She's Here!

It's been a long time since my last update, so I'm finally posting a picture of our baby girl! Riley Kate Manning was born on 7/24/08 at 10:07am. She was 6lbs 11oz, and 18.5 inches long.

I was at the hospital Wednesday night for pre-induction with the idea that I'd be induced Thursday morning. Late Wednesday night, I started feeling nauseous and the doctor was getting nervous that I was getting sicker, so he opted to induce me Wednesday night instead.

After a sleepless night, even with the wonders of an epidural and a catheter (seriously, where was the catheter the last couple months of pregnancy? I would have gotten a lot more sleep!), I was ready to push around 7:30am. They warned me that first babies can take 2 to 3 hours of pushing, so we were prepared. Unfortunately, even after 2 straight hours of pushing (which Jeff and I both agree was so anti-climatic based on what we'd heard), the doctor realized she wasn't dropping, so he said I needed a c-section.

Well, even though I had known all along that she could end up as a c-section, I lost it and cried the whole way through. Then, to top it off, I had a bad reaction to the meds they gave me in the operating room, and was barely conscious through the whole thing. I didn't even get to hold her on my own for 3 or 4 hours after she was born. :(

We came home Sunday afternoon, and recovery hasn't been nearly as bad as I had anticipated. I'm still on extremely restricted activity for another week, but I've had a lot of help from Jeff and his mom Julie. And Riley is fantastic! She eats like a champ and sleeps like a champ, so it's been helpful in my recovery as well. We also found out after my surgery that I'll have to have c-sections from now on just based on the way I'm built. So, I'm now prepared for that, so maybe I won't cry hysterically through the next one. :)

Many of you have already seen these pics from emails last week, but we'll post some new ones soon. She's starting to open her eyes more and it's unbelievable how much she's changed over the past week!