Birth and 2 Week Pictures

For those asking me if Zane looks like Karys did as a baby, I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of the two of them so you can do your own comparisons. First, a picture from birth:

Karys

Zane

And now at two weeks:

(Neither of these pictures were taken at exactly two weeks, but close enough. The picture of Karys is one of my least favorites, honestly, but she does kind of resemble Zane which is why I'm showing it!)

Karys

Zane

2 Weeks Comparison

I'm going to basically copy an idea that my friend, Amy, does on her blog. At least I'll do it for this post!! As her kids are growing up, she blogs about the different things they are learning to do each month. I neglected to do that for Karys and will probably regret it one day, but hopefully I can get it going for Zane! I thought in this post I'd list out some of the things we're learning about him, but also compare what life is like at 2 weeks with Zane versus what I remember it being like with Karys.

Zane had his two-week check-up at the doctor yesterday and things are looking good! When he was 6 days old we went back up to the hospital for a weight check. When he was born, he weighed 8 lbs. 1 oz. When we were discharged from the hospital, he weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz. At 6 days, he weighed 7 lbs. 6 oz. Here's how things stacked up yesterday:

Weight: 8 lbs. 6 oz. (43rd percentile)
Height: 21 inches (60th percentile)
Head: 14.25 inches (29th percentile)

Now to compare that to his big sister. He started out basically a pound heavier than her at birth. She was 7 lbs. and 20 inches at birth. At two weeks, she looked like this:

Weight: 7 lbs. 6 oz. (20th percentile)...notice, still exactly a pound difference!
Height: 20.75 inches (66th percentile)
Head: 14 inches (38th percentile)

I know that they are on different charts since he's a boy and she's a girl, but it's interesting to see the differences.

At two weeks, here are some things I've learned about Zane:

--He is a snuggler!! Karys was absolutely not that way. She tolerated being held but she had too many important things to do to spend time snuggling. :) She's still that way. ;)

--He sleeps best when he is swaddled. The first day we were home I tried laying him down in bed and after about 5 minutes he was screaming!! Then I read Amy's blog and saw that her baby really liked being swaddled because her startle reflex was so sensitive. This seemed to be his problem too so I found a swaddler that a former co-worker had passed on to me when I was pregnant with Karys and we've all been in love with it ever since! (Karys did not want to be swaddled as a baby...again, she had to many things to do to be restrained in any way!!)

--One thing Karys definitely had on Zane was she was an awesome nighttime sleeper! I remember at her two-week appointment telling the doctor I had been waking her up every three hours for feedings and wondered when I could quit doing that overnight. I remember her telling me that I could just let her go, but no longer than 5 hours at a time. So at two weeks Karys and I were only getting up once in the night. At two weeks with Zane, we're getting up 2 or even 3 times in the night. Hopefully that will be gone soon!!

--I'm still tweaking Zane's schedule. It's crazy how I felt like I knew what I would do with his schedule before he was born, but now that he's here, I feel like, "What do I do??" :) He seems to LOVE to eat so I'm still playing around with how much to feed him and how often. Today we're going to try 3 1/2 oz. every 3 hours. We'll see how that goes! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to nurse again this time. I did it for like 4 or 5 days and then when I realized that I had the same super-low milk suppy I had with Karys I decided I couldn't deal with the emotions that come with that. It's a real bummer because Zane was an awesome nurser (which his sister never was!) but for some reason my body doesn't want to do what it's supposed to!

--Zane will get to take a tub bath soon!! During the night last night I changed his diaper and realized his umbilical cord stump had fallen off...yay!! As soon as it heals up completely, we'll be all about submersion! :)

I am absolutely loving having a baby in the house again. Even in spite of the lack of sleep. :) I know it will just continue to get more fun. :)

Zane Elliott Magan, 12-28-2010

Back at home

Sister and brother meet for the first time

Daddy and Zane


Mommy and Zane...I love how intently he was looking at me :)

Sweet sleeping baby...who will take a paci!! :)

It might take me all day to get this finished, but I'm determined to blog about Zane's birth story! :) First of all, in case you were keeping track my due date was January 9, 2011. And as you can see above, Zane was born on the 28th...12 days early!!! Believe me when I say, I was as shocked as anyone!! If you're ready for a story, keep reading. :)

On Monday the 27th, I had my 38 week check-up with my doctor. When she walked in the room she said, "Are we having a baby today?" To which I said I didn't think so. But I was glad that I was feeling better than I had on Christmas Day. I spent most of that day with Braxton Hicks contractions that just came and stayed. I was so cramped up most of the day...not fun at all!! At that appointment when she checked me she said I was at 3 cm. which was exciting because the previous week I hadn't made any progress and was still at a 1. She then told me that she thought I would deliver sometime within the week. I tried not to get my hopes up too much because I've just been expecting the entire time to go late since Karys was late.

Later that day my parents came to get Karys and take her back to their house for a couple of nights. Since they were off from school on Christmas vacation this would be a fun time for them and her, plus it would give me and Ryan a chance to have a little time to ourselves before adding to our family. I had all these plans of fun stuff we could do...like go see a movie, go out to a restaurant childless, all that fun stuff. Monday night we did end up renting a movie so I guess at least we got to do something! :)

During the night Monday night I took a couple of potty breaks and when I got up I thought that I was feeling a little crampy. But I was able to go back to sleep so I didn't really think anything about it. Around 5:30 I woke up again and thought the cramping was coming at fairly regular intervals so I decided to start timing things. I still wasn't confident that this would mean anything because on my due date with Karys I woke up contracting and after a few hours of watching TV on the couch everything had subsided so I didn't get my hopes up too much this time. After 30 minutes of laying in bed I was tired of just staring at the clock and since I couldn't sleep I decided to get up and watch some TV. Actually the first thought that occurred to me was that I hadn't gotten a chance to paint my toenails like I'd wanted to and I figured if I got out of bed I could accomplish this (which I did). I also knew that if this turned out to be the real thing I wouldn't be allowed to eat anything once I got to the hospital so I decided to eat some breakfast. Around 7:30 Ryan woke up and asked me what I was doing and I told him I was timing things. At this point I also called my doctor's office to find out how I would know to go to the hospital. The on-call doctor told me to call my doctor back at 8:30 and ask the nurse if I could get in for my doctor to check me because that way if I wasn't making any progress she could just send me home and I wouldn't waste a trip to the hospital. I didn't end up getting to talk to anyone from my doctor's office until 9:30 but they told me I could come in right away. Since Ryan and I were expecting to get some things done last week without Karys we had to spend some time before we left for the doctor's packing up our bags for the hospital!!

When we got to the doctor's office, she walked in and said, "Are we having a baby today?" To which I told her I didn't know and I was hoping she could tell me! I told Ryan before she got in the room that I thought one of two things would happen. She'd either tell me I was still at a 3 and to go home and wait it out or if I was lucky I might be at a 4 or possibly a 5. So she checks me and says, "You're at a 6!!" Of course my first response was, "Are you serious?" And she told us that we needed to head straight for the hospital.

On our way to the hospital I called my parents and told them that apparently they didn't come get Karys so Ryan and I could have a break. Apparently they took her so we could have a baby! Once we got to the hospital they got me hooked up to the monitors and my IV to get 2 bags of fluid in me so I could get my epidural. This was around 10:30. My doctor came in around 12:15 p.m. and broke my water. Unfortunately there was about a 45 minute delay between this happening and the anesthesiologist being able to get in and give me the epidural. I had been feeling pretty good up to that point but those contractions were ROUGH!!! And then once the anesthesiologist got in there he had a million questions about family medical history and all I could think was, "Hurry!!" But once my epidural was in, things were good again. :)

The thing that amazed me this time around was how quickly things progressed. I dilated pretty quickly and the baby moved down fairly quickly too. We got to the hospital at 10:30 and he was born at 3:11 p.m. All in all, it was a really good experience! Here are his stats:

Date: Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Time: 3:11 p.m.
Weight: 8 lbs. 1 oz.
Length: 19 1/4 inches

So far I can tell that his nose and mouth are similar to Karys's but he really doesn't look like her that much. But he's a total cutie!! He's a really easy baby so far too. I've spent his first few nights sleeping with him but after reading that one of my friends has success getting her baby to sleep by swaddling her, I tried that today and it really seems to help! I'm looking forward to our life as a family of four. :)