Zoey Marie Smith

I've been wanting to start a new blog for a long time now, and what better way than to share pictures of our sweet new baby. I finally took a few newborn photos today, which proved to be a little harder and more time consuming than I planned, but so worth it! We're going to try round two in a few days, so there will be plenty more pictures of this sweet little girl soon.

  

 

For those interested in the "birth story," I'll share the condensed version. When I went to my 36 week appointment, my doctor was a little concerned that the baby was measuring small. They did an ultrasound right away and it confirmed that she was measuring small. They also did a no stress test and everything still looked fine. My doctor wanted me to see a specialist in Idaho Falls to do a more accurate ultrasound, so we went on Jan. 28. They also confirmed that she was small and were also concerned about the fluid levels being a little low. With all this along with my history of having a stillborn, they had plenty of reason to induce me. I was 37 weeks (full term) two days later on the 30th, so my doctor had us come in then. They started inducing me at 9am and I was dilated 2cm. At 11am my water broke and I was dilated 4cm. At 11:15am the contractions really kicked in gear and I asked for an epidural, which I happily got at 11:45-ish. Around 1pm the contractions got intense again, (even with the epidural) and I was fully dilated. And at 1:31pm she was born. I couldn't believe how fast things went! She weighed 5lbs and was 18.75" long. Because she was small and considered late preterm, she had to go to the NICU for observation. So I got a quick glimpse of her and that head of hair we weren't expecting, and she was off to the NICU for 6 hours. It took us a day to decide on a name since the names we had in mind didn't quite fit her. Lance thought of Zoey a day or two before she was born and that was the one that fit. It took me a while to commit to it only because I didn't mull over it for nine months, like I did with the other names. But I love it now and it totally fits her.

 

(I hesitated sharing the above pictures because I look beat. But I realized it's partly the lighting and no one looks good with extreme overhead lighting, right? We'll just blame it on that anyway :) )