Chunky Monkey

I took Shawn in for his 2 week check-up on the 24th, and I was so surprised to find that he gained a whole pound from his birth weight! The Dr. said he looked great, and I was glad that they didn't have to give him any shots since he was poked so much those first few days after he was born.

His stats were:

• weight: 9.04 lbs.- 57th percentile
• length: 21.85 inches - 86th percentile
  
• head: 39 cm - 87th percentile

So far, Shawn has been such a mild baby. He's a good sleeper (better during the day than at night), and a pretty good eater too. I swear sometimes I rock him for like 10 minutes and he's still wide awake, and then I give him to Spencer and he passes out in about 5 seconds. Shawn is doing pretty good at trying to hold up his head.

Thankfully, he tolerates Sydney smothering him with kisses really well too. The first thing she says to me when she wakes up in the morning or from her nap is, "Mommy, where's na baby?" I think my favorite though is when she gets right up in his face and says, "Hi cutie pie!" or "Hi sweet boy." She needs LOTS of reminders to not touch him when he's sleeping, but she has been a great big sister and has been doing well with having another kid in the house.

Dental Ball

Last Saturday Spencer attended the 99th Annual Navy Dental Corp Ball. They switch off every year between formal and informal attire, and this year it was informal with a '70s theme. He went costume shopping that afternoon with one of his buddies, and came home with this get up:

The best part of it was that just after he put on his wig, glasses, and facial hair to model them for me, Sydney walked downstairs after waking up from her nap. She came down the hall toward me, but as soon as she saw Spencer she smiled nervously and immediately started backing up. He took it all off before there was any serious panicking.

While he partied, I stayed home with these little cuties.

He doesn't look super happy here, but Shawn takes awesome naps in his car seat.

While the baby relaxed, I painted Sydney's fingernails bright pink (she wanted them to match my toenails). She almost let me paint her toenails too, but she bailed at the last minute. She has some sort of phobia about us touching her feet, especially if there is toenail clipping involved.

How Do You Hug A Porcupine?

A few weeks ago we got a free little paperback book called "How Do You Hug A Porcupine" in a box of Cheerios. It has become one of our favorites! Sydney has the whole thing memorized, but she still likes us to help her. I love to hear her "read" it, we have been reading it to baby Shawn several times a day :)

She has been saying such funny things, too, like:

"Daddy, you're hilarious!"

"Let's do _______. Won't that be so much fun?"

"I want you to lay with me for 2 minutes because you love me."

"I need a drink because I'm firsty firsty."

Her facial expressions make all of it even more priceless, she is quite the character!

Sweet Baby Shawn

I was scheduled to be induced on the Wednesday the 10th, but it still wasn't a sure thing since we were supposed to call that morning to make sure they had rooms available. I started feeling kind of weird on Tuesday night while Spencer and I were watching a movie, and before we went to bed I told him I thought we'd be having a baby tomorrow whether they induced me or not. Sure enough, I started having contractions around 1:30 am; they were about 30 minutes apart. By 4:45 am, they were about 15 minutes apart. Spencer had gotten up to use the bathroom and I told him I was having contractions, so he told me to tell him every time they started so he could rub my back while I breathed through them. I got up around 7:30 am to take a shower and make sure we had everything ready to go before we headed to the hospital. Spencer dropped Sydney off at our neighbor's, the Coat's, and then we were off.

It took a while to get checked in, get the IV in, get monitors strapped on, etc. It was 11:30 am before the Dr. Hoffman came in to talk to me and check my progress. I was so excited when she said 4 cm, that made me feel kind of tough. She asked me if I was going to get an epidural and I said, "When can I have it?" She said, "You're in active labor at 4 cm, so you can have it right now if you want." About 30 minutes later the nurse anesthetist came in to do the epidural, and Spencer was excited that they let him stay in to watch. Within just a few minutes my toes and legs were tingling, and I got to spend the next several hours sleeping. The Dr. broke my water when I was 5 cm (around 1:30 pm), and the color indicated that the baby already had a bowel movement. She said that was typical of a baby that's a week overdue, but that the NICU team would have to be called in during the delivery just in case.

Around 4:30 pm, I started feeling a lot of low, posterior pressure, and contractions. That didn't happen with Sydney, so it kind of took me by surprise. I got really shaky too, and Spencer would hold my hand while I shook and breathed through contractions. I asked the nurse if we could call in the nurse anesthetist to give me more drugs, but the nurse checked me and said the baby was so low that she didn't think drugs would kick in before I started pushing. Spencer said he could already see the baby's head before I started pushing, so I pushed three times and he was out. I was shocked at how the relief from the contractions was so immediate! Unfortunately, after Spencer cut the cord he had to be handed over to the NICU team right away, so I had to wait for a while to hold him.

Welcome to the world! He was a healthy 8.0 lbs, 20.7 inches long. The Dr. said people would think he was a C-section baby because his head was so nice and round :)

Not too happy about getting his lungs suctioned.

Proud Daddy.

First photo with Mom and Dad.

It is such a sweet experience to hold a brand new baby, especially when it's your own!

Back to the warming table for a sponge bath.

He hated it and screamed the whole time they cleaned him.

But he didn't cry when they gave him a shot in his leg.

Holding my clean baby boy while we waited to move over to postpartum.

Postpartum was an interesting experience. Luckily births were slow that day, so we got our own room. The bad thing was that it had a Jack-and-Jill bathroom with the room next door. Bladder control has never been a strength with me, especially not right after labor with an epidural still wearing off. It wasn't exactly ideal to have to drag my pitocin IV through the length of the bathroom with me to lock the other room's door before using the restroom. At 1 am I was about to pee my pants (or if we're being honest, my diaper) only to find my door locked while my neighbor brushed her teeth...with an electric toothbrush...that guarantees you brush for at least 2 minutes. Yeah, good times.

Spencer went home that night to be with Syd, and Shawn was in the room with me all night as they didn't have a nursery in the hospital. They joined us for breakfast the next morning at about 8:30 am. When Sydney walked in the room, she looked around and said, "Mommy, where's baby Shawn?" She couldn't see him up high in his bassinet :) When I put her on the bed so she could peek at him, she said, "Mom, he gots little tiny eyebrows! He gots little tiny eyes! He gots a little tiny nose, and a little chinny chin chin!" She was so excited.

Admiring her tiny brother.

Me and my kids!

Dr. Hoffman came in to check on me, so we snapped a quick picture with her. Sydney was happy to converse with every doctor, nurse, and corpsman that came into our room.

Sydney was also excited to get a present from her baby brother- a baby doll with lots of accessories. I have yet to show her that you can push her belly to make her cry, laugh, and talk (and I don't think I'm going to any time soon!).

There was some concern about my blood platelets, so I had to keep in my epidural catheter over night. The anesthesiologist came in the next day after they rechecked my platelet levels and gave me the "ok" to take it out. It didn't hurt to have it removed, but I about screamed out loud when they ripped all the tape off my back. Ouch! Made me glad that I'm not a hairy man that has to get his back waxed.

The only other issue we faced was Shawn's bilirubin level- which had something to do with antibodies from my blood crossing the placenta to him. As far as I know, it was only an issue because we have different blood types. Thankfully, all his blood tests came back showing he was "low risk," so we were able to leave the hospital that night.

Suited up to go home.

We were SOOO excited to get out of the hospital!

All buckled in and ready to go. I laughed at how those little socks look more like knee socks on his tiny legs.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers! We couldn't be happier to have TWO kids in our family!!

Not What I was Hoping to Post

I really, really, really wanted my next post to be a "hooray, we had our baby!" post, but no such luck. Because of the typhoon, my OB appointment was cancelled and I obediently checked into the hospital with about 30 other pregnant women who were at least 37 weeks along. We were all told to bring small bills for vending machines (ironically all vending machines were outside, not exactly typhoon friendly), a pillow, blanket, flashlight, entertainment, toiletries, etc. I went in prepared for a 24 hour stay, leaving my makeup and a respectable change of clothes at home. Shortly after checking in, we were all taken to a big room where they had set up cots and passed out air mattresses to put on top of them. About 20 minutes later, they came back and said it was a safety hazard to put the air mattresses on top of the cots, so we had to choose one or the other. Most opted for the air mattress, but I kind of hate them and went for the cot instead.

Pregnant refugees, taken with my friend's phone.

The storm did not pass as quickly as they usually do, but hung out over the island for about a day longer than expected. The hospital didn't have soap or towels for us, so after a day of being stinky I finally borrowed shower gel from a more prepared friend and used the shirt I slept in as my towel. It was a pretty boring few days, so I got in plenty of naps, read Anne of Green Gables for the first time, watched Pride & Prejudice, ate meals in the galley (with dessert at every meal- yum!), and chatted with the other girls I was trapped with. I walked up and down these big ramps that went from the 1st to 5th floors of the hospital multiple times every day to try to get some contractions going. Since I was several days overdue, I went up to Labor & Delivery a few times to see if someone would just check me so I would know if anything had changed since last week, but they always turned me down since I wasn't in labor. One nurse told me my smiling indicated that I wasn't feeling any pain, and that maybe I should downplay that if I came up again later. Almost every time I called Spencer he would say, "Can't I just come pick you up? It's not even that bad outside."

We finally got released at about 5pm on Saturday evening, we were all itching to get out of there. I think I was checked out and in my car about 5 minutes after the announcement that they had downgraded the storm from TCCOR 1-Emergency to Storm Watch. It was so nice to come home and see my family, take a shower, and put on makeup!

Now I am 5 days overdue and things haven't changed much. I'm still praying that I won't have to be induced, but at least there is some comfort in knowing that I'll at least have this little guy sometime this week.

Keeping Things Interesting

Methinks this is going to be one of the craziest weeks we've had since we've been here. I'm due tomorrow, which I feel like isn't really a big deal since I'm not really expecting to have this baby on time. Plus, the rest of our stuff is being delivered, and I want to unpack as much of it as I can. The trickiest thing that I'm trying to figure out is what to do about this:

It's a category 4 typhoon, expected to hit Okinawa sometime on Thursday. I know the hospital is going to call me to tell me to check in to labor and delivery... it's protocol for them to call anyone past 37 weeks and request they come in just in case they go into labor. Otherwise if you go into labor they have to send a tactical unit to come get you (which, let's be honest, would be one heck of a blog post!). But my question is, what if I'm chillin' in some cot at the hospital during the storm, and then I really do go into labor? Will Spencer be able to get to me? Why don't they just induce me while I'm there so we don't have to worry about it? So many questions... we'll see what happens!