Welcome to the blog: a quick pregnancy summary

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while now. I thought it would be a great way for me to capture everything that happens in Audrey's life (at least for the first year). I'm not much of a scrapbooker/memory keeper as many of you may know, so I thought this would be an easy way to alleviate some of the guilt that I feel for not making elaborate scrapbooks/photo albums, etc. like some of my friends (you know who you are!).

So a brief summary since this blog is getting off to a late start - I found out I was pregnant on St. Patrick's Day of 2010. Scott was working (he's a firefighter), so I had to wait until he came home the next day to tell him the great news! We were both thrilled! I was very lucky to have a fairly easy and uneventful pregnancy. My due date was November 24, 2010 (the day before Thanksgiving).

I knew all along that I wanted to find out the sex of the baby. I have a very strong opinion about this (as many of you know)...I know a lot of people are not finding out and say they love the surprise. Maybe it's the planner in me, but I can't imagine not knowing for twenty weeks when I could know and be preparing! For some reason, I really thought I was having a boy for the first half of my pregnancy. Maybe it's because I didn't feel too nauseous, but I was convinced we'd be painting the nursery blue. In July, we had our 20 week sonogram and were thrilled to find out it was a girl! I immediately started shopping for adorable pink nursery decor. :-)


Last photo before delivery - 39 weeks


I'm not going to go into too many details of the birth, but here are the highlights. I started feeling a bit strange on Friday, November 19 before my last day of work (mild cramping). This lasted all day and was progressively getting worse. I still felt okay that evening, so Scott and I went to his great aunt's 90th birthday party. After we came home, the pain was getting much worse, so after timing the contractions, we arrived at the hospital at 1:30 a.m. My water broke at 2:00 a.m., got the epidural at 5:00 a.m., and then delivered little Audrey at 4:49 p.m. on Saturday, November 20. She was 7 lbs. 9 oz. and 19 in. and just perfect! Labor was definitely not easy, but I think it was not as bad as I expected it to be (Scott may disagree with this!).

Audrey's first photo!

People always tell you how wonderful it is to become a parent, but you just can't understand what they're talking about until it happens to you. She has been a great baby so far - pretty laid back and only fussy when she's hungry. I am going to try to post weekly, but we'll just have to see how it goes...right now, if I have free time, I'm usually asleep on the couch!