First Family Photo

So here is our little family. Julie, Baby Kate, Kiki and some bald homeless guy that was walking out in the street.

As we were getting ready for bed tonight, little Kate had the hiccups. She had them a lot when she was inside Julie, but on the outside, they seem to be a lot less fun.

Julie's milk is starting to come in and it looks like the transition from colostrum to milk has gotten a lot of things moving downstairs. TMI? It is just that this baby/momma stuff is so amazing.

Good night!

D&J&K

Presenting Katherine Olivia Beck

It's about time that my parents realized that my name is Katherine Olivia Beck. I'm just now 24 hours old and am ready for the world to call me by name. Sorry for the delay.

It didn't help that Doug and Julie spent most of the day before I came out trying to figure a way to have my initials read 'ODB'
I just met my grandparents (Doug's parents) David and Sina. They seem nice.

Shimmy Shimmy Yaw Shimmy Yeah, Shimmy Yeah!

Peace and goodnight!

KOB

... and Heavenly Rest.

We are all finally back home together. Julie is laying in bed with Baby Beck working on breastfeeding. It is a whole new world figuring how to feed her when she is outside of her body and has been a little tricky, but for now, she is so sleepy and perfect that we're not going to worry about it.

We still don't have a name, we need some quiet time to see what she wants to be named. Things have been too crazy up until this point. I keep looking at her and thinking how beautiful she is and how much I love her and her mom.... so the name Julie keeps coming to mind... probably not a great idea.. probably has something to do with the 15 minutes of sleep that I've had since 3:00am Thursday morning when Julie's water broke and things started happening.

Quick update, no real need to go into details. Julie and I felt like she was making great progress towards being in active labor building up to what we thought was the 4-1-1 phase of things at around 1:00pm which was when our midwives showed up and let us know that we still had a long way to go. We we're pretty cocky and thought that we'd be done w/ baby in hand and a cleaned up house by around 6:00pm that evening. Nancy helped to manage our expectations and let us know to plan for a late night.

As soon as she and Michelle left at 2:00 and we took our walk, things started really happening and we started to go into active labor. They knew that if Julie was still chipper and able to joke between contractions, she wasn't actually in active labor. They told us to call when Julie quit laughing.

Shortly after they left, Julie quit laughing and started to have serious/strong contractions. Being in the birthing tub helped a lot, and having me press on her lower back helped her ride through the contractions. At 6:30 or so Julie wanted to try a different environment so she got out of the tub and finally worked back toward the bed in our bedroom. After just about an hour and a half a very loud very beautiful baby girl popped out to meet the world. I'm still in shock about how beautiful she is and how amazed I am when I look down into her little chubby face.

After that things got too interesting. But that is a story for another time.

Now we rest.

D&J&?

Exciting day... too exciting

So today has been a lot more exciting than we hoped... Short story.. .Everything is perfect... baby girl is here crying with big lungs and testing out perfectly on all fronts.

Julie did so well and had a very short and easy delivery, but that pesky placenta gave us some trouble. We were able to get it out with a bit of love from Nancy, and the situation became nice and stable. After some discussion we decided that it would be best if Julie took a trip to the hospital and that I am going to stay home with one of the midwifes and the baby... She is out there now... pix will be posted soon...

Keep sending the love and good thoughts.. it is going to be a long night.

D&J

Midwife Check In

The midwives (Nancy and Michelle) stopped by to check in on Julie. Everything looks good and they checked out setup which also looks good. Still a bit early in the process, so they are going to come back in a couple of hours.

They're telling us that getting rest now would be a great idea. We are going to go for a bit of a walk and see if anything changes. They are going to be a quick phone call away.

4-1-1 (we think)

So one of the mileposts in the whole pregnancy/giving birth journey is the 4-1-1 stage... This means, that there are 4 minute gaps between contractions, which are lasting 1 minute each.. and that this has been going on for an hour... The contractions haven't been all THAT strong, but we don't really have a frame of reference that really gives us an accurate callibration (just the birthing videos, and most of those ladies were pretty calm up until the birth).

So we're actually right around that neighborhood and Julie is calling Nancy our midwife to give her an update.

Not yet in transition is the report.... things progressing well.

D&J

It's GO time!

Julie's water broke at around 3:00am this morning. We were both too excited to go back to sleep, so we got a bunch of last minute things sorted around the house (videos returned to Blockbuster, bendy straws and donuts bought at the 24-hour super market). We went for a nice walk around 5:00 to watch the light come up over the city which was very nice and beautiful.

We waited until 7:00 to call the midwife and are waiting a bit longer before we call my folks (Doug's parents) because we know that as soon as they get the news they'll try to come over/fly up as quickly as possible.

Note to people engaging midwives: when she says, "Call when your water breaks." She really means, "Even if it is 3:00am in the morning, CALL WHEN YOUR WATER BREAKS!" After we talked to her this morning and let her know that the water was clear, she let us know that it is going to be a LONG day and that we should go back and try to get some sleep.

So Julie is resting/sleeping now and I'm going to start getting some breakfast together.

Julie calling her sister with Kiki.

Stay tuned for updates.

Our last quiet weekend?

Well, it's Monday and Julie and I had a very quiet, chill weekend. We're figuring that we probably are never going to have another weekend where it is just the two of us. A very exciting and scary thought indeed!

Brother Jon came over Saturday morning before he left for a photo-walk and took some great pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jonbeck/DougAndJulieAlmostTime?authkey=Sple_af0uPo


It is nice to know that at least one of the brothers has a shred of talent for things creative.

Other than visiting with Jon and getting a delivery (and car seat inspection) from James Green, we did a whole lot of relaxing and video watching.

So now we wait!

Last Birthing Class Tonight!

We're getting close! Tonight is our last birthing class, and we should be ready to go. We are at 37 weeks which means that we are in the "Green Zone" for having a normal birth (full-term pregnancies run 37-42 weeks). Julie has been having lots of problems with her back and ribs, but has been a real trooper about everything.

So I think we have everything ready to go. Julie has been checking out some pediatricians, and I am going to try to get the car seat anchored in the back of our Corolla. I'll post some pix of the baby's room and all of the great stuff we have.

Kiki is going to be so mad!

Up until now, Kiki has been Julie's precious little baby. Those two are so cute together, following each other around. Sometimes it seems like Kiki thinks that Julie is HER baby, and will be very diligent about making sure that Julie's face is clean (like in the picture above). Hopefully little Kiki will understand the changes that are going to start happening in our home. She is a smart and sweet little cat. Maybe she'll be fine if we give her an extra wet-food treat for the first couple of weeks.