Lilly Lynn

Finally, the post I've been dying to write! I must warn you, it's going to be EPIC...and long. I certainly have lots of pictures, videos, and stories to share.

The morning of May 8th was intense. We arrived at the hospital, and everything just went so fast from there. I was excited to hear her cry for the first time, but I was so scared for the surgery. When they got me on the table to administer the epidural, I suffered through a good 20 minutes of the most frustrating and hopeless pain of my life. The anesthesiologist couldn't get the correct spot on my spine, so he ended up shoving the needle into my spine 6 TIMES! Each time was unbearably painful, but I had Ryan there, holding me and telling me that I could get through it. As with Easton's c-section, I didn't take so well to the anesthesia. I spent the entire surgery throwing up and running a fever. I pushed through the pain because I knew that in a matter of minutes, I'd meet my daughter. When they pulled her out and I heard her cry, I just burst out a gasp and cried. She was here!! She weighed 8 lbs, 4 oz, and was 19 1/2 inches long. A LOT shorter than I expected, considering Ryan and I are both tall. But she was beautiful and perfectly healthy, more than I could ask for.

We named our beautiful girl Lilly Lynn Goodrich. My grandma on my dad's side is named Lillian. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to name a daughter after her. When the time came to name the baby, the middle name was the hard part. We picked Lynn after Ryan's grandpa who passed away a long time ago. His name was Lynn, and he is the talk of the Goodrich family. I wish I could have met him. Her name is perfect! We love it! She's daddy's Lilly Bug.

The next 4 days in the hospital were bliss! She was so amazingly cute! And, she's such a mellow baby. She doesn't even cry when she's hungry or needs to be changed; she only gets mildly fussy. We enjoyed all of the family visitors, but what I enjoyed the most was mine and Ryan's alone time. Each night, he'd crawl into the hospital bed with me, and we'd put Lilly between us while we watched a movie or some shows. I learned a love that I didn't know existed. Ryan transformed into such a caring and loving dad. When I would watch him changing her or burping her, I would just fall more insanely in love with both of them. Lilly certainly loves her daddy! Whenever the nurses would come in to take her temperature (the only thing that ever made her really cry), all it would take to calm her down was Ryan's hand on her chest and hearing him talk. She calms down immediately when she hears him.

Since we've been home, it's been a rather hard adjustment. When you're pregnant, your end goal is "I'm having a baby! It's going to be so fun," but you don't really ever think about reality: the late nights, the worries about if she's still breathing, the crazy schedules, and the many, many visitors. On top of that, I didn't plan for the backlash that my body had in store. The first day or two at home were hard. She's such a good sleeper, she was sleeping through the night, so we were worrying that she wasn't eating enough. So we were waking her up to feed her...a lesson I've since learned, and get made fun of by my mom. Nursing a baby is also a very hard thing to get adjusted to. My little Lilly has been so patient with me!

The past week or so was rough. When we first got home from the hospital, I was feeling pretty good, doing lots, and trying to stay on top of things. Then I started to notice a plethora of symptoms that worried me. The pain of my incision was getting worse, all of the nerves in my body hurt, my feet were swollen to about 6 times the size, and I was having an impossible time breathing. It felt like everything was getting worse, not healing. I was told by my doctor to go to the ER. Not wanting to risk it, we did. I spent all of Monday getting CT scans and blood work done. They were concerned that I had developed a blood clot in my lung...here I was thinking it was just pneumonia. They also advised that I needed to take it easy. I hadn't been resting at home, and had instead been taking on way too much, considering I'd just had major surgery. So Ryan got me home and is making me stay in bed. I feel guilty. I didn't want him to have to take on the late nights by himself or have to do everything around the house alone. But he insisted. I am feeling a lot better, and I know I have my Ryan to thank for it. He's so good at taking care of his girls, all the while doing chores, running errands, and greeting visitors.

I guess I should talk about how Mother's Day went. I was pretty excited when we picked the date of the c-section, and it meant that I would celebrate my first Mother's Day. We first celebrated Birth Mother's Day that Friday. I can't forget about the first adorable baby I gave birth to. Mother's Day was fun. I was in the nursery, feeding Lilly, when Ryan came in and handed me a card. It was so sweet. He made me breakfast and took care of me the whole day, and then we spent the evening at my mom's house with both of our families. My mom is so in love with our little girl. When we had to leave Lilly with her while we went to the ER, she was in heaven! I am so appreciative of both of our families and the support that they've shown us. My mom has been incredible. She comes over almost every day to bring us food and clean.

Well, I think that's most of it. We're just enjoying getting used to the new routine of life with the cutest little baby on the planet. Her sweet face makes all of my pains and worries go away. I hope you enjoy the many pictures. We have since gotten her newborn pictures taken (I'm SOOO excited to get them back), and I'm working on putting together a video of the whole birth day.

This was the last pregnant picture...heading to the hospital.

Walking the Green Mile.

The smurfs!

This is my "I'm really scared to get poked" face

I'll admit, I look pretty scared....cuz I was!

She's here!!

I've been wanting to do this for 9 LONG months....

My mom, Jeff, and Jack brought me this gorgeous bouquet of flowers

Lilly bug, wearing her lady bug outfit. LOVE the antennas on the hat

She's smitten with Uncle Jack

First day home.

LOVES her daddy!

Tell me you don't fall in love when you see this...

My mom has a little lamb finger puppet, and when she was putting on a puppet show, Lilly grabbed the lamb, pulled it close, and fell back asleep. We couldn't stop laughing.