Introducing Baby…

Hello! Can you tell I had a rather hectic third trimester combined with first 3 months with baby? It’s good to be back! The last trimester just got overhauled with work. Trying to tie up lose ends, transitioning etc. Those who know me well, know that I am extremely particular about my work so I really put a lot of effort into that (maybe too much some days). Next came baby and my whole world changed (for the better)!

As you already know, we had a sweet little girl. Her name is Doutzen! It is a pronounced phonetically: “dowt-zen”, not “doot-son” :) It’s origin comes from a Dutch province of Friesland. It is also more popularly known as being the name of a Victoria’s Secret model (Doutzen Kroes). My husband is of German descent so we had toggled around with many German names, but ended up jumping over the border into Netherlands when the time came to pick one. We had 4-5 names on our short list and everyone told us that ‘when we had the baby, the name will just come to you and you will know right away’…well, that didn’t happen so eloquently for us. Despite the nurse pressuring us for her name so she could fill out paperwork, we took our time. It was closer to an hour of staring in amazement at our sweet angel before we made the final call and it was the best decision because I love it.

L&D
Labour and Delivery was LONG! I felt my first contraction on January 2nd just as I arrived at my OB office for a routine check up. At that time she had given me a slip for inducing me by the 7th if the baby hadn’t arrived. I kept mum on having felt the earlier contraction because at the time I thought I was imagining it. Contractions started making themselves much more predominant by 6 pm that night. I scurried off to take a shower and do my hair so it wouldn’t be in a messy top knot bun for the succeeding 2-3 days. THIS WAS IT!!! My husband timed the duration and length of time between contractions so we knew when to call the hospital. Now, the general rule of thumb I was given was to go to the hospital when contractions are 1 minute long, 3  minutes apart. I never quite got there. They held consistently at 30 seconds long, 4-5 minutes apart…for the entire night…I remember sitting curled up on the couch in pain, contorting into different poses just to get through each one watching the clock. Ever notice how SLOW time goes by when you’re literally watching a clock? By the morning I felt delusional and the contraction rhythm had not changed at all in the past 12 hours! We called the hospital to discuss my pattern with a nurse & she told us to come in when the contractions were 1 minute long. ARGH! By 10 am, I remember just picking up and begging that we call them again. We ended up going in to be examined and subsequently being admitted. I felt much better just being in the hospital by now. I didn’t have any set plans about whether or not if take an epidural as I wanted to see how things progressed. The annoying thing is that my amazing nurse kept coming to check up in me every 10-15 minutes to ask me if I needed the epidural yet. SO ANNOYING when you’re trying to just focus. Nonetheless, I advised her that I’d hold out for another couple of hours and to ask me then. She ended up coming back 5 min later (around 2pm) to let me know that if I didn’t get it now the anesthesiologist was headed into surgery and wouldn’t be available for at least 4 hours to administer it. Knowing that, I gladly accepted it. Who knows if I could have held out, but I was getting awful and I didn’t want to risk it <insert BIG sigh of relief here>. I can’t believe how quickly the epidural kicked in and offered an immense amount of relief – I immediately took a cat nap. Like I said, that was around 2pm and for the rest of the day my contractions never lasted more than 40 seconds and we were in official delivery mode around 9:50pm and our angel was born at 10:06pm. Thankfully there were no complications whatsoever and I still remember the feeling of hearing her scream before I could even see her.

40 Weeks Pregnant – Went into Labour the very next day!

STATS
Name: Doutzen
Born: Friday, January 3rd, 2014 (40 weeks + 1 day)
Time: 10:06 pm
Weight: 8.0 lbs
Length: 21.5″

I never in my life thought anything could have such a profound effect on me as the moment they put this precious little girl on my chest. I still get butterflies when I think back or even look at her to this day. 

Here we are 3 months later and her smiles light up my day/life! She is an excellent sleeper, super calm, very analytical of everything around her as she takes it all in. We are so lucky! The only real challenge I’ve had with her so far is that she refuses to take a bottle of expressed milk – and YES, I’ve tried every nipple and brand there was at Babies R Us. At the end of the day, it doesn’t concern me too much.

Here are a few select pictures of our life for the last 3.5 months! A huge thanks to Adam Biesenthal Photgraphy for capturing incredible memories. He is the most patient, talented, creative photographer I’ve ever met! If you’re in the Greater Toronto Area, I strongly urge you to give him a shout for baby, weddings etc. (For the record, no, I was not asked to endorse him or being compensated in any way. These are my honest thoughts and opinion).

xxxo
M