Introducing....

Kendra McCall Stowell
Born: June 5, 2010 @ 5:34pm
8lbs 14oz and 21.1 inches

I am so totally IN LOVE with this little girl. She is perfect - eats well, sleeps well, hardly ever cries. Kendra is such a blessing and is COMPLETELY worth all the pain I went through...and there was a lot of pain. Here's the story and I'll try to make it short.

Jon and I had our "last date before baby" on Friday and it was kind of a joke because I could barely walk. I was having major pain in my pubic bone area and didn't know how I was going to last until the 14th (the due date). So we had our date, came home, and went to bed pretty late around 11:30. I woke up at 1am to my water leaking all over the place (sorry TMI). I told Jon my water broke and he wanted me to try and go back to sleep since I wasn't having contractions and the same thing happened with Ryder and it took him forever to be born. I couldn't. Hello...I was leaking and getting excited and anxious there was no way I was going to sleep. I told him I would just drive to the hospital and call him if anything big was happening. Well I got to the hospital at 1:30 and they had a hard time testing the water to make sure it was amniotic fluid. It took them 5 tries and TA DA it was fluid (I knew it). So they admitted me and I got my IV started. I decided to leave Jon alone and he called me at 6:30am and I told him nothing was happening yet. They started me on pitocin around 7:30 and after a few hours my cervix hadn't dilated at all. The contractions became more painful so they gave me the epidural (which is a godsend) and everything pretty much remained the same. Since I was running on about 1 hour of sleep I became very frustrated and emotional that it was taking so long. I cried on and off for a few hours until FINALLY they told me I was at an 8. YES!! Once I reached a 10 I pushed for about 30-45 minutes, which was exhausting, and then Kendra arrived. She had chubby cheeks and a double chin and just looked so BIG! And she was. She has my nose and Jon's chin...everything else is too hard to tell this early.

Postpartum had been pretty rough this time around. The cramps that you get when your uterus shrinks were excruciating and I'm so glad that part is over. They were so bad in the hospital that I couldn't sleep and asked the nurse for drugs. She gave me 2 percocet within an hour and that didn't even touch the pain. I called my nurse and she gave me a hot towel because I couldn't have any other drugs. That didn't work. Then she came in with a hot pad. That didn't work. The weird part is I wasn't even feeding the baby and I was having constant cramping. The nurse decided that was not normal and I should not be in so much pain so she called my Dr. who approved Demerol. Thank goodness! As soon as the nurse put it through my IV I passed out...only to be woken up an hour later when they brought Kendra back from the nursery to eat. The drugs made me so loopy I was falling asleep while I fed her. So when I entered the hospital I had had only 1 hour of sleep, that first night with Kendra I only had 1 hour of sleep, then the next 2 nights at home I had only 1 hour of sleep. Let me tell you I've been exhausted beyond belief I don't even know how I have functioned. I'm finally getting more sleep now but Ryder has been waking up in the night and trying to come in my bed and then he won't go back to sleep in his own bed so I've been up with 2 kids in the night and it is NOT fun. Other than that I have no complaints. Life is good and we are so blessed. We love you, Kendra!