Hip Sonogram

Because Katherine was breech, we had to have a hip sonogram to make sure her hip was not dislocated. We had to be at Children's Hopsital, near downtown at 8 am. That was the biggest challenge since we are usually back in bed by then. The sonogram was really pretty uneventful. Katherine did not cry or seem to mind it. We found out later this week that everything is just fine.

Aunt Glenda, Courtney and Amy

Sam's Aunt Glenda and cousins Amy and Courtney, along with their kids, Caroline and Madison came by for a visit while they were in town. Aunt Glenda is Sam's mom's sister. She brought a very special gift for Katherine. It was a picture of Sam's mom, Katherine Sue, when she was a baby. It was in a frame that had her bronzed baby booties attached. It is special since our Katherine is named after her.

Jake and Kathleen visit

I have had a lot of friends who have had babies recently. That is fun because we can have play dates and play groups. Today Kathleen and her son, Jake came over. Jake is one week older than Katherine. Of course this play date was really for the moms because they can't play yet. It was fun.

Family portrait

Tonight we had Richard and Jen take family portraits. It was a lot of fun, especially our feet picture. They did a great job.

El Fenix

Today was Katherine's first visit to El Fenix . That may not seem like a big deal to most people, but in our family, it is a big deal. We grew up eating there about once a week. Since Will was in town, we had to go eat there. We even braved our worst rain storm in thirty years.

Slept through the night

This was a big event. The books say that if a baby sleeps longer than 5 hours they have slept through the night. Well, Katherine slept 6 hours. Hopefully this is the start of something great.

Could it be colic?

This week Katherine has been very fussy (that is an understatement). It seems that she cries a lot and does not want to sleep during the day. The only way that she will sleep during the day is if we are holding her. She is small and it is fun for now, but I sure do not want it to be her habit. We have tried all kinds of things to get her to stop crying, rocking, dancing, swaddling, swinging and even sleeping on the dryer. I have talked to the nurse at her pediatrician's office and I am spending a lot of time on the Internet reading what to do. The only saving grace is that she is still sleeping just fine at night.

Dr. Halsell visit

Today we took Katherine for her two week visit with Dr. Halsell. For some reason, Katherine cried the entire time. She cried before we were in the room, in the room and as we were leaving. Every time we would finally get her settled down, someone would come in to look at her. Today she weighed 6 lb. 11 oz and was 19 inches long. Her weight, height and head circumference were all in the 5th percentile. She is a tiny thing.

Cousin visit

George, Shannon, Emily and Nathan came for a three night visit. They are going to be moving to the metroplex so they were looking at houses and they came to meet Katherine. Wednesday we all went to eat at Tony's, our favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant. It was Katherine's first restaurant visit and she slept through the entire things. Thursday Carissa and Ty came for the day. This was the first time we had all four cousins together. They were so cute. Nathan kept saying, "Baby Katherine is so tiny."

Nurse Laura

Because we left the hospital a day early, we had a home visit from a nurse. She was a former midwife from England and reminded me of Jo from Supernanny. It was great. She was here for two hours and went over all kinds of things. The best part was that she weighed Katherine. She now weighs 6 lb. 5 oz which means that she has gained 12 ounces in the last 5 days. She is a good eater.

Dr. Visit

Today we took Katherine for her first Doctor's visit. We saw Dr. Yaeger. She weighed 5 lb. 9 oz which is one ounce more than when she left the hospital.

Birth Announcement Photos

Tonight Heather Pollard came by to take pictures of Katherine for her birth announcement. I don't think Katherine was too excited about this at first. To get her to relax, I laid on the ground and put the white sheet over me. Then Katherine laid on my chest for the pictures. Heather did a great job.

Family Visit

Today we came home from the hospital. Joe and Pam (Grandad and Grammy), Carissa and Ty came over. Sam and Joe went to a banquet where Sam was given an award for the outstanding engineer of the year award. Pam, Carissa and Ty stayed home with me. I was pretty tired and pretty sore.

Katherine has arrived!!!

Katherine Frost was born on Wednesday, February 22nd at 6:47pm. She weighed in at exactly 6 pounds and is 18.5 inches long. Though smaller than expected, she is perfectly healthy. She has very blonde hair and dark blue eyes which is no surprise.

We are both doing well and she is a very healthy girl though Wednesday did not progress exactly as planned. We were three days past our due date and I had my weekly doctor's appointment. When I had all my weekly testing and measurements, my blood pressure was high whereas it has always been perfect. The nurse said that the doctor would probably order blood work and if it showed that I had preclampsia then he would probably induce on Friday (the day he is on call).

As I was waiting for the doctor to come in, I sat on the table praying about this. We had planned and prepared for a natural, unmedicated childbirth and had not wanted to be induced. My main prayer was that our decision would be clear and that Sam and I would agree with the doctor's recommendation. The doctor did in fact recommend that we get blood work done, but he also suspected that the baby had turned in the last week because he felt a hand or a foot as the presenting part. Therefore, he sent me over to a specialist to have an ultrasound. When I had the ultrasound three things were discovered. First, she had in fact turned into the "complete breech" position, meaning her butt and her feet were down in a way that she was in affect sitting Indian style. Second, when the doctor measured her, he said that she was no longer gaining weight or growing. He estimated that she was 6 pounds, 5 ounces but not adding more weight. Last, my amniotic fluid was getting low. Because of these three things, he suggested that we deliver now and because she was breech, it was to be by c-section.

Well, my prayer for clarity of a decision was answered, but not how I wanted. Given her lack of growth, we agreed that we should not wait and given her position, c-section was the way it was going to happen. Since I had wanted an unmedicated birth, this was in effect a "worst case scenario" for us, but amazingly I had a great attitude about it. I think because this decision was black and white. The most important thing was that I have a safe delivery of a healthy baby and that was accomplished. I had experienced an easy and very healthy pregnancy but 100 years ago, it would have ended with a hard labor that would have most likely not progressed and possibly ended in death of the baby and me. So, we were thankful that we had the option of a c-section.

That set the day into motion of being admitted and waiting until the c-section could be performed. It was not what I wanted, but I will say, a c-section does have some advantages. It is pretty quick and given the epidural, painless. I did not have a single contraction or labor pain (which I did want to experience at least a little). Best of all, our post-partum pictures are great because my little girl does not have a cone head and I still had on all my make up since I had not endured labor.

People have asked how we came up with the name Katherine Frost. Both names are family names. Katherine was Sam's mom's first name. She passed away when he was 8 and we wanted to honor her memory in this way. Frost is the first name of my dad's mother and grandmother. Both women are special family members and we hope that our little girl will share many of their character qualities. An interesting, but obviously unplanned coincidence is that both of these women passed away the same week that our little girl was born (but not this year).