Brichelle Edi Brawley

Well at about 2:30am on September 5, 2010 I was woken from a semi-peaceful slumber from contractions that were quickly getting more intense and painful. After timing them for a short while I decided I should at least go in and get checked for dilation. I have had them check a few times(once being a week prior) and so I was sure they would tell me to suck it up and go back home. And since it is a 45min. drive, I wanted to be sure I really needed to go. At first I went to let Micah know that I would be driving myself to the hospital and should be back in a few hours, but then a contraction came and it was apparent I would not be driving myself anywhere. So we left Gianna with Grandma Brawley so she could keep sleeping and headed out. They were getting so intense so quickly that I dared not clean up or put on any makeup as not to waste time. We were joking on the ride that we better buckle down and get serious about names, as we had not chosen one yet. Well at the hospital after trying twice to stop the contractions they finally decided that this baby was coming ready or not. (In the hour they were trying and dawdling around not taking my labor seriously I went from a 4 to a 6, Much quicker then Giannas labor). So an eternity later I was able to get an epidural before I killed someone. Can I say after doing one without and one with that I will probably put the anesthesiologist on my Christmas card list. It helped me keep her in just long enough to get a second dose of antibiotics in her system and a steroid shot to help her lungs develop quicker. So once the antibiotics was through my system they broke my water which had been at a 10 for a long while by this point and about 3 good pushes later our beautiful baby girl Brichelle Edi Brawley was born! She was born at 9:59am, 4lbs. 12oz. 18.5in. long! 

These last two pics are the most recent, the put some new jammies on her and she just woke up and was stretching. She had just gotten the green light to not be under the blue light anymore so the sticky things on the side of her face got taken off that day, she kept pulling at them so I think she was happy about that. But the feeding tube remains until she can drink her feedings all on her own for three days straight. They require her to have 45ml of milk which is about 1.5oz. but she has made great improvement each day and yesterday she finally stopped losing weight and started gaining! She was 4lbs. 6oz. so I was super excited and today we get to go give her a bath, not her first one but the first one that they have let us do. A funny side story about her name after she was born and we still had yet to pick a name we narrowed it down to two name and played paper, rock, scissors. The other name "Brielle" won but we ended up going with Brichelle instead. And her middle name Edi is a shortened form of Edith who is my great grandma and Micahs grandma's name, we also had family votes on how to spell it but you pronounce it Edi(ee-dee). We hope to have her home in another two weeks, but only time will tell, maybe we will get lucky and it will only be a week. But we want to make sure she is strong enough too before she comes home, and we are able to get ready for her since we clearly weren't prepared. So hopefully once we bring her home we will have a bassinet set up and all of the other essentials. :)