Welcome Katelyn!!! (Week 139/1)

Whoohoo - baby Katelyn has finally joined our family. :)  This post is a little late, but I'm sure you guys all forgive me.  Posts will now be done on Wednesdays (instead of Mondays) since Katelyn was born on a Wednesday!  Here's our birth announcement - the first one anyway - created even before Katelyn was born and just waiting for a photo (yes, I was THAT ready for her to come!).

This is going to be quite a long blog post - so you are warned!  Why?  Well, of the millions of pictures we take, its the lucky few that are chosen for the blog that ever see the light of day.  The rest just sit in a folder, stored on 2 backup drives, rarely to be looked at again. It's true!  So here we go...

Tuesday morning.  Lost my mucus plug that morning - yippee! - but I know it doesn't really mean anything definitive.  40 week 2 day doctor appointment.  Am I really still pregnant?  I'm horribly uncomfortable.  Doctor checks me and I'm at 2cm dilated.  Hmph, I guess that's progress from the 1cm I was at last week? I had hoped that I would be super dilated and she would send me across the street to the hospital to have the baby. hehe.  Serious!  Will and I even got everything in the car - ready to go!  Here I am that morning at the doctor office.  I am SO ready!

No such luck though.  I think my doc felt a little bad for me so she had me go across the street to get some fetal diagnostic monitoring - check the baby's movement, fluid, etc.  If anything looked amiss, we'd induce that day.  Whoohoo - a possibility!  Is it bad that I was hoping that something would come out not so great?  Bad Kathy.  No such luck.  It was nice though, we were in a little room with an ocean view while they monitored her movements - and I could finally confirm that these little tightenings I had been feeling were indeed contractions from the machine output (funny how you completely forget... but with Tyler it was all back labor!).

So home we went.  Sigh.  I had accepted that we'd probably just have to wait for our scheduled induction Thursday morning.  Boo.  But...the rest of the day I was having mini contractions - strange...they were getting a bit stronger too... hmmm.. but I didn't really pay them much attention.  It wasn't until we put Tyler down to bed around 8pm that I thought that it might be a good idea to start timing them.  Got my handy iContractions iPhone app and we were in business.  Yikes - by 10:15pm I had called my OB office since contractions were about 5 minutes apart and ~40seconds long.  Biggest fear? - not getting my epidural in time!  2nd biggest fear? - getting sent home from the hospital for false labor.  Dr. said to come on in.  Ahhh!  Thank goodness Trina was on alert already and came over quick - we got to the hospital by 11:15pm.

So I was going to write my birth story here but figured I didn't want to gross anyone out.  Long story short:
- got my wonderful epidural
- awesome coincidence: we had the same nurse Cassie that delivered Tyler 2 years ago!- made us feel really comfortable
- took a nice nap with Will while I dilated
- dilated super fast - 3cm at 11:30pm, 4cm by 1:30am, 8cm by 3:45am and 9cm by 4:45!  no need for pitocin and my water broke by itself!
- my doctor came at 5:30am - got everything set up - pushed for about 5 minutes to get baby ready (they had a term for it, but I guess it was where the baby is at the exit?)
- pushed another 5 minutes and OUT SHE CAME! 


so all in all, it was a ridiculously fast delivery.  I couldn't even believe it, especially compared to how long it took with Tyler.  It was magical, wonderful, beautiful, breathtaking, etc.  And I even watched it happen (courtesy of a mirror!).  Love it!


Here's baby Katelyn!

After some skin to skin time, they took her to get cleaned up and weighed.  Even from across the room, I could see her on the scale, eyes wide open, looking around.  She was so alert!  7 pounds 13 ounces - wow!  Tyler was only 7 pounds 1 ounce!

She was really calm too under the lights as they examined her.  I think her apgar score was 9/10.  Good job Katelyn!  Ahhh!  Our little Katelyn is here!

Here are her newborn stats that they put up.  3/3 - an easy birthday to remember!

Ok, another newborn picture - I can't get over how tiny she is.

Here's a picture with our nurse Cassie and my Dr. Jennifer Lee.  We were all feeling great and excited.  

After Dr. Lee got everything back into order (yes, some repair was needed!) we stayed in the room for a couple hours while I nursed Katelyn.  It was beautiful - the sun was just starting to rise right after delivery and our wall-to-wall ocean view was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l.  Breathtaking - really magical to watch the sun rise and have a new baby in our arms.  Here's a photo with the view.  When we had Tyler, we were on one of the side rooms so there was only one window at the other side of the room that I couldn't even see out of.  This was MUCH nicer.

Here's Will enjoying some daddy-daughter time with Katelyn.

Afterward we headed upstairs to recovery.  Unfortunately we weren't lucky enough to get an ocean view room upstairs (boo!).  It was maybe 9am in the morning?  Oh well, no big deal.
We quickly got situated - Wednesday morning - adrenaline still pumping - we had a whole day ahead of us!  First though, had to introduce Katelyn to pika. :)

Picture of Will, myself and Katelyn!  

Later that afternoon my inlaws and parents came to visit.  I've never really understood how people have their parents wait in the waiting room while they're in labor - just makes me uncomfortable I guess.  Plus I really value the quiet new-family-time right after delivery - I don't want to be sharing the new baby with anyone! :)  

Another photo of Katelyn!

By 6pm Trina and Mariam had picked up Tyler and brought him to the hospital.  I was SO happy to see him!  Katelyn was dozing away in her bassinet when I heard him coming down the hall.  We stepped outside our room and he came running to us down the hall for a big hug.  Aww, I had missed him so much!  He was so excited to meet his baby sister!  Here's their first picture together - big brother Tyler!  He would keep repeating "gentle, not hard" when he touched her. So sweet!

Here's a picture with my mom and mother in law.  My mom brought dimsum for Will to eat too. :)  

Our first whole family picture!  Things are totally going to change I'm sure - to go from a family of 3 to 4?  Not a big difference, right?... haha, yeah right!

Tyler was so excited that he kept wanting to climb up the side of Katelyn's bassinet so he could see better.  I'm so excited to see him be a great big brother!

Picture with the grandparents.  Katelyn had good timing. :)  My parents had just gotten back Sunday night from the Bay Area from seeing Kareen's new baby, and were leaving Thursday/Friday to head back up for my cousin's wedding.  So Katelyn coming right in the middle on Wednesday was perfect!

Picture with my girls!  Thanks Trina for helping us take care of Tyler while we were in the hospital!

Will, myself and baby Katelyn.  Yay, we have our little girl!  Man, how long we waited to have a daughter that we could name Katelyn! :)

And another one with just myself and Katelyn.  Does she look like me?  It's too soon to tell.  She does have Will's earlobes though (I have non-existent earlobes) and supposedly a high nose (whatever that means).  

We even caved and had the professional hospital photographer take photos of Katelyn.  We were much stronger with Tyler and said no thanks, but I couldn't resist this time!  Totally overpriced, but what can you do?  Uhoh, I hope this isn't going to be my stance on expensive girl clothes... anyway, here's my favorite picture that the lady took.  She was gushing about how cute and alert Katelyn was too!

How adorable is that little bow? Sheesh!  Aww, sucks that she scratched herself though.  Boo.  And another one that I took on my iphone:

It's customary to stay 48 hours in the hospital after delivery (until Friday) but we were OK'ed by my OB to leave the next day (Thursday).  What's the rush?  We wanted to get home and be with Tyler!  Unfortunately my pediatrician wanted us to stay longer (I was GBS+) to make sure everything was fine with Katelyn, so we compromised and agreed to stay until Thursday evening.  Sucks though that Katelyn had to get a blood draw to test stuff (an actual syringe! Will went with her to the nursery - I couldn't watch).  She was fine, and we found out she was AB+ blood type.  I do kind of wish we had stayed the night, looking back, since it was nice to have all the nurses available to us, and the DRUGS.  haha. Yes.  Pain medication that I can only get in the hospital! Haha!  Anyway, we headed home Thursday night with Tyler after dinner.  He was really excited to help lead the way of my wheelchair to the exit!

And to "help" hold baby Katelyn in the carseat.  I sat in the back with them and WOW is it crowded back there now!

Home sweet home.  It's good to be home, but tiring as well. We're still getting adjusted to having a newborn, her schedule (or lack of I mean) and her needs.  Pretty exhausting!  Will's parents came by on Friday to help out with meals and play with Tyler after he came back from school.  Saturday we had a nice quiet day (Katelyn's still in the sleep-all-day mode) and it was really relaxing and calm - we're not nervous/anxious like we were the first time around!  Tyler was great, with a few minor outbursts.  Oh yes, and he is no longer completely potty trained.  But we expected it and it's not a big deal.  


My biggest guilt right now is not having time to play with Tyler.  I miss it so much!  Seems like the last 9 months I've had to be careful when I'm playing with him because of my belly, and now I'm always tending to Katelyn.  We are definitely making an effort though, I go to him every morning when he wakes up and calls for me (6:20am on the dot) and we have some special mommy-Tyler time snuggled up in his bed.  I can't believe how much he's grown - he's such a big boy now!  I do really like my inlaws coming over - specifically because they SPOIL Tyler with attention.  And YogurtLand trips. :)

That's my prerequisite for all visitors - must show Tyler tons of interest first before getting near the baby. It's only fair!  My brother also dropped by this weekend as well.  Here he is with Tyler!

And then with baby Katelyn.  

Here's Tyler and my mother in law making meatballs.  We've found that Tyler is much more interested in eating things that he helped make (like dumplings and wontons!).  He really enjoyed making these meatballs and eating them later!

More pictures of Katelyn because I just can't get enough..

Ahhh!  Newborn babies are just too precious and adorable.  I could stare at her all day.  Seriously.  I probably spend 23 out of 24 hours a day holding her.  No joke.

Random picture - One of Tyler's new favorite tv shows is called Dinosaur Train - a cartoon about dinosaurs who take a train around to learn about other dinosaurs.  What's not to like for a 2 year old boy: dinosaurs AND trains!  Anyway, he has these dinosaur figures from a while back that he's taken renewed interest in - lining them up!

The other day, he made his own dinosaur train - and was SO proud of himself!  I was pretty impressed too!  Each car has a dinosaur on top!

My main concern at the moment is to just make sure that Tyler doesn't feel neglected.  He really is a wonderful kid and seems to understand everything going on. I feel so bad sometimes when we're tired and don't have a lot of patience - it's not his fault!  We'll be better for sure.  So if anyone wants to come over and shower Tyler with attention and play with him - call me! :)  He's a silly kid and loves playing - even with an orange. heehee!

Katelyn is growing bigger by the second - we've already had 2 pediatrician appointments and another one next week.  Her jaundice is under control, and she's steadily gaining back her weight.  We had some issues with nursing in the beginning that are (thank goodness) starting to resolve themselves.  Even made a trip to an Ear, Nose, Throat specialist to make sure she wasn't tongue-tied.   I did find a great gathering of breastfeeding mothers at this breastfeeding boutique in Aliso Viejo that I may meet up with again too!  Look for updates on Wednesday now!

Have a good week!