She's here!!!

It's taken me a couple weeks to post, but little miss has arrived.  Alexis Jayde Krueger was born 1/4/17 at 1:29pm.  She weighed in at 7lb 5oz and 18.5 inches in length. She was five days early, and much like when I was pregnant with her brother, I worked right up to the day of delivery.  More literally with her.


I went to work that Wednesday.  I decided to stand at my desk that day since my hips had been bothering me. Around 9:30am I felt a bit of low pressure and went to the rest room.  It became quite apparent to me that labor was imminent. So after less than 2 hours at work, I got back in my car to head home.  Halfway home, at 10:02am, I had my first contraction. They were roughly 8 minutes apart for the rest of the ride. I waited for Justin at our house and at that point my contractions were 4 minutes apart and we still had a 40 minute commute to the hospital.

I called ahead to my doctor's office and they alerted the hospital which made for a pretty quick registration.  I danced around in the hallway a bit while waiting for my room, which had just been mopped.  I quickly changed into the oh-so-sexy hospital gown and provided a urine sample.  Not long after my nurse Joleen has me climb up in bed where she hooked me up to a monitor for the baby's heartbeat.  She also got me hooked up to IV bags for antibiotics and fluids (apparently I was strep-b positive) and I awaited the anesthesiologist for my epidural.   Joleen was awesome in talking me through my contractions with breathing exercises and keeping me focused.  My water broke while my epidural was being placed.  When I was told I could lay back it was at that point I told them I couldn't, that I needed to push.  Chaos ensued as the delivery team rushed in and a nurse ran to get Justin back in the room. In about 3 to 4 pushes Alexis had made her grand debut before the epidural really took effect. During clean up, our doctor was chatting with us about his recent trip to Jamaica. He'd literally flown back into Albany at 2:30 that morning. We joked about the coincidence that Alexis had been conceived on our trip to Jamaica last spring.

The healing process so far has been a breeze.  Amazingly I didn't need stitches. Start to finish labor was about 3.5 hours.  Alexis took to nursing before we'd even left the delivery room. Our overall experience could not have gone any smoother.  Since I had been strep-b positive they wanted to monitor baby and I for a minimum of 36 hours. This was fine as they put us in our own room with a pretty awesome overnight nurse named Emily.  Our evening chats really made the time pass.  We had photos taken right at the hospital, much like when we had Jayson. Bellevue also gifted us a swaddle -me blanket and Pandora charm.  Just like when we had Jayson, we left Bellevue feeling 110 % satisfied with our care and overjoyed to go home with the newest member of our little family.

Her big brother adores her, as does our fur baby Ace.  When I next post I'll be sharing her one month update.  It's hard to believe she is almost a month old already.  

Welcome baby Alexis! We've waited our whole lives to meet your beautiful face.