Sunday, September 29, 2013

Audrey Éowyn

I've gotten lots of complaints from family members that I need to upload more pictures of our baby girl, so here's one of my first attempts to do so.  I totally meant to do this earlier, but she's kept me pretty busy, I'll have to say!  If you haven't figured it out already, our baby's name is Audrey Éowyn Byard.

So before we had our daughter, we refused to share the name we'd chosen for her with anyone.  We wanted to keep one thing a surprise, and it was a lot of fun knowing our baby's name and getting used to using it ourselves before anyone else got to say it.  We knew that once we'd shared the name with everyone, we would potentially get a lot of grief for the middle name.  And we sure did!  But at least everybody was polite about it.  When we tell it to someone new, usually we have to repeat it three or four times before they finally understand what we said.  And then we need to spell it, because the name is hard to grasp without seeing or visualizing the spelling. 

Let me just briefly fill you in on how we decided on a name for her.  We actually have a couple of baby names picked out for our family (besides Audrey's name, we had a boy name and another girl name, both of which we plan to use in the future, so I will not be divulging!).  When we got pregnant with our first baby, we chose all of the names on the way down to my aunt and uncle's house for Thanksgiving.  We lost our first baby way too early to tell if it was a boy or a girl, so we never named it, even to ourselves.  

When we eventually found out we were pregnant again and having a girl, we knew exactly what her name would be (although we had two girl names we liked, we originally assigned one to an elder daughter and one to a younger daughter--provided we have one).  This would have been around the middle of April, so I'm pretty proud of us for being able to keep the name a secret for that long!  We decided to name our children the names we would have liked to have had for ourselves, if we could have chosen any other name in the world to be called.  Kyle had just one name, but I had several, so Kyle had to veto some of mine that he didn't like.  Also, there was some other criteria:  the first name had to be easy to spell and pronounce and it couldn't be a name that was too old and stuffy for a child or too young for an adult woman.  Also, since we spend a lot of time with hundreds of kids, the name couldn't have a negative connotation from a former student that we knew.  It might sound shallow to most, but my teacher friends surely understand!  I have had one single student in my career named Audrey; luckily, she was a real sweetheart.  

We did NOT name our daughter after Audrey Hepburn, so please do not assume that we did!  I like Audrey Hepburn's movies and we decorated our daughter's room in Audrey Hepburn BECAUSE we decided to name her Audrey.  I've always really liked the name Audrey, and I'll admit I probably became a fan of Audrey Hepburn at first because I really liked her name!  Audrey Hepburn was a really great person, but not why we gave our daughter the same name.

We decided to do something completely different for the middle names of our children--we have (and will) name them after famous fictional characters from literature.  This made total sense to us because (a) we both like to read, (b) we've read a LOT of the same stuff since we both majored in English in college, and (c) both of our professions (and therefore, a large chunk of our lives) revolve around literature.  We also had criteria for this as well:  the name had to be unique (we WANT our kids to be asked about it!), the character had to be righteous, noble, and moral (sorry Scarlett O'Hara!  I love you for your flaws, though!), and the text that it was from had to withstand the test of time (i.e. no stupid Bella or Anastasia or Katniss names for us!).  We also tried really hard to choose names from different genres (fantasy, historical, sci-fi, etc.).  So we settled on Éowyn from Lord of the Rings for our first girl.  It was Kyle's choice, and I think it sounds great together.  He promised to let me choose the middle name for our boy (if we have one), so I've got something good and ready for that :)

We've been trying to take plenty of pictures of Audrey, although I worry that we're not taking enough since she's getting so big and I'd like to not forget what she was like when she was small.  I've not posted any pictures on Facebook of Audrey, but Kyle has, so you've probably seen quite a few.  However, here are some more hospital pictures we have to share:


Audrey and Me (38 weeks).  I wish we'd taken a picture before we left for the hospital at 39 weeks, but we were running late so we didn't get one :(
We reported to the hospital on Saturday, September 14th at 7:30 AM to be induced.  I tested positive for Group B strep, so I had to have two doses of antibiotics in my system before they would break my water for me.  The doses had to come four hours apart, so the first several hours at the hospital was just sitting around and waiting.  I came to the hospital 4.5-5 centimeters dilated thanks to a balloon that my doctor put in my cervix the day before.


Taken after I got settled in bed in my labor/delivery room before they started the first antibiotics.  We're having a baby!
My room board :)
Kyle's parents came up to be there when Audrey was born.  We played some games, walked, and watched TV while waiting on my contractions to become more intense.  At this point, I'm weathering a contraction while everyone else is watching HGTV.
Dr. McKnight broke my water at 1 PM and they put me on pitocin at 3 PM after they determined I wasn't making ample progress on my own.  They weren't kidding when they told me pitocin would make the labor a lot harder!  My contractions got pretty fierce really quickly.  After I got to a 4 on the pitocin, I decided I wanted some morphine (I wanted to avoid an epidural as much as possible).  Since they can't give you morphine at 8 centimeters or beyond, they checked to see how dilated I was...7 centimeters!  Phew!

After about 20 minutes of having the morphine, my contractions felt the same as before.  I was certain that my nurse didn't administer it correctly.  I felt nauseous right after she gave it to me, which means it took affect, but I was suddenly adamant that I wanted an epidural.  The nurse wanted to check me again before giving me an epidural, and thank goodness she did!  In 30 minutes I went from 7 to 9.5 centimeters dilated!  No wonder the contractions felt the same; the morphine was working, but my contractions were really just that much more intense!  With the end in sight (and some coaxing from Kyle and the nurse), I skipped the epidural.  We were fully dilated and began pushing exactly at 7 PM.

Of course, Audrey has proven time and again throughout this pregnancy that she likes to take her own sweet time!   Finally, she popped herself out at 8:42 PM.  I got to hold her immediately and it was the best feeling in the world :)  Kyle cried, but was too grossed out to cut the cord.  We opted to have her weighed and cleaned up right away...the suspense of knowing how big she was was killing me!




All in all, I have to say delivering a child is an...interesting...experience.  Man, does it HURT.  I was pretty sure in the middle of my labor that I would NEVER have another child EVER again.  But, I forgot about it pretty quickly after I got to hold Audrey.  They even gave me stitches and I was too busy counting fingers and toes to even notice. 

Now we have a wonderful, healthy baby girl in our lives, and we couldn't feel more blessed.  Each of us comments at least three times a day how beautiful she is, but we're pretty biased!

Audrey's first bath

So cooooooollld!


Audrey here looks IDENTICAL to Kyle's newborn pictures.

That ultrasound tech was right...chubby cheeks and lots of hair!

I still can't believe I grew her!
Probably one of my favorite pictures of all time :)

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations Megan! She is beautiful! I love her long, black hair! I love how you said during labor you never thought you would want another baby again. I thought that EXACT same thing when I had my second baby who was also delivered natural! It's a good thing they are so cute and sweet. :)

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