Going into the fourth week

It is unbelievable how much you love your own baby. it is almost an ache in your heart - when you just sit and stare at him. i used to think "yeah, of course people love their kids" and i knew it was aweful to hear when kids were kidnapped or abused. but you really never know until you have your own. how you could look away for just a moment in a crowded place and have him nabbed, or how no one really knows why SIDS happens. until i had my own kid, i never in a million years imagined how much the thought of finding him not breathing could make me feel. and i used to think i was not maternal!
of course, that overwhelming love is also mixed in with frustration (when it is 3am and he just won't stop fussing) and the occasional desire to just shove his whole bassinett in the closet and shut the door (just let him cry his little lungs out until he falls into an exhausted sleep). luckily God has given me a lot of patience for Thomas and the thought doesn't cross my mind too often. william is handling it a little differently. patience has not been his strong suite - i know he has thought about squeezing thomas so he can't cry (bad william!) and just leaving him on top of the dryer, crying. but then he realizes how helpless Thomas is and that he has no other way to communicate with us right now when something isn't right. William may not have actively worked on gaining patience with circumstances ever before, but he is getting a crash course in it now to make up for the past. i have certainly heard a marked decrease in the not so family-oriented language that pops out of his mouth whenever he stubs his toe. maybe this will help him be more patient with Thomas as he moves into toddler-hood. we'll see. :)

8 pounds, 3 oz!

He was 7 pounds when he was born - but he gained 13 ounces by the time he was a week and a half. And now he weighs 8 pounds and 3 ounces. our doctor said to try to make sure we are not letting him eat too much. what a little piggy! and how are we supposed to tell if they are eating too much. most of the books/websites say that babies instinctively stop eating when they are full. i think this is payback for william because he is always saying he is going to make sure his kids are not chubby by making them run laps.

anyways, i think Thomas is trying to look up at whatever is sitting on his head in this picture. It was taken when he was only 3 days old. i can't believe his face is already changing. they grow so fast!


Here he is strapped in at 4 days old, fast asleep and ready to go on his first car ride - home!

I knew it didn't come from me...

we keep laughing at the way Thomas sleeps with his arms up.

well last night at 4 in the morning, william conked out from exhaustion and lo and behold... touch down!

mystery solved.

Sorry more pictures - he is so cute!

This is his favorite thing to do - waking or sleeping - one or both hands at the side of his head. Touch down!





Look at how small his foot is!






Ok, i promise - no more pictures for a little while. :)

Elephantitis

i had to have an IV stuck in me during the labor as well as the c-section. i asked to be able to just drink water on my own but the hospital staff gave me some reason for having the IV - i can't remember it now. i think think the rate that they allowed it to titrate into my system was for an average size person and i am only 5 feet. so after having the IV pump fluid into me for 20 hours - i woke up with HUGE feet, ankles and legs (all the way up). it's quite grotesque and made walking around a little uncomfortable. i had to buy a pair of size 9 slippers (i usually buy 5.5 or 6). funny... and yet not so funny.
they look kind of like the pigs feet in the chinese markets. ha ha... they are better today, but still swollen from the calves down. another week maybe. don't look too close - my nails are not very nicely manicured. william has been helping me clip them for the past few months. :)

Here is a cute picture of our baby boy

Here is a picture from today - 2 weeks old. he looks more like william esp if you see william's baby picture - same eyes, forehead and cheeks. he has my mouth and nose though.

i am completely biased but i think he is terribly cute. and this is the best time - when he is fed and changed and just sits there looking at you. completely magical :)

there's more: realigning life for Thomas

william and i have been married for 9 years now. we know each other fairly well. arguments don't really happen (not like the first year or two of marriage when you are trying to figure each other out and decide how to pick battles). we still love to talk as we fall asleep at night, share memories and dreams about the paths our future could hold. corney i know.
so along comes baby. baby reorganizes things, your relationship, your priorities, the things you pray about, your time and your entire life. baby doesn't listen and he doesn't care that you are tired and didn't eat yet. i think we had at least 3 arguments at the hospital. one about william not taking this seriously (going home to dink and get on computer when steven and vijay didn't) and not being at the hospital where i needed him on Monday at 2am. a second about parents - how often they can come over, how needy my dad is becoming, how high maintenance my mom is and how his parents impose themselves on us without asking us first if what they works for us. and the last smaller one about him dragging his feet (he didn't get the baby seat in the car until the day we left the hospital. this really surprised me because as some of you know - william is all about getting things done efficiently and on time. he obviously was in some sort of denial about the imminence of the baby's arrival).
our last argument happened the third day we were home because william had run out of patience and was letting me know it. so i finally let lose and started into him - letting him know that i wanted just as badly as he did to throw things around, that i was just as exhausted if not more so, and that having him throw temper tantrums made things twice as difficult because not only do i have to manage Thomas, i have to manage him too. that made him stop and he has been more patient since then.
ugh, and i never finished sending out christmas cards or thank you cards for gifts from the baby shower. it helps to know that millions of people take care of their babies every day, but also humbling as it undoes the way you are used to doing just about everything.

Thomas William Kuo - FINALLY! :)

Hard to believe but our baby is finally here. whew! I have hundreds of emails that i haven't responded to and lots of mail, and phone calls have been hard to return (one at a time, one or so a day if i am lucky). sometimes we just sit there and stare at Thomas in awe and simple amazement. sometimes, we look at each other and wonder what we have gotten ourselves into. he doesn't really come with any sort of guarentee and is non-refundable on top of that. I guess God doesn't take returns on babies :)
So here are the essential details: his name is thomas, he weighed 7 pounds on the dot and was 19.5 inches. he was born on 1/8 at 7am by c-section. i went to the hospital on sat morning at 9am after my water broke. (if you read the post from the week before, i was doing some rather heavy cleaning on Friday, about 12 hours before my water broke at 6am). i was in labor for 18 hours and my doctor ended up having to deliver by c-section after determining that the baby was just not coming out. he was in the right position, but my pelvic bones were not separated enough to allow him to pass through.
so word to you who have not had babies yet: take that epidural while you can because labor without it was probably the most painful/agonizing thing i have ever been through. just when you think that it can't get more painful, it does and just gets worse and worse. then once you are fully dialated, you have to start pushing, and that is even worse than getting yourself fully dialated. God is good - He has provided a way out. take it unless you really enjoy pain, or don't feel it. ha ha...
i will post pictures later today if i can get on my desktop. we'll see...

New Year's resolutions

i have to admit, i have not given this much thought this year. but out of the blue, william mentioned that he has two for this year while we were driving home the other day. his first is very relevant - to stop cussing, for his sake and for the baby's. so we don't have to have a call from preschool teacher telling us that junior is cussing the other kids out. ha ha.... bad bad. his second is to sit up and stand straight, so he is not slouching. he asked me what mine might be - and first to come to mind was to finish what i start. i tend to start projects and not finish. we'll see how long these last. :)

Still waiting...

so no baby yet... but at our doctor's AP today, she said that i have some signs that we are progressing towards the end (went from 1/2 to 1 centimeter... whoop dee do) - but it really depends on body and baby. some women can be a couple centimeters dialated for weeks and then go into labor. while others only start to dialate once labor starts. i am having lots of contractions and they are getting pretty strong - little more towards the uncomfortable, but still not consistent or really painful.
i decided that there is no reason to take it easy any more - early delivery is no longer an issue and any exercise i get at this point is only going to help (as long as i don't overdo it/deprive baby of oxygen). so i cleaned out the family room today - moved out all the clutter, got things into 3 piles: donate, garage or upstairs. even arranged all of the crazy clutter in the bookcases - don't think those will get done once baby is here so better now than never. the top of the piano was starting to look like storage too- so got that all cleared up. feels better just knowing it is clean.

william and i have different notions of clean. he has a higher tolerance for clutter and dust than i do. however, he appreciates when the clutter is gone. better feng shui for the room. just have to get him to move the stuff in my piles now...

Happy New Year's! ...and on sick husbands....

Happy new years!
We had a very quiet new year's weekend - william came down with a cold. so we literally spent 4 days together at home, either eating, sleeping or watching DVD's. you know how men are when they are sick - like little kids. they go from strong and supportive to whiney, somewhat combative, grumpy yet needy. my hypothesis is that this is why women say that they go crazy when they retire too, because all of a sudden, you are at home together and you and the husband are there all the time - so it is hard to get things done. men are like cats or dogs - they want to know what you are doing, where you are going, they follow you around when you move to another room to see if you are doing something more interesting. or in william's case, he goes and gets his guitar and follows me to the room i am in.

so i was going to use the week/weekend to finish writing season's greeting cards and thank you cards for our baby shower. did i get to any of that??? no... every time we had some down time, he would hop into bed and say "let's watch another movie!!!!" impossible! like i said - a little kid. but i hopped into bed to watch the movies, because once the baby is born, who knows when the next time is that we will be able spend that kind of lazy irresponsible time, just the two of us, together. luckily i did get to finish washing most of the new baby stuff (b/c that is fast) and we went to Target to pick up some last items off our registry. i think we are as ready as we can be for the little guy... now he just has to come out!

p.s. but he is still sick.... please God - make him better so he can go back to strong & supportive. :)