Tomorrow we celebrate our first, first birthday!! I feel like I need to write down Lily's birth story, because the details are only going to get more and more fuzzy. Hopefully one day she'll care to hear about how she came into the world!
I found out I was pregnant on December 2nd, 2011. I had just gotten back from a 10-day girls vacation in Vietnam and Cambodia on December 1st, and I knew it was a possibility. We decided to wait and take a pregnancy test the next morning since they say the tests are more accurate first thing in the morning, but looking back, we should have just taken taken the test twice and not waited. Anyway, I woke up that morning to take the test before Jim left for work (normally I slept way past when he left the apartment) and it was positive!
We started to regret our decision not to go back home for Christmas that year, realizing it would have been the perfect opportunity to tell everyone in person. However, it ended up being a good decision because morning sickness kicked in big time at 6 weeks and I was miserable! It seriously took all my energy just to get out of bed and get dressed. I would have been miserable on the flight and I was glad we stayed in Taipei.
We decided to wait until Christmas to tell everyone, which was torture! Every time my mom called me and asked how things were going all I wanted to say was that I was miserable with morning sickness! Finally Christmas came, and we were very thankful for Skype! We ordered a book of grandparent names and had it sent to my parents' house before Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had my whole family (including Grandma, parents and sisters) on Skype and I told my mom to go get it and open it under the guise that she might be able to use it Christmas morning. She opened it and screamed (and screamed and screamed and screamed)! Everyone was shocked of course because we had been adamant about not having any kids while we lived in Taiwan.
For Jim's parents, we knew his mom wanted to be called 'Granny' after her own mother, so we ordered a kitchen towel with "Granny's Kitchen" embroidered on it and had it mailed to her house. We called Jim's family on Christmas Eve as well and told them to call us back on Skype so we could see each other. Well, they took their sweet time calling us back while we had an anxiety attack! I think a very looooong hour went by before we got back on Skype with them, then we used the same trick to get Susan to open the gift. Unfortunately, it was not immediately clear that the Granny we were referring to was the "new" Granny, not Jim's grandma. However, it was exciting to watch as everyone in the room eventually 'got it' as we asked "what do you think it means?"
Fast forwarding 9 months...The night of August 5th, I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions. I laid in bed staring at the clock to see if I could time them and they were pretty erratic. I decided to get up and take a shower and by the time I was done they had subsided and I fell back asleep.
The same thing happened the night of August 6th. I didn't feel like taking another shower in the middle of the night, so I decided to just wait it out thinking the same thing would happen as the night before. Well, the next thing I knew, my water broke at 4:30 am!! We called the nurse hotline for Dr. Maryam Baird and they told us to come right to the hospital. My previous plan was to wait to go to the hospital until the contractions were consistent, but of course we listened to the nurses. Jim took a quick shower while I paced around making sure we had everything we needed and ate a quick bowl of cereal.
We got to the hospital about 5:45 am. My nurse hooked me up to the machines to monitor contractions, and that was about it. Thank goodness for a shift change at 7 am because we ended up with the best nurse in the hospital, Jenny. Since we were there on a Sunday, my doctor wasn't on call, so we ended up with Dr. Greg Shepherd. NOT the best doctor ever, but I guess he did his job and that's all that matters. I remember Dr. Shepherd was annoyed with me when I told him I didn't want pitocin right away [to induce labor faster]. Is it really that strange for a woman to want to see if her body can figure out what to do on it's own??
At 9:30 am I was 4 cm and at 11:45 I was 5 cm. My contractions varied between 3-5 minutes apart. The pain was kicking into a new gear at this point and I got the epidural. I don't even remember getting the epidural. The idea always scared me beforehand, but it was so not a big deal at the time and barely felt like a bee sting.
I decided to let Dr. Annoying give me pitocin at about 1pm, and was still 5 cm at 2pm. Things picked up after that and I was 8 cm at 3:45, and 9 cm at 4:30pm. At 5:00 we said goodbye to my parents and sisters and Baby E was born at 5:37pm!
I think it took about an hour before we realized that we needed to go get my family before they took Baby E for her first bath. As Jim was heading out the door he stopped and turned back around and said, "Wait! We need to decide on her name first!" In all the excitement we had forgotten to name our poor child. We quickly agreed on Lily James and Jim left to get the proud grandparents and aunts.
Jim was able to Skype with his parents (thanks to the hospital's WiFi) and they got to see Lily in the nursery taking her first bath. They flew in the next day to Houston.
We brought her home on August 9th and then the real fun began!
I found out I was pregnant on December 2nd, 2011. I had just gotten back from a 10-day girls vacation in Vietnam and Cambodia on December 1st, and I knew it was a possibility. We decided to wait and take a pregnancy test the next morning since they say the tests are more accurate first thing in the morning, but looking back, we should have just taken taken the test twice and not waited. Anyway, I woke up that morning to take the test before Jim left for work (normally I slept way past when he left the apartment) and it was positive!
We started to regret our decision not to go back home for Christmas that year, realizing it would have been the perfect opportunity to tell everyone in person. However, it ended up being a good decision because morning sickness kicked in big time at 6 weeks and I was miserable! It seriously took all my energy just to get out of bed and get dressed. I would have been miserable on the flight and I was glad we stayed in Taipei.
We decided to wait until Christmas to tell everyone, which was torture! Every time my mom called me and asked how things were going all I wanted to say was that I was miserable with morning sickness! Finally Christmas came, and we were very thankful for Skype! We ordered a book of grandparent names and had it sent to my parents' house before Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had my whole family (including Grandma, parents and sisters) on Skype and I told my mom to go get it and open it under the guise that she might be able to use it Christmas morning. She opened it and screamed (and screamed and screamed and screamed)! Everyone was shocked of course because we had been adamant about not having any kids while we lived in Taiwan.
For Jim's parents, we knew his mom wanted to be called 'Granny' after her own mother, so we ordered a kitchen towel with "Granny's Kitchen" embroidered on it and had it mailed to her house. We called Jim's family on Christmas Eve as well and told them to call us back on Skype so we could see each other. Well, they took their sweet time calling us back while we had an anxiety attack! I think a very looooong hour went by before we got back on Skype with them, then we used the same trick to get Susan to open the gift. Unfortunately, it was not immediately clear that the Granny we were referring to was the "new" Granny, not Jim's grandma. However, it was exciting to watch as everyone in the room eventually 'got it' as we asked "what do you think it means?"
Fast forwarding 9 months...The night of August 5th, I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions. I laid in bed staring at the clock to see if I could time them and they were pretty erratic. I decided to get up and take a shower and by the time I was done they had subsided and I fell back asleep.
The same thing happened the night of August 6th. I didn't feel like taking another shower in the middle of the night, so I decided to just wait it out thinking the same thing would happen as the night before. Well, the next thing I knew, my water broke at 4:30 am!! We called the nurse hotline for Dr. Maryam Baird and they told us to come right to the hospital. My previous plan was to wait to go to the hospital until the contractions were consistent, but of course we listened to the nurses. Jim took a quick shower while I paced around making sure we had everything we needed and ate a quick bowl of cereal.
We got to the hospital about 5:45 am. My nurse hooked me up to the machines to monitor contractions, and that was about it. Thank goodness for a shift change at 7 am because we ended up with the best nurse in the hospital, Jenny. Since we were there on a Sunday, my doctor wasn't on call, so we ended up with Dr. Greg Shepherd. NOT the best doctor ever, but I guess he did his job and that's all that matters. I remember Dr. Shepherd was annoyed with me when I told him I didn't want pitocin right away [to induce labor faster]. Is it really that strange for a woman to want to see if her body can figure out what to do on it's own??
At 9:30 am I was 4 cm and at 11:45 I was 5 cm. My contractions varied between 3-5 minutes apart. The pain was kicking into a new gear at this point and I got the epidural. I don't even remember getting the epidural. The idea always scared me beforehand, but it was so not a big deal at the time and barely felt like a bee sting.
I decided to let Dr. Annoying give me pitocin at about 1pm, and was still 5 cm at 2pm. Things picked up after that and I was 8 cm at 3:45, and 9 cm at 4:30pm. At 5:00 we said goodbye to my parents and sisters and Baby E was born at 5:37pm!
I think it took about an hour before we realized that we needed to go get my family before they took Baby E for her first bath. As Jim was heading out the door he stopped and turned back around and said, "Wait! We need to decide on her name first!" In all the excitement we had forgotten to name our poor child. We quickly agreed on Lily James and Jim left to get the proud grandparents and aunts.
Jim was able to Skype with his parents (thanks to the hospital's WiFi) and they got to see Lily in the nursery taking her first bath. They flew in the next day to Houston.
We brought her home on August 9th and then the real fun began!
I saw your blog when you linked up to Kelly's Korner - but what really caught my eye was that you lived in Taiwan! I've spent a lot of time in Taipei, Yangmei and Tainan for work (including 4 trips there this summer - I was there every month from May - August for 2-3 weeks at a time - I got back from my last trip last Friday). Dubai seems very different from Taiwan!
ReplyDeleteThat's so cool! I don't meet very many people who even know where Taiwan is, let a lone travel there often :)Dubai is extremely different. More westernized, and easier to live here with a baby. Thanks for stopping by my blog!
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