The Kalal Family: One Week Old!

How in the world has one week already passed since we first met Izzy?!? She is already changing before our eyes, AND I have yet to do her birth story justice on the blog!! Today is the first day I feel pretty rested from a glorious night of sleep... so here goes. (No, don't worry, she's not sleeping through the night yet, she just decided last night that she would eat and go back to sleep like an angel every time. She even snuck in one 4 1/2 hour stretch!)

The Night You Were Born...

The day started like any other. I was officially 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant, and Jeremy and I were looking forward to my doctor appointment to see how things were progressing. On the way to the appointment, I told Jeremy that I just had a feeling today at school... I left my classroom nearly spotless, double checked that all my copies were ready for my substitute, and even wrote out my parent newsletter instead of waiting until Friday like usual. Little did I know my intuition was dead on!

Dr. Weinrich determined that I was 5 cm dilated, and he set up an appointment for me to be induced that next morning... it was like deja vu! He said that he pretty much expected to see me back again that night, though. He was right ;) By about 6:00 that night, I started not feeling well, and by 7:00, my contractions were coming about 5 minutes apart, and by 8:00, they were getting painful. Jeremy had his mom come over to the house since Cooper was already in bed, and we headed for the hospital. We arrived a little before 10:00, and I was dilated to 7 or 8, according to the nurse. The nurse asked me what I wanted as far as pain management... I tried to smile through my contraction as I whispered, "Epidural!" I was admitted and the anesthesiologist was paged. It felt like forever until he arrived with the miracle epidural, but it was a welcome sight when he walked through the door. Jeremy and I were joking about whether this baby would arrive on October 24 or October 25, since it was so close to midnight. Apparently Izzy wanted to come exactly on her due date, so she arrived just barely into the next day, at 12:19 AM on October 25.

I always wondered if the feelings would be the same holding my second new baby as it was when I held my first new baby... just like with Cooper, this magical feeling washed over me as soon as they laid her on my chest. I got to hold her fresh little body for nearly five minutes before they made me give her up to the nurse to be weighed and cleaned. But it didn't take five minutes to fall utterly and completely in love. The minute I saw her and heard her little cry, I knew life would never be the same! Holding our little Isabelle Ann, I thought about what an amazing miracle it really is that she came to be. My heart swelled when Jeremy held her for the first time. He was a proud dad, ready to protect his little girl all her life.

At first, we thought it was kind of great that she was born in the middle of the night--after all, we didn't have visitors knocking down the door to meet her, and we could relax--just the three of us. Then morning came. And our excited family came. We were most anxious for Cooper to meet her. When he came into the room, he knew something was up. He was most curious about being on the bed with mommy, then playing with the balloon he brought, then looking into the bassinet, and then he started getting curious about Izzy. He was quiet and gentle, like he knew he should be. It was pretty cute! He even wanted to kiss her--with closed lips, even! I haven't even gotten a closed-mouth kiss from him ;)

The video is a little long, and the sound quality isn't great, but we really wanted to capture the moment that our family of four was together for the first time...

Cooper's second day back at the hospital... he wanted to hold and kiss his new baby sister :)

And we quickly realized that a night of no sleep, plus a new baby, meant we were exhausted by early evening. The adrenaline carried us through, and Izzy went to play with the nurses that first night while we got 2- to 3-hour spurts of sleep.

This is the day we brought Izzy home from the hospital

Now that we have Izzy home, I honestly feel like she's been our daughter forever. I just feel like I KNOW her and she's only been mine for one week... She is a very content baby, a get-to-business nurser, and she's settling in to a sleeping and eating pattern at night that we like!! She's even an over-achiever... always reaching her 'goal' of wet and dirty diapers each day ;) Go figure.