The Story of Dylan

the story of Dylan coming into being, begins on Monday night. I couldn't sleep at all with tons of vaginal pressure. so i went to the dr. and that was my last blog entry. so I got sleep on tuesday into wednesday night but I felt weird all day long. I ran some errands then came home to nap. Once I woke up, I realize I was suppose to go to my pre-natal water class in an hour but I still felt like uber crap. so i decide not to go but since I was sweating bullets, I went out to our apartment pool for some relief. call the hubby to tell him that I think this might be the time I went into labor. So we chilled out for the night and went to bed.

low and behold, i woke up 3 hrs later feeling more pressure. I timed the contractions @ 5 minutes apart for 45-60 seconds for an hour. we decided to go to the hospital to be checked. When I got checked, I was 4cm dilated and 90% effaced. the dr declared me to be in active labor. I labored until about 3pm before I finally broke down and got pain meds and pit. But that did help to the point that I was able to finally dilated some more to the point that the next time the checked me I was 9cm. Boy, when they say that you feel like you have to poop, then you know pushing is just around the corner. After they declared me able to push, my doctor checked up on me and after an hour of pushing little baby Dylan made her way into the world. It's funny because at the same time five other women gave birth within an hour and a half of me. But Dylan was the only girl. Since they were so busy in the birthing center we were the last family to move over to the recovery area and get some rest at around two in the morning.

In the recovery area we definitely got some great advice and support from all the nurses but one, who was a little too by the textbook and lacked patience for dealing with new parents and newborns. Being a family care nurse requires a certain amount of compassion and an understanding that not all newborns will know how to breastfeed immediately within the first 24 hours and be able to do it on demand and the "required four times the first day". But anyways, our parents stopped by on Friday along with Kaysie and Charles and after a night of feedings every two hours we were ready to go home early Saturday afternoon.

We've now spent our first night alone with the baby and are still getting settled in. There's been questions about how we came up with the name Dylan. So first off, we both like gender neutral names (which helps when it's not completely certain that we were having a girl) and with a name like Laurel I like unique names. Our first concert together was Bob Dylan, whom we are both big fans of and we had a table at our wedding dedicated to Bob Dylan. And if anyone remembers Rugrats, Tommy's little brother was named Dylan and I really liked the nickname baby Dyl. So I guess that's it, it kind of just came to us one day and stuck.

So now this blog is being transferred to posts all about baby Dylan. Don't expect a lot the first few days, hence the first half of this entry was typed one-handed by me and the rest was dictated to my husband. So this will continue to be the place for updates, videos and pictures, though more pictures will be uploaded to my Flickr site and Facebook.

Flickr.com/laurelrae


Also, I forgot to say thank you for all the congrats everyone has been giving us. It has kept us going when the times are tough/painful (all mommies know about this one). We will be doing Dylan tours within the next few weeks so if you want to be included just let us know. :)

This is pretty funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJRzBpFjJS8

Granted, we have use the name excuse so are we smug?

But I guess everything is done in "we"

FAQ Part 1

So I figure I should have a FAQ section right about now. I have gotten some repeat questions and I would like to share my/our answers for them.

Are you taking Lamaze Classes?
No, Pregnancy and Labor have come a long way since the days of Lamaze and the hehehoo breathing. I have mention this before but we are taking Childbirth Prep classes and in this class we will learn about comfort techniques to calm myself. Nick is mainly learning ways to be a better birthing partner and be able to be there for me. Pre-Natal Yoga will be helping with learning how to breathe and ways to stretch out my body pre-labor or in other words prepare my body for labor. We realize that hospitals charge a lot for having a baby and we would like to try to prevent as much additional cost as possible. Also, if the class shows up before we have the baby, Be By Baby is offer a comfort measures class that will refresh our memories for the labor and learn new techniques.

Have you picked out any names yet?
Yes and No. We have ideas but no for sure solid names. First off, we would like to keep our names private because we know how critical some people can get with names. We do not want to be totally inlove with a name then tell people to have them find out something wrong about it or they do not like it. We have our own disagreements about the names and idea. Like I like this one name but Nick did not like the nicknames that came with it. We have to like all the nicknames that will come with the name. Also, we would like to see what the child will look like before giving her a name. What if she does not look like a so-so but we really like the name.

Are you moving out of the city?
Yes, we cannot afford to live here anymore. I have lost my job twice in 6-7 months so our savings is nearly destroy. We can have my mom watch our child while we both work and it will be a lot cheaper then daycare. We will be living off a metra stop so there should be no excuses for us to go to the city and city people to come visit us.

So more to come later as we get ask these questions over and over.