3 weeks ago

So I have been totally absent from the blogging world! I gave birth 3 weeks and 2 days ago, and since then, it's been tricky to find time to let everybody know that Yes, I had my baby! and Yes, everybody is healthy! So in order to relieve the minds of all of you fellow bloggers (and blog-stalkers)

Gabriella Claire

was born on October 21st, 2008

at 5:05pm

weighing 7lbs, 11oz

measuring 51cm long

and "perfect", according to the doctor

Now that everybody's got the basics, here is some back-blogging:

Me, very pregnant. I'm dressed up for my niece's blessing (hi, Caitlyn!) on September 21st, exactly 1 month before I had my own baby!

And then, a month later... the labour story:

Monday morning, October 20th (my due date, exactly) at 3:30am, I started having pretty regular contractions. Like, 5 - 10 mins apart. I spent the morning trying to sleep, eat, relax, breathe through contractions (Paul was amazing for getting me focused and breathing during the pain) and then we went to the hospital that afternoon.

*I should point out at some point that my mom was really certain that I would deliver on my exact due date, since I was born on my exact due date.* And, by the way, my mom was here for 3 whole weeks to help out with all of the cooking, cleaning, burping, changing, etc. She was a huge help.

When we got to the hospital, they said I was only 2cm dilated, and to come back later that night. So Paul's mom took us to Earl's for dinner (I had their Santa Fe Chicken Salad, my FAVORITE!)

Dinner was a great distraction, even though I was having contractions about every 5-8 minutes at that point.

Paul and I. and my Huge Pregnant Belly.

My Mom, Me, and My Wonderful MIL.
Notice my swollen belly (yup. and my white bra.) under my shirt. Not a prego shirt. I didn't realize you could tell until I saw these pictures!



Being a Monday night, Heroes was on. We love Heroes. I was very determined to at least watch Heroes before we went back to the hospital. :) So we got home from dinner, and got all set to watch Heroes at 10:00... even though my contractions were pretty close together by then. Silly me! About 10 minutes into the show, I told Paul he needed to get me to the hospital already. Walking through the hospital to the Labour & Delivery ward, they were playing Heroes in one of the waiting rooms... but we'd already missed quite a bit on the way to the hospital, so Paul made me keep walking :)

We ended up waiting in the waiting room for quite a bit until they had a bed available. More walking and leaning against Paul, breathing through contractions. When we got into triage, my water broke, and the nurse said that she'd never seen so much amniotic fluid come out of one person. I flooded the bed, fluid was dripping over the sides and puddling all over the floor, and it kept coming. Even after they moved me into a labor & delivery room, I was still having gushes of amniotic fluid come out. Apparently our little princess had lots of fluid to keep her safe and comfy!

We tried laughing gas, but it didn't do much... They gave me Fentanyl, because I was really adament that I didn't want an epidural. Not so much because I was concerned about the risks (although, my sister-in-law was paralyzed from an epidural, so the risks are real) but because I'm ooky about needles. And an IV in the arm for a morphine derivative is much less ooky than a needle in your spine!!! The idea just royally freaked me out. Plus, I'd recently read a book on Hypnobirthing, which basically is all about how the fear of pain is what causes the pain, and how childbirth is the most natural process in the world, and there doesn't have to be pain in a normal birth. So I just needed to not fear the pain. Simple, right? yeah... maybe if I'd actually practiced the techniques behind the theory... maybe it would've worked. As it was, there wasn't time to learn techniques, since I only found the book a few weeks before I was due!

So I was awake all of Monday, and all of Monday night... When the nurse, Jessy, went home at 7am on Tuesday, and we got a new nurse, Miriam, she gave me extra doses of painkiller so that I could sleep for a few hours. I woke up for each contraction, but then she'd give me more drugs and I'd fall back asleep. So that took us until about 9am, and then I walked around lots, and dilated 2 more centimeters. Everything was moving v e r y s l o w l y .

By about 3 in the afternoon, I was still only dilated about 7-8 centimeters, and the doctor suggested that I give serious thought to having an epidural. Because I was in pain from the contractions, I was tense from not having gotten much sleep over the last 36 hours, and it would probably just move things along. At this point, I was sobbing to Paul. A little from the pain, but mostly because I was scared of the epidural :) But we had a prayer, and felt that having an epidural was what we needed to do next, and that everything would be okay. I felt good about getting an epidural, but I still had to cry about it some more until they got the guy in there to do it :)

When the anesthesiologist arrived, he told me stuff that I completely don't remember... I made a point not to look at anything... he did stuff to my back that I didn't even feel... and then I fell asleep for an hour. I woke up 10cm dilated, and the nurse said to go ahead and start pushing :)

When I imagined childbirth, I imagined everything to be a lot busier when I started pushing. I was told that there would probably be med students who would want to watch, and medical staff that would be in and out to supervise... But it was just me, Paul, and Miriam (the nurse). So I was pretty confused when she told me to start pushing! But I did, and the doctor came in and apparently decided that things weren't going to happen anytime soon. He said later that he went and put gas in his car. (*?!?*)

45 minutes later, our Little Angel was born :) They told me to push, and dangit, I pushed! When she crowned, the nurse was frantically paging the doctor, but nobody was coming... the resident doctor ended up being the one to deliver the baby, but my doctor came in time to examine Gabby and stitch me up (2nd degree tears. I'm still working on healing)

When they gave her to me, I do remember thinking how strange it was that she had blue eyes. I know they may change, but I was born with dark brown eyes, almost black, and since Paul and I both have brown eyes, and I am part-Asian, I just expected that my kids would be born with dark eyes right away, also. But I love my baby's blue eyes, and I hope they stay that way :)

Anyway, I don't remember much else, except that the room looked really weird to me, because the bed was higher, the light was different, and I was probably pretty stoned. But Paul told me afterwards that there was LOTS of blood (I didn't see any of that) and that he cut the umbilical cord. I was surprised, because every time we talked about it before, he said he completely was not interested in doing that. But he was right in there, participating and excited :)

I also just asked him - did our baby come out screaming? Or was she calm? Because she's a pretty calm baby now, she only cries if I don't feed her quickly enough. Paul says that she did cry a bit when she came out, but once the cord was cut and she was wrapped up, she seemed pretty content.

Stoned Momma and New Baby



Proud Poppa and Beautiful Baby

After they stitched me up and cleaned us up, we were moved into a private recovery room. Paul forgot my shoes, and I had to go and get them the next day :) But anyway, Paul's parents and my Mom all came to see me and the baby (well, really, they wanted to see the baby. They'd already seen me before :))

My Mother and her First Grandchild

Paul's Mom (AKA "GWAMMA") and Granddaughter #2, Grandchild #5

Grandpa Spackman loves babies :)

You should all know that even after the baby was born, we still hadn't decided on a name. The only name that we knew we BOTH liked was "Claire", and at some point after she was born, Paul looked at me and said "so are we just going with Claire, then?" and I said "we might as well!"

But after staying the night in the hospital, just the two of us, I decided she wasn't a Claire. Maybe for a middle name, but that wasn't her first name.

Paul came to pick me up the next day, and I told him, and he sighed, but we got out the name book while we were waiting for the nurse to come back and discharge us. She took a long time (2 hours?) which was good, because that's how long it took us to go through the book and veto names, make fun of names, try out names... When we got to "Gabriella" I said "Gabriella Claire" and it became our first and only maybe... Gabriella is "heroine of God" and Claire is "clear light".

Our little girl also has a Korean name, Yae-na, which really, only her Korean Grandmother uses. We were initially thinking we might give our children Korean middle names, but that ended up not happening. So she has an unofficial Korean name. "Yae" means intelligence and wisdom, and "Na" means beauty and elegance.

After we picked a name, Paul hugged me and told me that he felt that our baby wasn't just a "Claire" either, but that he hadn't wanted to say anything unless I brought it up :) So it wasn't just me!

We had a whole coming-home outfit planned out:

Daddy's Little Girl:

And because Paul is typically seen in a hoodie and jeans, his mom found a teeny little outfit, complete with sweatpants and hoodie for a newborn!

Unfortunately, it was still too big for our little baby, and she didn't end up wearing the hoodie home. But look how cute!

Once we got home, we got settled in pretty well. She wanted to eat CONSTANTLY that first night, so it's a good thing that we got breastfeeding more or less figured out at the hospital. I'm really glad that I'm able to breastfeed, I had been a teeny bit nervous before that it might not happen for me.

Happy Mom, Content Baby



Whew! I think this was my longest post ever :)

Just know that things are going well, and that she wakes up to eat every 2-3 hours, and that there will be more posts and more pictures later.