Alyssa Marie has arrived!!!

Well, at last our daughter has arrived! Alyssa Marie Frenette was born Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 2:34pm. She is my smallest baby weighing 7lbs 6oz and 18.5 in at birth. She is adorable and has tons of thick, black hair. We all love her enormously and she fits into our family perfectly.

The kids all love her...especially Kaylee who loves her, perhaps, a bit too much. Always gotta keep an eye on her when she's near the baby as she loves to be a little mommy.

She is such a good little girl, but needless to say we are all so exhausted over here. I went into labor Saturday night, and though the contractions were tolerable, I wasn't able to sleep a moment because of the discomfort. I finnally told Eddie we needed to go to the hospital at about 4am Sunday morning as the contractions were starting to get more intense and I wanted to make sure to get there with plenty of time for the good ol' epideral. I was checked in at triage and was told I was dilated to 5 cm, and since my contractions weren't regular my OB wanted me to walk an hour and go from there. The following hour Eddie and I walked the halls of Good Sam and even found a staircase that I ran up and down many times. Oddly enough, in this process my contractions were slowly diminishing, and I was getting very frusterated at the thought of being sent home.

So I went back to triage at the end of the hour and I was now dilated to a 5 (or) 6 and 90% effaced, so I was admitted because of the progress I had made. Well, I laid for the next 4 hours in L&D with virtually NO contractions at all, and it showed as my cervix had remained the same at my next check. The OB came in and gave me 2 options: 1) She felt comfortable with allowing me to go home and allow labor to start on it's own if that's what I wanted or 2) She could start pitocin and get the contractions going again.

I'm not crazy, though I may look it...but there was NO WAY I was being sent home at 6cm dilated, especially since I am GBS+ and require antibiotics (which take 4.5 hours to administer PRIOR to baby's birth). I got the pitocin added to my IV at 11:40am and less than 3 hours later Miss Alyssa was in my arms.

Again, no sleep that night, as the hospial beds are always soooo uncomfortable. But Alyssa was perfectly behaved. We were anxious to arrive monday and got here in the evening. Eddie, was concerned that Alyssa wasn't getting enough to eat, as my milk has yet to come in, so he offered her a bottle of formula. BIG MISTAKE. My perfect baby was up the whole night (from 9:30pm until 3:00am) screaming because her tummy was hurting. She was so gassy the whole night, and it wasn't until she through up and had a horrible diaper at 3am that she finally was able to sleep--and I was able to as well. So, I've had maybe 4-6 hours of sleep the past 3 nights. Hopefully tonight will be better.


All and all we are so excited to have Alyssa a part of our family. It's a big adjustment going from 3 to 4 but feel so blessed.