The hospital Pictures

Fingers and Toes

In the craziness that was the morning of Day 2 of the hospital stay, the photographer came in to take our pictures. The hospital had just changed photography companies at the beginning of the month, so it was a different set up than when William was born. And I have to say that I am glad - I didn't care much for William's hospital pictures. So, here are a few of our favorite hospital pictures!

P.S. There aren't a lot of pictures with John because the baby decided she was HUNGRY during his part of the session. The photographer actually decided to go shoot (with a camera) another family and come back to see us later because she was so crabby. Luckily, I knew just how to fix her up :) and I got my pictures taken with her on the return trip.

PPS Just as we were starting our session, William arrived with Grandma. Totally unplanned, but we were happy to get a few pictures of him with the baby. However, they didn't take a picture of the whole family. Why? I don't know. But, they did get a sweet one of my mom with the baby.

Day 2

We had a good first night in the hospital - we both even got to sleep a little bit. We had to wake the baby to feed her even. The longest the hospital will let them go at night is 4 hours between feeds. Overnight we began the big debate over the name selection and didn't really get anywhere. John preferred one name, I preferred the other. We finally decided we needed to sleep more than we needed a name for the baby and agreed to revisit the problem in the morning.

We had a busy morning. The baby had her hearing screening done, had another visit from the pediatrician, a visit with the OB and had her pictures taken all before lunch (I'll post the hospital pictures separately because there are a lot of them)! We also had a visit from the cutest big brother and his Grandma! The hardest part about being in the hospital was being away from William. Up until the baby was born, the longest I was ever away from him was roughly 7 hours. Even though I was overjoyed about our newest bundle of joy, I was fiercely missing me some big boy.

William and Grandma coming up for their visit - William is carrying his present for the baby. How cute is our boy?
William giving the baby "pats". He was surprisingly gentle with her - I was so relieved!
Still calling her his "baby brother", he also says "cute!" when he's looking at her!

Helping Mama hold the baby and looking at her little hands/fingers.

A favorite activity: playing cars with Daddy on the windowsill and watching the cars drive by the hospital

Hmm...turns out when babies cry, they are LOUD! So funny that he did this on his own!

After the big boy left and every one else quieted down, John and I tackled the name problem again. In the end, we put the two top names on pieces of paper and put them into a hat. Same story as what we did when William was born and we were trying to name him. The name that came out of the hat: Amelia. And so she was named.

For the record, this was not the name I had already given her in my head during our special moment the day before. However, John did not really like my name very well...and in the end he was right about her being a girl...and the paperwork was filled out and turned in...so the name stayed. But, I will tell you that I struggled mightily with the name for the first week or so. I'm guessing largely due to hormones, because Amelia was one of our top names and a name I really like. But, I was having a hard time telling people her name without feeling like throwing up and I cried about it almost every day. I didn't want to blog about it because I didn't want to write her name. It just didn't feel like her name. We talked about it quite a bit and even made some phone calls to different offices and looked into officially changing her name. And then we didn't. For a lot of reasons that are probably also hormone related and not very interesting. In the end, I wanted to give you a heads up about my feelings about her name, especially if you are planning on talking about it with me in person. If you're looking for me to be all...warm and fuzzy about it, I'm not. I love her name and we're keeping it.

I've rewritten the last few sentences 100 times now and they still sound crabby. I don't really feel crabby about it anymore - you'll just have to take my word for it.

PS And no, I won't tell you the other name.

The weekend before...

So what did we do the weekend before with family in town? I meant to post these pictures on Monday morning (3-30), but then I went and had a baby instead.

It was raining outside, so we went to the Mills inside play area. Good thing Aunt Megan was with (her first trip to our house) - she didn't mind climbing up, over and around with William!
Sometimes it is nice to just watch your energetic kid play from afar...
Buying tickets for the....
Merry-go-round!
Weeee.....! Who is having more fun?
We also stopped by the NASCAR store for a quick picture
But ended up staying for awhile to admire the cars.
Playing house with Grandpa...ding dong! Who is here?
Sunday afternoon, Grandpa and Megan had to leave. After dinner, William and daddy went out to work on their lawnmowers to get them ready for mowing season!
William loves to be a helper, so he would carefully watch what John was doing and then do his best to mimic with his own lawnmower...very cute!
And then Sunday night we got this before bathtime! Perfect time to start potty training, right? Five hours before the baby is born? For the record, I ask him if he wants to use the potty every time we're in the bathroom. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. Usually he sits for 6.2 seconds before hopping up to do something else. Tonight he sat and sat...and revealed something pretty exciting when he finally got up. Has he done it since? Nope, but that's okay. We're going to go full force with the training late this spring/summer.

William meets his Sister

We finally started making calls around 8ish in the morning to our family. We were most excited to have our big boy come up to the hospital to meet his new little sister! The funny thing is he keeps calling her "baby brother". I think we've been talking a lot about him being the "Big Brother" he just assumes everyone is a brother? We have not started talking about gender differences yet, so I know he isn't confused about that yet...

The Big Brother coming up to the hospital with Grandma
Look! The baby brought you a present!
How did the baby know you like cars?
Helping Mama hold his new baby sister when she was just a few hours old(or "baby brother" as he likes to call her)
Grandma Kim gets her hands on her new grandbaby
Grandma and her grandchildren
Look baby! Cars!

A family of four!

She's Here!

One of the birth plan preferences* we had was to not find out the gender of our baby until delivery day. We also wanted John to be the one to announce the gender after the baby was born. After our baby was born, I looked to John to make his announcement. He studied the baby carefully, turned to me and said "It's a girl!" My jaw dropped (if you're coming in new, I was convinced this was a baby boy. Totally 100% convinced) and I said "What?!?!?!" John repeated himself clearly "It's a GIRL." I still didn't believe him and I had to sit up and look for myself. Twice. Yes indeed, we have a little girl. I don't think I've ever been so happy to be wrong.

Another birth plan preference* was for me to cut the cord if at all possible. And I did it! I'm not really one for blood and gore, but I cut the cord and am very proud of myself. We have pictures, but I currently cannot post them because...well the whole world can technically look at this blog. If I can get them appropriately cropped, I'll put them up to share.


By the time things got cleaned up and everyone was out of our room it was almost 7am. John and took a while just to admire our new baby girl. I was still in disbelief, so I kept telling John "It's a girl!" and John kept on smiling. Smiling big.

Somewhere in here, we decided it was too early to call anyone and tried to nap. John was successful in this, I was too smitten by my new baby girl to do more than doze off before waking up to look at her. While I was gazing at her, I was trying to figure out which one of our girls names was going to fit her best. At one point, a special song came on the radio (it is a long story and not very interesting) and I was pretty sure I knew what her name was.

I know this picture quality isn't the best, but it is the first picture of me holding my daughter!
John holding his baby girl
A little more cleaned up, after the cord has been cut
Weighing in...8lbs 8 oz
What our girl did a LOT of...cry. She was NOT happy when she had her clothes off!

Nor does she like having her hair washedBut, she sure is pretty when she is all cleaned up!
All cleaned up and back with Mama
I am in love with her wild woman hair! It is super soft and wavy, although with everyone touching it it gets greasy fast. This picture also gets the hair color about right. Again, with everyone touching it, it turns darker with all the oils (yuck).

*Birth plan preferences are a set of wishes that you would like to have followed during your delivery. During labor it can be difficult to communicate what you would/wouldn't like to have done, so most of the time plans are written up beforehand and signed off by both the dr and yourself. However, birth plans are not honored in emergency situations.

Baby's Birthday

I've put together 3 versions of this event. Feel free to read the version that you are most interested in and skip the rest.

The short short version
We had a baby! It was a girl! Yay us!

The short version
On March 30th we had a baby girl at 5:45am! I can't believe we have a girl - I was totally convinced that we were going to have a boy! One of our birth plan preferences was for John to tell me what the gender of the baby was. When she was born, he told me "It's a girl!" I said "What?!?!?!" and then I had to sit up to see for myself. She has a lot of wavy brown hair and dark blue eyes. She weighed 8lbs 8oz and was 21.5 inches long with APGAR scores of 8 and 9 after delivery. Both mom and baby are doing well!

The long, expanded, detailed and entirely too much information version

I woke up at 1:30ish on Monday morning. I had been sleeping for a few hours and was groggy. I stood up and out of habit went to the bathroom*. I went to the bathroom and returned to bed. I felt a contraction as I got back into bed. However, I had been having contractions pretty regularly for the last few weeks and I figured if this was going to be the real thing I wasn't going to sleep through it and I wasn't about to stay up half the night analyzing false labor. So, I dozed off but was unable to stay asleep. I was so uncomfortable! Finally, I got up to do a little walking around the house, get a drink of water and see if there was anything timeable.

I was having trouble timing the contractions I was having and finally at 2am I decided things were real enough to wake John for some assistance. As expected, John sprung into action out of a dead sleep. We timed contractions for 15 minutes before making a call to our doctor to let her know we were going in to the hospital. John ran around and gathered our last minutes items that needed to be packed while I wandered around trying to help. However, most of the time I would be distracted by a contraction and not complete the task I was working on or forget what I was doing all together. John would run by and grab whatever I was holding to throw into the bag or finish what I was doing.

The contractions were getting more intense and it felt amazing to have John pressing on my lower back during the contraction. Just before 3am we woke my mom to hand over the monitor for William and let her know we were going. (For the record, I don't know what took so long. It really didn't feel like an hour.)

I'm not going to lie - the ride to the hospital was long and not a whole lot of fun. I had put a lot of relaxation music onto our MP3 Player and I listened to it on the roughly 30 minute ride. I tried to relax, but it wasn't going so well. The contractions were NOT fun while I was sitting down. Things had been workable as long as I was able to move around. But, it the car, it wasn't easy. A little over halfway to the hospital, I felt a huge shift downward. After that big movement, things got even more intense and there were fewer breaks between waves. While we were driving, I was carefully considering my options and coming up with plans**.


Finally we arrived at our hospital emergency room (laboring moms are all admitted through the emergency room after hours). It was just about 3:30am and as we approached, the woman behind the desk asked us "Is she is labor?" In answer, I leaned over the window to work through the peak of a contraction and gave a little groan. She hurriedly opened the door and gave us directions to L&D. She asked if we wanted to use a wheelchair - I declined because of the whole sitting problem. It took a long time to get to L&D because every time I had a contraction, I needed to stop and work through it.

We finally got to L&D and the nurses took one look at me and hurried me off to a room. The nurses had to help me change into a hospital gown and then told me they would like a urine sample. This is funny to me because in my head I was saying:

I'm so sorry, but I just can't right now because I can't sit down and I'm so uncomfortable. I'm really sorry!

But, what they got from me was this:

BLANK STARE

Then they asked me to go ahead and get into the bed so they could start an IV and hook up the monitors for the baby's heartbeat and my contractions. Again, in my head I clearly remember being polite and nice:

I don't think I can sit right now and I'm sorry if that makes your job harder. However, I'm totally willing to help you do whatever you need to make things easier for you. I'll hold still, eat green beans or stand on my head. Just won't sit down. Again sorry!

And again, all they got from me was this:
BLANK STARE

While this was going on, John was busying himself with applying extreme amounts of pressure to my lower back. If he stopped for even a second or moved his hands I would let him know that movement or lowering of pressure was unacceptable. The contractions were coming roughly every minute and lasting a freakishly long time (I don't know how long they lasted - it just felt like f-o-r-e-v-e-r). At 3:45, they convinced me to climb up into bed for a minute to be checked so we could make a plan. I was 100% effaced at 6cm dilated. I was so happy to have made it so far.

Somewhere in here the contractions started having more than one peak and not coming fully back away to give me a break. After several of these, I decided it was time for some relief. An epidural was placed at about 4:30am and by 4:45am I was finally able to speak to people outside of my head again. The differences in epidural from William's birth was incredible - even though the exact same person administered both of them. The epidural I had during William's delivery was very strong and I was unable to feel anything. This epidural was really light and I could still feel the contractions and some pain with each one. However, I wasn't feeling the worst edge of each one. It also helped that after the epidural was placed, transition was over (the most intense part of labor) as the contractions spaced themselves out and were not as long lasting. Kind of stinks because I had to be sitting down through the most intense contractions to receive the epidural - and we all know how I felt about sitting down.

At just after 5am I was checked again and found to be completely dilated and at zero station. This is also where the nurse discovered I didn't have any membranes (my water had broken)**. Our OBGYN was called and our room was prepped for delivery. Our OB arrived at 5:29am according to John's notes and we started pushing. Pushing was much easier this time because I could actually feel what was happening. After 15 minutes, our baby was born - it was a GIRL!

*This is the only time I can figure my water broke. I wasn't awake enough to really notice what was happening and things sure picked up after I used the bathroom.

**I had been again planning on not having any medications during my labor and delivery. Just hours before I was adamant about not getting an epidural. I still felt strongly that I didn't want the medicine, however during the intense contractions I could feel myself questioning if that was the right plan. In the end I decided I would wait and see how things progressed and leave the final decision for later***.
***Now I feel like I have done everything but the pushing without the drugs, I am still up for having labor without drugs. So if (which is a BIG if right now), I was going to be pregnant again, I would again plan on a medication free delivery.

We're Home

We're home and we're working on getting things around here back to a new normal. So far, things have gone very smoothly, but we are currently working with 3 adults and 2 children. Soon, it is going to even out with 2 adults and 2 kids and we'll see if it is still smooth.

I have a lot of pictures to sort through and tons of e mail to catch up on. And there is that whole sleep thing. So, it is coming. But, it might be awhile.