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. :)

One last ultrasound...

We get one last ultrasound! For the last 3 months, we have been wanting to get another ultrasound - despite the fact that there really was no reason to get one. considered buying our own machine (not really once we found out the price), so we could peer in on hm whenever we wanted. Our doctor kept telling us that that they only order those when there is something that might be wrong. But we were just dying to see him!!! :)
To our surprise, when we went in for a routine checkup yesterday, the doctor covering for our regular obgyn, decided that i was a little small looking for 38 weeks and told us we should get an ultrasound to get an estimated fetal birth weight. what a nice late christmas present!
So we have an appointment for this afternoon at 2pm to sneak one last peek at the little alien junior growing in my tummy before he makes his grand entry into the world. exciting.... :)

p.s. hmmmm... definitely not as exciting to get an ultrasound at 38 weeks. the baby is so cramped in there, that you can only get partial views of his profile and tummy. everything else is pretty much just a blob. he can barely move around. so if you want to see him, make sure you get it in before 30 weeks - when he can still swim around in your belly like a little tadpole.
we also had to wait in the radiology waiting room for an hour despite being on time to our appointment. so it was a double whammy, wait one hour, with nothing exciting to see at the end. boo hoo...

The Notebook

William has been on winter break for the past several weeks so we have been watching/renting a lot of movies in the evenings and weekends - all the movies we have not been able to watch while he was in school. of course, we also realize that we will not be able to watch movies once the baby is born either so that is another motivation. I would love to go see some of the movies out in theaters now - but sitting in those theater seats for 2-3 hours just doesn't sound comfortable to me right now.
Anyways, last night we finally got to watch "The Notebook". someone had told me (lots of people actually) that it was really good but i didn't remember what it was about - and i didn't remember why it was good. i just remember hearing from quite a few people that it was worth watching. so i convinced william to watch it - although his first reaction was "waaaah.... chick flick. scsi you go watch it with her... " it starts a little slow but it is one of those movies, even though it is a chick flick that grabs you and sucks you in. a good story, well told.

needless to say, by the end of the movie, i was crying quite uncontrollably and could not stop thinking of Nancy Reagan. and william was using copious amounts of tissue to try to stem the flow from his eyes as well. we sat through the entire end credits, tissues in hand, when william mentioned that it wouldn't be so hard if it weren't for the image of Nancy Reagan, and how she said good-bye to her husband. thinking that she had to go through that, for 10 years. i could just say "i know" and sob even more.
every once in awhile, it is good to watch a movie that reminds you of how exciting it was when you were dating, and how the years have been flying by, but that you love each other all the more for the memories. it helps to find a way to treasure each day together, because you never know how it will end and you don't want to regret what you weren't able to tell your best friend.

My tummy.. 38 weeks and counting...

So here is my tummy on the 24th - pretty humongous. i have to lean over to see my feet otherwise, they are completely gone. only 3 more weeks to go until I am considered full term. we tried to convince the baby with lots of walking that he wants to come out earlier but at our doctor's appointment on Friday, there was no change in my condition... aka he is definitely n0t ready to make his entrance into the world. so we are still waiting...
Just don't want to have to go in and induce!

On pregnant food cravings...

there are a lot of myths about pregnancy out there that are propagated by media. the biggest one I found in terms of my own preggers time was the junk food craze. I did not find myself craving crappola at all. definitely not greasy, overheated fast food french fries, or heat lamp hamburgers. gross! What i did crave was fruit - almost any kind of fruit, esp grapefruit, fuji apples, cherries, strawberries or frozen natural strawberry fruit bars, blueberries, almost any berry, oranges, grapes, bananas, etc. Regina mentioned that all she wanted was salad in her first trimester.

you will also find yourself changing habits that you would never think. for me, it was ice in my drinks. i NEVER EVER drank water with ice. in fact at restaurants, i would actually sit there and scoop out my ice into william's glass. i never liked the feeling of my fillings shrinking as icy cold water hit them along with my teeth. well, turns out pregnancy raises your basal body temp just a bit. enough to make you feel hot a lot of the time, but at the same time, get cold easily i.e. indoors, i am down to a T-shirt. but step outside in 50 degree weather and even with a down jacket on, i start shivering almost right away. even now, in december, i am just fine with our thermostat at about 64 degrees. heater? who needs a heater! william walks in for lunch and is always freezing - for once, turning on the heater when i don't need it. i told him to enjoy the savings now b/c once junior is born, we'll probably have it at 69-70 at all times until he gets a little older. last night, i made myself a passionfruit/mango tea in a glass full of wonderful ice - LOVE that ice cold tea and juice!

the last thing - about all those strange combos of food, midnight pickle/ice cream runs... personally, it was not about odd combos for me, but i did crave 1) really good food and 2) variety. eating the same food for days used to be fine - esp b/c i don't like to cook every day. so when we did cook it was at least 2 days worth. plus, any time we got food from either mom, it was always several days worth. enter pregnancy! definitely do not like eating leftovers for days now. must have GOOD restaurant food at least 2-3 times per week. And variety - oh love variety. Trader Joe's has been great because they sell a lot of different types of food. My favorites to add variety to a ho humm food day have been: 1) Trader Giotto's organic vegetarian pizza 2) Tandoori Naan bread with different types of hummus 3) steamed artichokes with almost any type of dressing 4) spinach & mushroom quiche 5) chicken perogies with olive tapanade... yummmy!!

Waiting...

our official due date for Baby Kuo is jan 11th. our ultrasound technician said it was jan 8th. we still haven't figured out a name yet - down to Michael vs. Thomas. one of my co-workers has survived the first 8 weeks with their new baby, brendan nicholas. cute name! seems that posting pics online is the easiest way to go to satisfy friends and family who want to see the newest member of the family.

anyways, here we are at 37 weeks and after all the stress and bedrest, my doctor laughingly said that we will probably carry him to full term. we've decided that that is not going to work for us. we want our tax break!! :) so i have been doing everything within safe reason to induce: a lot of walking, up and down stairs, massaging pressure points that shouldn't be massaged, and am now contemplating taking small amounts of evening primrose oil. supposedly that has a little more effectiveness than the castor oil.... we'll see. most of the online articles say if the baby is not ready to come out, he won't come out so I have been praying too - asking God for this very selfish request - please let us have it early rather than having to induce late! please please please God :)
Luckily God has a sense of humor... and of course, all things according to His will. amen...

Vicky & Raphael's wedding Sat Dec 17th

Here is detailed an account of what happened on our way to Vicky & Raphael's wedding on Saturday. we eventually went into the city for Vicky & Raphael's wedding but I had not finished working on all of the preparations for the Christmas dinner for LBF. so we decided to miss the ceremony and make it to the reception at 6pm, at Yang Sing in the Rincon center.

so poor william had to run around at 1pm to print all of the packets out for me once i had them all formatted. this was for the after dinner game - guessing who's who based on baby photos. he asked how many copies were needed and i told him 40 (we were expecting about 37-38 people). he informed me that 40 copies, with 15 pages each was over 600 pages, lots of copies. well gee, i had never thought of it that way. but it was true - i really had not thought about the fact that it was 600+ pages. on top of that, he had to print out 60 envelopes and 60 mail merge letters for LBF (our follow-up pastoral search networking letter). both of which I also was finishing last minute.

so i started calling all of the places that offer printing services (kinko's, office depot, staples, etc) and found that printing is not cheap! what happened to 3 cent b&w copies!!! all of the places pretty much across the board charged 7 cents/page to laser print. after that many charge 6-7 cents/page for self-service B&W copies. what a rip off! anyways...

while he was printing, he decided that each couple was only going to get one packet. so that cut it down to 20 packets. poor william - now i was feeling really bad about leaving this for last minute.

by the time he gets home (4:30), he is fairly grumpy. i had a plate of food ready for him because we had woken up late that morning and really hadn't had lunch. but he didn't want to fill up too much before big chinese banquet though. so we got ready - but even that took longer than expected and we ended up not leaving until 5:30. as anyone knows, you can not get into the city in 30 minutes on saturday evening at 6pm. so we are both grumpy sitting in bridge traffic and hoping that we were not missing too much.

i apologized for the last minute rush and causing him stress on what should have been a more relaxed day. he said that it was like handing in a final term paper at the last minute - did not like having to do that one bit. so i apologized again and told him that i know i should have finished the packet on wed or thursday but that last minute photos kept trickling in. so i left it to the last day to prevent re-work to paste in last minute photos. i told him that i was really frustrated that we had left late, causing us to have to sit in traffic anxiously. now i was getting hungry and thirsty and i don't like feeling hungry at this stage, b/c it probably means that the baby is hungry.

william pauses when i say this. turns out the real reason william is so frustrated with the day is that i have been volunteering to do a lot for church lately when he has really wanted me to just rest, eat and walk - be a little selfish for myself and for him. instead, i am having to sit on the computer for long stretches to fulfill the items i committed to in the board meetings. that has been upsetting him (awe... actually very sweet of him and makes me feel like a big jerko b/c he is thinking about me/us, not all the printing problems). so he has purposely not committed to anything, thinking in his head that he is going to have to help me with my to-do items anyways. *sigh* most of it was phone work up until this last week so it really was not a problem. but he really wants us to think more for us - and we only have 2-3 weeks left before the baby comes and lots still to do to get the house ready. i think i am still in partial denial that this baby is coming. we have been married for nine years (NINE!) with no kids and it is hard to imagine how this little kid is going to turn everything upside down...

anyways, we finally arrived at Yang Sing - a little after 7pm. turns out they were still doing toasts and hadn't started eating yet. all that rushing for nothing. and william couldn't get a glass of wine because the bar was instructed to stop serving wine after 7pm - and we had just missed the cutoff. he could get wine once food started coming. so we sat there starving for half an hour while the toasts finished and finally started eating. the food was marvelous - a full, 10 course, gourmet chinese seafood banquet. sooo soo yummmy. we sat with phebe & don kuo, who were happy that we were there because they didn't know anyone else at the table. it was very nice to catch up with them. their boys andrew (15) and jonathan (13) used to be so quiet and nerdy, are actually getting into girls and clothes now. funny.... also saw andrea & pastor Johnson and their girls, felix, and grace & albert with daughter Catherine.

vicky looked so beautiful in a simple strapless silk gown with silk flowers bunched in the back, and a ruffled organza silk train falling from box pleats in the back of the skirt. the wedding cake was this beautiful tiffany blue 3 layer cake - but it didn't taste as good as it looked so we capped off our meal with 2 bowls of mango pudding. double yummy!

ugh, my posts are getting too long... :p ramble ramble...

Baby Showers

Sunday, Dec 11th, we had our baby shower. we weren't originally going to have one because we really weren't sure when the baby was coming (with all the preterm labor complications). also having family host a baby shower was out of the question (his parents are not very social), my mom is not in good health and my sister has her hands full with her 2 year old (plus planning these types of things is jut not something she likes to do :)

then we got to a point where things looked good - baby was staying inside where he belongs and all the weeks of bedrest were paying off. by that time, it was mid-nov and i was contemplating planning my own shower. i didn't want to ask anyone and it wasn't really going to be a shower - more of a celebration party... ha ha...
Robin started asking about a shower and i explained the above and she decided that wasn't good enough (thanks dear robin) and she mobilized Grace and what was going to be a small party turned into a bigger party (somehow everyone that i thought might not be able to make the odd time {due to morning church} ended up making it).
so we packed over 30 people into our house and did a Costco run for food. Robin also cooked up a massive egg casserole - yumm! it was a little hectic but it was actually really nice to see everyone, esp being on bedrest for so long. got to catch up with a lot of people and find out what was going on for the holidays (lots of family and skiing trips). 4 of my co-workers were actually able to make it - it was great to see them. we played some baby shower games: guess the belly circumference, match the animal to it's baby and guess the baby food. surprisingly it was mostly guys that won - ha ha.... and then we had cake - special ordered by michael and grace by a bakery on the peninsula. it was a whole sheet white cake with yummy strawberry mousefilling. we were still eating that cake at the end of the week :p

it was overwhelming how generous people were with gifts. we got so much of what we needed as well as a good number of gift cards to make up for what we still need. we love our friends and family! of course, we don't love them just for gifts, but we never expected all that. it reminded me of how important our little community of friends are and how we support each other through all of life's many changes and curve balls.

we had another baby shower on Wednesday, the 14th at william's office. we were overwhelmed there too! i teased william that for all his scowling grumpiness, i was surprised at how many of his co-workers would want to contribute to his first kid (almost 20 of them!). even he was amazed and reasoned it by saying that his co-worker Vicki must have went around twisting people's arms for money. ha ha! but vicki did a lot of work - she was the one that collected $, as well as buy all the gifts, cake and decorations. i am trying to figure out what we can get her as a thank you gift. William mentioned she just got a golden retriever puppy this summer so maybe something dog related.

My nemesis....

Maggie, on her favorite spot in the whole wide world - William's lap. She always looks at me with a snug, self-satisfied little look, as if she is saying "ha ha, i have his lap, and you don't."

My constant bedrest companion, our dear kitty, Scsi. He is probably wondering why I have been spending so much time snoozing with him these last 3 months. I hope the adjustment is not too hard on him when the baby comes. william and i will have to make an effort to make sure he doesn't feel neglected. I hope our baby is not allergic to him!