Introducing Tyndell Eve Ahrens!

Tyndell Eve was surprisingly born on Wednesday, December 10th at 8:42 am - 5 weeks early! She was 4 lbs, 15 oz and 18 inches long!

And the [insert "descriptive"] labor story starts with Tuesday being just a regular day - work, home, dinner - then right when I sat down at dinner, I thought..."hmmm...I think I just peed myself." So I went home to change and come back (we've been hanging out across the street from us a lot lately b/c my parents have been renting a house there! Thank goodness for their help!) to eat. Through dinner, things just didn't seem quite right (or dry for that matter) and when Jeff and I went back home, he said, "Well - I'm super tired and am going to turn in early." And I replied, "Um - I don't think I actually did pee myself....it keeps coming..." So we called the midwife and they confirmed that yes I just might have had my water break so we needed to go to the hospital to be sure. We arrived there about 9pm to find that it was true so I had to be induced right away to prevent infection even though I was so early. So after a couple of hours of preparation/cervix softening medication (whoa - can I write that here? Sorry if this is too descriptive...), I was already having contractions even though they thought it would take up to 12 hours initially. So - they began to give me pitocin at about 2:30am and I had contractions through the night. At about 7:30am - the contractions became really really intense and about 45 minutes later, my midwife confirmed that I had reached 10cm and that it wouldn't be long. I pushed from about 8:15am onward and our sweet girl came out 30 minutes later.

So - we were in the Boca Community Hospital from Tuesday night to Friday afternoon, but Tyndell cannot come home yet since she's a premie. We go back to the hospital's NICU about 3 times a day for the feedings, to hold her, and drop off what I've pumped that day (whoa?! can I write that too?!), but haven't heard yet when she will be home with us. Essentially - she has to stay under the UV light for a few days, be able to keep the feedings down and not need to supplement with an IV anymore, gain weight, and learn to either bottle or breastfeed well before coming home. She's doing better every time we visit her but it seems like it's just going to be a slow process for her to get out of NICU.

Other than hospital visits and finishing up the things we thought we'd still have a month to do before Tyndell being born, we've just been enjoying some family time and trying to get lots of rest. My parents are here til the end of March and Jeff's parents came down this weekend for a quick visit too so we're all together hanging out right now. Obviously - I'll try to do updates when we can, but it just depends on when Tyndell gets out of NICU.

Thanks for everyone's support, thoughts, texts, facebook posts, and prayers - they've been super encouraging during this time!