Our Family: October 2008

After seeing the pediatrician early Monday morning, we were released to go home. It took a while to pack up our belongings after living in the room since Friday night. Here's a photo of Natalie and Lydia right before our departure. It felt good knowing we were heading home.

Two wonderful volunteers came up to the room and helped us to our car. Here we are riding the elevator down to the lobby.

Here we are getting ready to leave the hospital and get in the car.

Lydia slept the entire ride home, her first car ride, all 10 minutes of it. On the way home, we stopped by Natalie's office, which was on the way, to show off Lydia to her co-workers.

As you can see below, she didn't appreciate the house and all of our hard work preparing it for her right off the bat. We, however, were certainly appreciative of the beautiful flower arrangement given to us by Tara, Tyler, and Tessa (our next-door neighbors).

Feeding time

Sleep time - for now! She truly prefers sleeping during the day and, well, not sleeping at night!

And bath time. She didn't like that very much.

It's much better being clean.

Here's a picture with her great-grandmother

(note: if you click on any of the photos, you can enlarge them)

As the saying goes, apples don't fall far from trees.

It all started at the VIP reception for the grand op

ening of the brand new Asheville REI on Thursday night. On Tuesday, we met with Natalie's physician and we were all prepping for an induction and perhaps a c-section on the 23rd because the baby was big and there hadn't been much interuteral progress.

However, that all changed soon after we walked into the new REI and Natalie's eyes gazed upon a set of pink Smartwool baby booties and immediately felt a strange feeling. Apparently, Lydia was extremely disappointed not to be able to participate in the festivities at REI that evening or shop at the pre-sale that night. During the speeches by the REI management folks, Natalie kept elbowing me asking me to time these "strange feelings." Totally prepared for a next week arrival, however, Natalie and I continued looking around the new store.

We went home that night, watched Grey's Anatomy, and went to bed.

Around 6:30 the next morning, Natalie woke me up by saying calmly, "Get up, it's time to go." Disoriented, I thought I had overslept for work because there wasn't a lot of urgency in her voice. However, it was because her water broke and those "strange feelings" were contractions, and the contractions were two minutes apart.

We got to the hospital around 7:00 and Natalie was taken upstairs. Contractions were now one minute apart. Natalie's friend, Angie, arrived around 9:00 am and stayed with us all day.

After progressing quickly, and around 11:00 am, we realized that it might be best to go ahead and start the epidural. What a difference that made for everyone. I can't imagine having a baby without one - and we only lasted about three hours before starting ours!

By around 3:00, we were almost fully dilated at 9.5 cm. We thought the baby would be here before we knew it and Natalie's parents were racing up from Florida, frantic that they may miss the delivery. They arrived around 3:30 in time for this three (soon to be four) generation shot.

Fast forward to around 7:30, still at 9.5 cm. After talking with the physician, we felt that we would give it a few more hours but decided that a c-section would be our best option and the safest option for the baby, since we had been at the hospital for over 12 hours.

We went back for the c-section around 9:30 that night. Here's dad in the bunny suit outside of the operating room. It took no more than about 10 minutes of surgery before we heard Lydia's voice for the first time (officially, 10:27 pm).

This is what she looked like when I first saw her.

Here I am cutting her umbilical cord.

Here she is on the weighing table (yes, the scale says 8 lbs 2 oz, for those keeping score at home). All the while, poor Natalie is still on the operating table as the doctors finished the procedure and I am getting alone time with the baby!