August 22, 2007

Hello!!! I, first of all, want to thank everyone for your thoughts and prayers!!! We appreciate the visits, flowers, and meals!! We are so blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives!!! Everyone has been so good to us!! Thank you Shannon for making updates on our website for us while we were in the hospital!!!

Meredith is almost a week old...can't believe it!!! She is such a miracle!! I could watch her for hours!! She is such a good baby; we're so lucky!!! She is beautiful!!! The prettiest baby I've ever seen!!!...but I guess all mothers say that. We're still trying to decide who she looks more like...we're thinking she's a good combination of both of us :) The hearing test and all the other tests they completed on her at the hospital came back with great results. (Her APGAR scores were an 8, 9).

The hospital stay was great...we had some wonderful nurses that took good care of Meredith and me. There were lots of babies born the end of last week, so we got moved around the hospital a few times. We started out on the 5th floor, and were moved to the 3rd after recovery. Then, we got moved to the 4th floor...we really enjoyed being on the 4th floor because Matt could go get Meredith out of the nursery anytime...we didn't have to call for her to be brought down to our room. My doctor said I could stay in the hospital until Monday if I wanted, but I decided on Sunday night that I was ready to go home. We packed everything up, and they got the discharge orders for me and Meredith ready, and we left the hospital around 5:00.

She was so good in the hospital, barely crying at all...even when she was in the nursery. We expected things to be the same when we came home. Wow...we were not prepared for Sunday night. We both were tired and Meredith started crying around 1:00...nothing we did made her feel better. We're thinking the pizza I had for dinner did not agree with her...I was trying to be careful with things that might not agree with her, but I really didn't think the pizza would cause that to happen. Luckily my mom stayed with us that night, and she stayed up with her for a while, so that we could get a few hours of sleep.

Meredith had hiccups for the first time on Monday. We thought it would make her cry, but it didn't...she was so cute. They didn't last very long.

On Monday night, my grandmother stayed with us in case it wasn't the pizza and Meredith was going to be a colicky baby. But, everything was perfect...she woke up for feedings about every 2 hours. But with her sleeping in between each feeding we were able to get some sleep. I told Matt that I could totally handle it, if every night was like that.
Meredith had her first sponge bath on Tuesday. She only cried for a few minutes. We put her little bathrobe on her, and she looked precious. She smelled so yummy!!! Matt said it washed the brown off her hair :) In some lights her hair looks light brown and in others it looks blonde. I was really expecting her to have dark brown hair since mine is so dark.

Matt just brought Meredith in here...she had been sleeping for a while, and has just woken up. Better go now, I don't want to miss much of her being awake. I love getting to see her beautiful eyes (they're kind-of a blue grey color right now); she sleeps so much that I so look forward to her waking up and opening her eyes real big.

Hope you all have a great rest of the day!! Thank you for thinking of us!! We all are doing really well!!! I'll try to post more pictures soon.

Shanda