Bear attack

LOL BEAR ATTACK

Natalie loves cupcakes

OH CUPSCAKE I LUF YOU

Video

Video!

I've had some requests for new pictures of Natalie, but I've got something that's even better.

Well, there were a couple more rolls of film to scan, but those have disappeared into the abyss that is Gretchen's scrapbooking area. Maybe they'll show up later on. I'll try to save them before they get chopped up and pasted to a page.

I figured I'd write something here just in case people are still checking the site out. We're all doing great. Believe it or not, Natalie is already sleeping through the night on a regular basis (and when she doesn't, she only wakes up for a feeding once a night) which is amazing to us. We know we're lucky. She continues to grow and become more active. She flipped over from belly to back nearly on her own last week. She's pretty close to doing it by herself. According to everything I've read, she's getting way ahead of herself developmentally. Perhaps she'll be talking in complete sentences next week, who knows.

Hospital Photos, part the Second:













#2038 (third row, fourth photo) is my personal favorite.

Roll of Film #1 has been scanned. You know the drill.

Natalie slept the whole way home, and hasn't woken up yet, so I don't want to bother her too much with the camera. I couldn't resist one picture, though:



Also, you can now reach this site through natalie.kampshoff.org. Eventually the baby.kampshoff.org address will no longer point here, but I won't disable that just yet.

Natalie also has her own email address, but it'll probably take a few years for her to respond personally.

Natalie Lynn Kampshoff was born at 9:38 PM on Friday, July 30, 2004. She weighed 11 pounds, 14 ounces and was 21.5 inches long at birth. (That's 5.4 kilograms and 54 centimeters for you metric folks. I think. Someone may want to check my math, I'm going on very little sleep here.) That's a big baby.

Gretchen worked very hard during her labor on Thursday and Friday, but she simply hit a wall Friday evening, and now it's obvious why -- it's likely that Gretchen would have never been able to give birth in the traditional manner. Dr. Kohls made the call at around 9 on Friday night to do a Caesarean section. As soon as we knew for sure it was happening, I called the grandparents-to-be and asked them to join us. I was hoping they would arrive before the procedure began.

Needless to say, this made both of us quite nervous. We hadn't really mentally prepared ourselves for this possibility -- our reaction to discussions of C-sections in our pregnancy class were limited to "That's not going to happen to us, is it?" We just assumed that it wouldn't come up.

After plenty of reassurance by the simply wonderful nursing staff at St. John's, Gretchen was rolled off into the OR and I spent what was probably the scariest 20 or so minutes of my life just waiting for them to prepare her for the procedure. When I rejoined her I was simply amazed at how calm she was. There was a barrier between us and the surgical team, and naturally I didn't dare to look while they were doing their job. About 20 minutes later, Natalie was born. I didn't get to cut the cord, but I got to watch as the nurses cleaned her and wrapped her up in a blanket. A nurse held Natalie close to Gretchen, and the crying baby immediately stopped when she heard our voices. After a few minutes of staring at our new daughter, Gretchen was prepped for the recovery room, and I went with Natalie for the weigh-in. The surgical team called after us to tell us to call back with her weight.

11 pounds, 14 ounces. Even the nurses got a picture of the scale. It was the largest baby one of them had ever seen born. We were immediately famous throughout the Maternity Care Center, not only for Natalie's size but for her full head of brown hair. At first look, we thought it was the color of Gretchen's hair, but after it was cleaned up and dried off, we realized it's actually more like my color. She has dark blue eyes, but of course that, along with her hair color, may change as she gets older.

Gretchen has recovered remarkably quickly. She's up and moving around, and fortunately they were able to disconnect her from her IV and everything else that goes along with it. She's in pain, but she's handling it much better than I ever could. It's almost a for-sure thing that Gretchen and Natalie will come home Monday afternoon. We'll introduce Daisy to her new playmate later that day.

Natalie is, in my totally unbiased and objective view, the most beautiful baby ever born. Except for a rather fussy night last night and an equally scream-eriffic morning today, she's been perfectly calm and content. She's taken being passed around among all of our visitors with only the occasional outburst. I've been told this doesn't last long, but one can hope.

Unfortunately, I don't have any good digital photos of Natalie. I had our film camera during and after the birth and only switched over to the digital for a few pictures after Sean got it from the room for me. (There's also some digital video, but that'll take a while to edit and such.) There are a couple were you can see less than half her face when it's buried in someone else's arm or whatnot, but I've decided to wait to post any pictures until I can take some decent ones tomorrow. If you're wondering how it is that I'm making this update at all, I've come home a night early to get our house ready for Natalie, and also to get a decent night's rest so I'm ready to help both mom and daughter tomorrow -- the sleeping accommodations for dads at St. John's leave much to be desired.

Quick Update:

Just for those of you that I haven't reached by phone yet: everyone is doing fine -- we were just in the hospital for a bit longer than expected. I'll post a much longer update later, hopefully tonight.

Thursday's the day.

Directions are here.

The short version: after a couple of procedures (at the hospital) to help Gretchen along, we will be staying overnight at the hospital on Wednesday, and she will be induced beginning Thursday morning.

The long version: our regular doctor was not at the clinic today for our appointment -- she got called out for an emergency C-section followed by another delivery, so we were seen by a nurse practitioner. They were concerned about her high blood pressure and the fact that we're three days late, so they sent us to the hospital for some monitoring and a cervical gel treatment, to aid dilation. Dr. Washbusch caught up with us at the hospital and laid out the plan: we're going in Wednesday morning for another cervical gel treatment, and will return to the hospital in the evening for an overnight cervical treatment. Thursday morning we'll start with pitosin to actually induce labor. This is all assuming Gretchen's water doesn't break or she doesn't start getting extreme contractions between now and then.

See you all at the hospital, hopefully Thursday afternoon or evening.

As most everyone knows, we've got a name -- first and middle -- picked out (plus a backup boy's name, just in case!) and have been keeping it a secret, as hard as that has been. I've nearly let it slip more than once.

If you want to guess, leave your guess as a comment on this post. (You don't need a Blogger account to leave a comment; just click 'Anonymous' or whatever.) The correct guesser gets to... uh... babysit first?

I'll think of a prize later. It probably won't matter, anyway -- I don't think anyone will guess correctly.

Thanks to Grandma & Grandma Painting™, we got the nursery painted over the weekend, and now all of the furniture is pretty much set. It looks pretty nice:

Big as a watermelon, happy as a clam.

At least that's what the doctor said. Baby is huge, head down, and has a normal heartbeat.

Hey, as long as it's not big as a clam, happy as a watermelon, I'll be happy.

Now that we're getting reasonably close to full-term, posting directions to the hospital might be a good idea.

Barring unforeseen events, our baby will be born at St. John's Hospital in Maplewood. The address is 1575 Beam Avenue, and the phone number is 651.232.7000. Here's a map of the hospital's location, and I'll provide some directions below. Of course, these are only suggestions; if you know the area better than we do, you might know a quicker way.

The directions that MapQuest provides for around the hospital are goofy; if you use that service to generate directions, there's no need to make any sort of U-turn as it says!

From the South:

• Take 35E North.


• At Exit 111A, take 36 East for about 2 miles.


• Take 61 North for about 1.5 miles.


• Take a right and head east on Beam Ave. for about a half mile.


• Take a left on Hazelwood St. (You should be able to see the hospital.)


• Take a right into the hospital parking lot area.

From the North/Northeast:

• Take 35E South.


• (Left Exit) Take 694 East for about a mile.


• Take 61 South for about a mile.


• Take a left and head east on Beam Ave. for about a half mile.


• Take a left on Hazelwood St. (You should be able to see the hospital.)


• Take a right into the hospital parking lot area.

Directions from the West/Northwest and East are pretty much the same; just get on 694 and follow the directions above.

Once you get to the hospital, you can park just about anywhere, though I wouldn't recommend using those spots reserved for the handicapped, clergy, or medical personnel. Use the main entrance; the Maternity Care Center is the first right, but you'll need to sign in as visitors at the front desk. We will not have our cell phones on while we are in the hospital, so please don't panic if we don't answer them! After you arrive at the hospital but before you visit, please call us (or have the front desk call us) so we know you're coming.

Nine Ten Months Later...

OK, so it's been nine months to the day... where's the baby?

I wonder if the general non-baby-having public will ever get used to the idea that pregnancies usually last around 40 weeks, not 36.

Gretchen and Baby will be full-term in a week... let the countdown begin!

The crib!

Had the second ultrasound on Friday afternoon. Baby cooperated this time, and let us have a better look at the heart, as well as revealing that she is a girl. More ultrasound pictures to come.

Had the first ultrasound today. Unfortunately, Baby wouldn't cooperate (had his/her legs crossed) so we were unable to find out the gender. Otherwise, though, the technician said everything looked just fine -- all limbs and vital organs in their right places, and a strong heartbeat. Due to Baby's uncooperativeness, we also couldn't get a detailed-enough look at the heart, so we will be having another ultrasound on April 2nd, and hopefully we'll be able to find out then.

I finally got the scanner working again, so...



Gretchen says she already sees evidence of an overbite. I don't see it, but I wouldn't be surprised.



That's one healthy-lookin' spine.



That thing on the bottom there is some sort of graph of the heartbeat.



I guess that is supposed to be the face, but I don't really see it.

We were both disappointed that we couldn't find out what we're having, but we are both extremely happy that everything is OK health-wise.