Welcome to the world, Baby Elizabeth. We're excited that you have joined our little family in KL
Before we left for the hospital, we took some pictures with the whole fam. The boys didn't want us to forget about them. They're so sweet
Checking in to Prince Court Hospital in downtown KL the night before--really cool view from the front door. We checked in around 10pm, whereupon they showed us to the room our doctor convinced us to book--a suite. It was the biggest hospital room we'd ever seen--separate room with a bed for me, huge sitting area with a second TV, China dolls in glass cases. Crazy. We then asked them if we could see a junior suite, which was only slightly smaller than the suite. Then they said "well, we have single rooms, but they are pretty small." The smallest "small" room we saw was still bigger than either of the rooms we had in Chicago or Baltimore with the boys, so we ended up there. Great view of the towers, too
The next morning they woke Erin up early to give her some meds and then let her sleep until around 8am, then took us to the OR to get going. I got dressed and waited while they prepped Erin. They walked me in just as they were beginning the operation. I sat on Erin's right side and held her hand, and got to watch the whole thing. The best part was when the doc had a hold of the baby's head, and two other people were trying to help get her shoulders out. Once again, our baby was bigger than we thought: she came out 9 lbs even though the last check-up put her around 7.5 lbs. Plus she was a week earlier than the two boys, so I'm convinced she would have gotten close to their sizes if we left her in another week. Elizabeth was born at exactly 9am KL time on 3 April 2013
Erin was much more relaxed this time--first, she knew the c-section was going to happen and so was able to mentally prepare, and second, just like last time, when they got going and she had trouble breathing, the anesthesiologist gave her a mild sedative to calm her down. In the US, they just told her "take deep breaths", which didn't actually help. So this time, rather than Erin asking me to distract her, she kept asking me "what are they doing now?" What a huge and welcome change. Thank you Prince Court!
After they finally wedged the baby out and sewed Erin back up, I followed the baby up to the nursery while they watched Erin in the recovery room for a while. We were all united back in our hospital room around 11am. The boys, Erin's parents, and Helen showed up around 12:30 to welcome Baby E into the family
When the boys show up it's a bit of a whirlwind, since there isn't much for them to do in the room except flip the light switches, hit the nurse button over and over again, and play with the latex gloves
We Skyped for a while with Mike's family on Friday morning. In this photo, Mike is looking very seriously at whatever Mike's mom is saying. We like Baby E's face in this picture
The first few days of Baby E's life have been mostly normal as far as baby's lives go--eating, sleeping, getting changed. She really hates getting her diaper changed, loves sleeping while being held, and her first music has been the Brandenberg Concertos, 1 through 6
Joseph would like to remind everyone that he is very excited about Baby Elizabeth coming to our family, and also let everyone know that he is a very helpful photo-taker. G'bye!
