pm we walked with the nurse who was wheeling LIlly to the NICU. They got Lilly to her new room and she was hooked up to monitors and put under a blue light. Turns out that my O+ blood was attacking her B+ blood and that caused her to have jaundice bad enough that she needed phototherapy. It's called OB Incompatibility. They were also concerned about infection because she was born 12 minutes before my GBS IV medicine would be considered sufficient. Luckily she didn't have Group B Strep but she did have Strep Viridans. That meant a week in the NICU getting antibiotics. It was very hard on me to see my tiny baby, who's less than a day old, being poked over and over as they tried to get an IV in her. It took several tries because her veins kept bursting. I also wasn't able to hold her much because she needed to stay under the blue light. 

She did get breaks from the light to breastfeed, but they had to be limited to 20-30 minutes. After a day her bilirubin looked good enough that they took away the big light and just had her on the bili-blanket. By Friday she was off the blanket which made it much easier to hold her. The last few days were hard and tiring, but I know it was to make sure everything was good and that Lilly was healthy and ready to go home. When Wednesday rolled around Lee and I couldn't leave the NICU fast enough. We were so excited to get home with Lilly and also to see our other kids who had been visiting cousins with Grammy.

Going home outfit!

Finally leaving the NICU!!

Lilly threw us some new surprises and I'm so grateful that modern medicine is able to catch these problems and have a cure. Without the wonderful hospital and it's staff we wouldn't have known anything was wrong with Lilly and she would have gotten really sick and possibly passed away. And even though we're home and things are going great, we still have to get her checked weekly for her hemoglobin.

Colorado Medieval Festival

We had a fun day at the festival today. It was hot, but there was enough wind that we felt cool. Our sunburnt skin doesn't agree. We saw knights battling and just had fun walking around and looking at everything. There was a giant mulch pile that the kids loved climbing and Terra got a lot of attention for her cute fairy princess outfit. Ty was a dragon for about half the time and I'm pretty sure his favorite part was the port-a-potty. He thought it was cool to pee in a blue box I guess. Luckily they weren't super stinky like I normally think port-a-potties are. I even got to advertise for Fort Collins Comic Con a little too! We didn't stay too long of course because walking around in flip flops while 38 weeks pregnant gets very tiring and painful after a while. I'm glad we went and let the kids explore somewhere new!