Family Pictures

Before my mom left yesterday we had her take some pictures of us together. Here are a few of my favorites. Enjoy!

Adam's First Week

We got home from the hospital on Saturday and we are so excited to have baby Adam join our family! I can't believe he is one week old already. Here are a few pictures and I promise to add some more soon.

Yep, we have a redhead!


Adam's favorite pastime is sleeping with Daddy

For those of you who want to know all of the details, here is the story...

Labor

On Monday (when I was two days overdue) I went to my doctor’s appointment and she told me that I was dilated to 2 centimeters. So on Tuesday morning Rex and I decided to go for a walk and try to get our baby on his way. We walked up to the Cal stadium and walked the stairs a couple of times and it did the trick. As soon as we got home my contractions started coming regularly. We called my mom that afternoon and when she heard that my contractions were coming about every 10 minutes and lasting a minute long she decided to get on the soonest plane. We picked her up at the airport and went to dinner while the contractions continued coming every ten minutes or so. When we got home we made sure the hospital bag was packed and then tried to get some rest. At about 4 a.m. my water broke and the amniotic fluid wasn’t clear like it should be. There was meconium in the fluid, which means the baby had a bowel movement in the amniotic sac. After my water broke the contractions were much more painful and we headed to the hospital. In triage they didn’t check my dilation because they said it would decrease the risk of infection because my water had already broken.
So we got checked into our own room and I labored there for an hour or two. My contractions weren’t really getting closer together so we decided to start the pitocin. Around noon I decided I wanted to get an epidural. At that time they finally checked and I was dilated to a six. After the pain relief started I was able to rest for awhile. During that time the nurses continued to turn up the pitocin to try to get me to move along faster, however the baby’s heart rate decelerated so then they would turn it down again. This happened a couple of times and I started to fever and they gave me an antibiotic through the IV. My doctor came around 5:30 p.m. and when she checked me I was dilated to a 9. She said that we would turn up the pitocin again and if I didn’t fully dilate soon that we may want to consider a C-section. She came back about an hour later and I was at 9 ¾ and then she left because she wasn’t on call that night. The nurse came in around 7 p.m. and checked me and said that I had fully dilated and that we could start pushing. The on-call doctor hadn’t arrived yet and the nurse that was with us ended her shift and we got a new one. As we continued pushing the baby’s hear rate decelerated again and really scared us so we stopped pushing and the nurse called in another nurse to help us out. The on-call doctor showed up and I kept pushing for another two hours.

Delivery

Around 9 p.m. the doctor said that she thought that we should use a vacuum to try to help him out. The vacuum was super painful and it popped off when we tried it. The doctor then gave me an episiotomy and right after that I felt like I needed to push again. I pushed so hard that the baby came out all at once and practically dove into the doctor’s hands. He came out with his face up (that’s why his nose is so beat up) and he had the cord wrapped around his neck 4 times and his body twice!!! All of his limbs were limp when he came out but I could tell that he was breathing. The nurses grabbed him and they cleared the meconium out of his lungs so he could breathe better. He had a huge goose egg on his head wear the vacuum had been attached. I got to hold him for a few minutes before the nurses took him to the nursery and then the doctor sewed up my 3rd degree tear.

The NICU

Adam stayed in the nursery so they could monitor his heart rate, which was high. When they tried to feed him his oxygen saturation went down (so they wouldn’t let me breastfeed him that night). The next morning he was transferred to the NICU where they did more tests on him and put him on antibiotics in case he had an infection. They did a chest x-ray to make sure he didn’t have any more meconium in his lungs and also an ultrasound on his head to make sure there weren’t any problems in the deeper brain tissue. Luckily the doctors said that everything looked fine with those. He also had a low platelet count that we had retested today and it is back to normal. He had to stay 48 hours in the NICU while we waited for the results of his blood tests to make sure that he didn’t have any infections. I was discharged from my room on Friday night, but Rex and I were able to sleep in a room they have in the NICU for breastfeeding mothers. We got the results of the blood tests on Saturday and everything looked good enough for us to come home. We were so happy to get out of the hospital and to finally get to spend time together!!!

Rex and Adam just about to leave the hospital.

The sign Daddy made for us!

Grandma came just in time for the delivery and has helped us so much this week.

He's finally here!

Rex Adam Kimball
Born November 4th, 2009
8 lb. 2 oz.
22 in.

We had a bit of a rough start but we are so happy to be together. Right now Adam is in the NICU but is doing really well and hopefully we'll get to bring him home soon.

Adam has strawberry blond hair and looks just like his Grandpa Kimball (and a lot like Rex).


The new happy family!

Still Waiting...

Yep, I was due yesterday. Here is the latest (and hopefully last) belly shot from today after church.

Teresa's twins!

I couldn't resist posting this precious picture of my friend Teresa and her twins. Annalise and Erica were born three days ago on October 27th, 2009. These little babies are miracles in so many ways. I won't go into the whole story, but after many years of waiting these IVF babies grew inside their mommy for 39 weeks (which is rare for twins) This helped one of the babies with a heart issue to be born healthy enough not to have to go to the NICU! I am so happy for Teresa and her husband. When I look at this picture it brings me to tears every time! Now I just need to have my little guy so these beautiful girls will have a boy to fight over :)

Still Baking...

A few weeks ago Rex and thought it would be funny for me to have "a bun in the oven" costume and he would dress up as my baker. So on Friday morning I decided I better start making my oven to wear to the church Halloween party that night. Here is how it turned out...

The box kept tipping and my belly would pop the oven door open. Ha ha! I am 39 weeks pregnant here...one week until our due date. Do you think we will have a Halloween baby?

We ended up winning the "Best Parents" costume award although we aren't technically parents yet!








For the cake walk I made some cupcakes that turned out cute. I love candy corn. Yum!








Our friends Jill and Sunny posing for the perfect picture!





We left the party to catch the Cal vs. U of A volleyball game. My cousin Stephanie plays for Arizona. I've been wanting to watch her play so I'm glad we made it see her. Can you guess how tall this beauty is?











Here is a video clip of the game. Go Steph!

A blue jay and a beer belly

For exercise I like to go walk around a track near where we live. It is mostly surrounded by trees, but there is a spot where there is a break in the trees which gives you an awesome view of the bay. I often see this beautiful bird while I am walking. Today I decided to look it up and its actually called a Steller's Jay and is closely related to the Blue Jay.

I decided that to today I would also start walking the stairs near the track and see if that might help my little baby start to move down a little. In between my hikes up and down the stairs I went and walked a lap around the track. One of the runner's jokingly called out to me, "You need to stop drinking beer, you have a beer belly!" That was a first for me. Ha ha!