Wednesday, May 7, 2014

22 month / 2 week update


April flew by with a blur...and with it came the birth of our daughter, Samantha!  Thankfully, labor and delivery was MUCH better this time around (full story here)!  But as many mommies don't advertise, it's not the L&D that's difficult...it's the recovery and first two weeks that really smack you in the face.  The good news is once you get past that, it only gets better from there.  But it's definitely memorable enough to remind myself that I do NOT want to go through it ever again!

It's hard to believe that Samantha has been in our lives for only two weeks, yet has already altered our lives so significantly.  Baby weeks are like years...and since I've been held captive in my apartment, it's been pretty isolating and hard to remember what life was like beforehand.  Being my second time around, it's not as jarring as the first time.  I hate to say it, but I now realize how much *easier* it is to be with a newborn now that I've experienced the demands of a toddler...I mean, all she really does is sleep, eat, poop, and make horse-like grunts all day long!  However, it's still been hard as heck with the sudden loss of sleep, pain from healing, and nonstop demands/concerns of nursing.  I know I shouldn't complain about her being a really sleepy kid, but this has meant lots of prodding and bothering to get her to eat...which is exhausting!  Luckily, having help from Shaggy, my mom, sister, and visits from other family and friends has made an incredible difference in giving me time to rest and some company to break up the monotony.  Plus, since my appetite has been through the roof lately, their gifts of food have been especially appreciated!  Whoever hyped up pregnancy cravings was wrong!  My post-pregnancy cravings have been insatiable - all I can think about are donuts, Korean bread, and hamburgers all day long!  This is not going to make losing my pregnancy pooch easy...

Of course, the key difference this time around is caring for a toddler at the same time.  How do you parents of 2+ children do it?!?  Even with help, Shaggy and I have felt so harried trying to juggle the needs of both kids at the same time.  Having our nanny around has been critical for Josiah -  not sure how I would make it through the day otherwise.  She's been able to provide him with structure and attention so that I can focus on attending to Samantha and getting in some naps during the day.  And since Sammy had some initial issues with feeding and inadequate weight gain in the beginning, it was important to give her our undivided attention.  That said, I've really missed my quality time with Josiah and try to scrape by any time with him that I can get.  Next to Samantha, he now seems like this massive man-child!  It's hard to believe that he was once a small and helpless baby....although, for those who remember, he was a feisty and unique kid from the start!

As natural as they may be, it's heartbreaking to see Josiah go through such conflicted emotions these days. When he's in a good mood, he's GREAT.  He plays well both independently and with others, loves goofing/hamming around, and enjoys singing and dancing around to music.  However, when he's upset, he will cling to us, scream/cry, and have complete meltdowns.  He varies between demanding ("Mommy HUG!") and rejecting ("No, No, No!") us, depending on his mood.  While he's curious about his "baby seester", he pretty much ignores anyone who is holding her.  But with each day, he seems to be coming around bit by bit.  He likes to look at the baby monitor, touch her bouncer and swing, and sometimes even give her a kiss.  As sweet as he can be, we still have to watch him like a hawk since he's made a few swipes at her already!

With his pent-up energy and a bit more courage these days, Josiah has been loving his daily trips to the playground and playdates with kids in the building.  He's still pretty careful (says "ouchie" and "sowee" constantly), but more willing to try new things.  While he still is a bit timid physically, he's completely confident with his verbal skills.  His new phrases these days are "good morning", "good night", "scuse me", and "have fun".  He continues to be a complete chatterbox and socializes with everyone in he comes into contact with in our neighborhood.  And now that he has been learning a bit of Spanish (he can recite 1-10) and Korean, and repeating everything he hears, his gibberish has become even more indistinguishable!  But generally speaking, he's expressing so much more these days and is very assertive about what he wants...which is usually "Disney Channel" or "Veggie Tales", which he chants on a 24/7 basis!  He loves to sing along to the theme songs and has such a great memory for the melodies and even detailed inflections.  I love when he randomly breaks into song, proudly chanting his ABCs, "Happy Birthday", "Let It Go" or any other new song he's picked up. He loves jamming on his doggie guitar alongside his Daddy.  Can't wait to get him started on music lessons!




Welcome Samantha!

On April 18th (Good Friday) @ 3:20 AM we welcomed Samantha Eden Lee to the world!  I did not expect for her to make an early debut - in fact, I was praying fervently about having at least the Easter weekend to enjoy before her arrival!  It sounds really silly in retrospect, but I was just anxious about the whole labor & delivery process and wanted to avoid reality as long as I possibly could.

It all started on Thursday, April 17th, when I woke up with an upset stomach that sent me immediately to the bathroom.  I felt pretty crummy, but didn't want it to ruin my day since I had made lunch plans with a fellow pregnant friend, Kaye.  I had been resting / working from home all week, so was looking forward to finally getting out of the house on such a beautiful day.  We had a great time at lunch and even joked about the possibility of me going into labor that day.  First of all, April 17th was one of the induction dates that my OB had suggested to me, which I declined because I was hoping for things to occur naturally this time around.  Also, my good friend, Wendy, had just delivered that morning, which made things feel more imminent for me.  Lastly, Shaggy just had a "feeling" that I would give birth on Good Friday.  He had no basis for that feeling, but his gut is often correct in these types of situations...

By evening time, I was still feeling a bit under the weather, but Shaggy convinced me to go out to dinner since it may be our "last time" in a while!  The three of us went to Son Cubano across the street and enjoyed the food and music (Josiah was bopping to the techno beats).  My stomach was still sensitive, so I just had a salad (very unlike me...should have seen that red flag!) and complained of feeling nauseous the whole time.  After dinner, I just laid on the couch watching TV and was complaining about heartburn and stomach pains.  Shaggy asked if these were contractions, and I insisted they were not.  However, by 10:30ish, my groans were regular enough that he started timing them...and like classic textbook contractions, they were 5 minutes apart.  I still insisted it was nothing and probably would've laid there all night if I could...but he called the on-call OB service and they told us to come to the hospital immediately.  We called our nanny to watch Josiah overnight while we drove off to the hospital.  I cried on the way there - this was just not the way I had pictured it.  I did not feel ready.  I didn't like going to the hospital in the nighttime.  I was afraid of having complications again.

It only took 20 minutes to get to Columbia and the hospital looked deserted.  Even the valet was off duty, so we just left our car in the driveway, which was unsettling.  I soon learned that being admitted in the middle of the night was actually a plus.  The process was quick and the hospital seemed much more serene than the craziness of the day.  Once I was assigned a triage room around midnight, a doctor examined me and confirmed that I was already 4 cm dilated!  Woah.  Luckily, my doctor happened to be on-call that night so would handle the delivery herself that night.  That was an answer to prayer.  As we waited, I flipped through some gossip magazines and Shaggy took unflattering pictures of me laying there, awaiting what was next.  At first, it didn't feel too bad...but as the contractions started ramping up even further, I begged the nurse to get me an anesthesiologist soon to get my epidural.  Once I was carted off to my beautiful L&D room, the long prep for the epidural began.  I always start humming whenever I get scared, so once the doctor was about to inject the needle into me, I sang the first song that came to my mind - Arirang!  No idea why such an old-school Korean song came into my mind...but I went with it.  It only took a few minutes for the epidural to set it, and soon I felt a warm tingle come over my body.  Ahhh.  I was a happy camper and looked forward to a few hours of serenity again.  Unfortunately, my slumber was short-lived because around 2:45 am, my doctor announced that I was fully dilated and ready to start pushing.  WHAT?!? 

I reluctantly agreed and got into position.  Unlike the last time, I did not have an entourage of doctors and nurses in my room, so I was much more comfortable.  I also didn't have my iPod blaring music in my ears, so I felt much more 'present' this time around too.  As I started pushing, I couldn't feel a thing.  That would ordinarily be awesome, but unfortunately that meant that I didn't have enough sensations in my body to know if I was pushing or not.  To help remedy the situation, my doctor propped up a mirror so that I could visualize what was going on.  Eww.  I initially declined because I felt weirded out by the idea.  But after several unsuccessful pushes, I finally relented, but still couldn't get over what I was looking at. Once I was making better progress, my doctor actually instructed me to push only lightly, to avoid major tears like last time.  So after 40 minutes of pushing and some weird squirming sensations later, Samantha was here!  She let out a big scream like her big brother, but stopped as immediately as she began.  There was some meconium in the fluid, so thankfully the doctors confirmed that she was fine and had not ingested any in utero.  Also, I had torn just a bit during delivery, but much less so than before.

As I held her for the first time, I definitely felt more of an instant bond with her than I did when first with Josiah. I tried nursing right away, but not very successfully - seems we both had a lot of learning to do together.  I had forgotten how little these babies are in the beginning, so I enjoyed cuddling with her and seeing her naturally fold into my arms.  I was also amazed by how similar she looked like Josiah upon birth, although with some key differences: 1) her full head of jet-black hair; 2) long, skinny legs, fingers and toes; 3) lots of fuzzy hair and pimples on her back; 4) she's an extremely sleepy baby who rarely kept both eyes open at once.

By the time we moved to the recovery room, it was nearly sunrise.  Can't believe all this happened in the dead of the night...and that we were greeting the day with a new baby!  We decided to name her Samantha, after Shaggy's late-father who passed away around the time that we found out we were pregnant.  We gave her the middle name "Eden" to represent God's original creation and promise of a new heaven and earth.  Being that she was born on Good Friday, these names carried an even more profound meaning for us.

It was lonely being in the recovery room by myself while Shaggy raced back home to attend to Josiah, but I was determined to be more self-sufficient this time around, which was hard being attached to IVs.  I spent my hours trying to nurse Samantha, but was left frustrated since she just did not want to latch!  When I wasn't feeding, I tried to sneak in a few hours of sleep before family came by to meet the new baby girl!  I was especially anxious to see how Josiah would react to her, which ended up being ambivalent!  He basically ran over to her, banged on her bassinet and said "knock knock", and then ran the other way.  He refused to sit still for any photographs with Samantha, but instead kept asking for hugs from us.

I was only in the hospital for two nights, but it felt like an eternity and missed my family and home like crazy.  My parents stayed with Josiah that weekend, so this gave Shaggy the chance to spend the daytime with us at the hospital.  Honestly, just having him there beside me on the hospital bed, smuggling me yummy food (Tomoe sushi was the highlight!), and holding Samantha while I took naps, was probably one of the more *romantic* times we've had in a while.  I know it sounds silly, but we haven't had any real time to ourselves in a long time, so it was sweet to be able to experience the early days with our new baby together.

That said, on Easter morning, I was ready to bust out of the hospital!  Once we got home, it was a different form of mayhem, but good to be in the comfort of my home with family by my side.  The next few days were filled with continuous attempts at nursing, until she finally latched on he 4th day...way to keep me waiting, Samantha!  I have a feeling this little girl is going to run my life completely...