Oops! A few videos from before Lucas's birth

Oops! I missed a few videos from the weekend before Lucas was born. 

Here's Grant dancing with Grandma Peanut at the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning.

Later on Saturday, Cecilia was practicing riding her bike without training wheels. Unfortunately, after this, she hasn't really had a chance to practice much more since then and we have put the training wheels back on so she can ride on her own.

More from the hospital

We had an ok night, that first night with Lucas. He was up frequently and nursing a lot, so there wasn't a whole lot of continuous sleep happening for any of us. Plus because Lucas was considered "large for his gestational age", he had to have his blood sugar checked every few hours before I started to feed him to make sure that his blood sugar didn't crash. Thankfully, his blood sugar levels were always fine though!

Also, that first night, Lucas experienced his first earthquake. There was a 4.0 earthquake that hit Fremont, CA (about 20 miles away) at 2:41am on July 21st. I felt it and was pretty sure that's what it was, but Chad didn't feel it. However, when we checked the USGS website a few minutes later, it said there had been one. Later that morning, we found out that Grandma Peanut had been up with one of the kids and wasn't quite back asleep yet, so she felt her first one too. 

Here's Lucas about 6:00 in the morning on 7/21. He was sleeping in my arms here and was making little squeaks while he was sleeping. 

Later that morning, Lucas had his first bath. He was not really a fan of it. 

After his bath, Lucas was wrapped up and put against my chest to help him regulate his temperature. He really liked being so close to Mommy!

Later it was time for Lucas's hearing test. They attach sensors to different places on the baby and use them to analyze if there is any hearing loss. Thankfully, he passed this test easily too!

Right after the hearing test was done, Grandma Peanut brought Cecilia and Grant to meet Lucas (who was still un-named at that point). They were so excited to meet their little brother!

Here's a video of Daddy taping Lucas making faces. At this point, we were just waiting for Lucas to having his final tests to see if we could go home that night. We were a little bored and tired of the waiting, so we took a bunch of pictures.

Finally, at about 8:45pm, they told us that Lucas had passed his final checks and would be able to go home.

The outfit that Lucas is wearing here is the same one that both Cecilia and Grant both wore home from the hospital. It was rather tight on Lucas though, as he was about 3/4 of a pound heavier than Grant and 1 3/4 pounds heavier than Cecilia!

In his carseat for the first time.

And here here Lucas is, at home! We got home about 27 hours after he was born. And just in time! Grandma Peanut, Alan, Gaoder, and Raina were leaving to fly to Virginia early the next day and we needed to be home to be with Cecilia and Grant.

Grandma Peanut was very happy to get to hold Lucas some more before her trip!

Introducing Lucas Anthony Austin!

I am going to try to get back to updating the blog, since we are now 3 months behind again. It has been a pretty busy 3 months, mostly due to the newest addition to our family, Lucas Anthony Austin!

On July 20th, my labor started about 2:30pm while I was at the mall with Sue and Gaoder, while they were looking for dresses for Grandpa Austin's funeral (another blog post on that will be coming). The contractions started off pretty spaced apart and not too uncomfortable, but they quickly started coming regularly and got more intense. After getting Sue and Gaoder's dresses, we all headed home and I rested for a little bit before calling the hospital and ultimately heading in.

We got to the hospital at about 5:00pm. The nurses got us checked in and hooked me up to the monitors to check how my labor was progressing. I was in active labor, so they had me change into a hospital gown and get comfortable (or at least as comfortable as I could...).

The view outside the window of the labor and delivery room.

Before the contractions got too intense.

Once we were at the hospital, Chad was keeping everyone updated, but it wasn't easy because things were progressing quickly! When I was examined at about 5:30, I was about 3-4 cm dilated and in some pain. Within about an hour, it had gotten more intense and I was in a lot of pain. The labor and delivery nurse that was with us saw that things were moving pretty quickly and started getting the room ready for the baby. By 6:45, I was having contractions about every 2 minutes and they were lasting about a minute each. So I wasn't really getting much rest in between contractions.

This is the readout from the monitors. The printout is tracking my contractions and Lucas's heart rate.

And this is a graph of all of the women that were hooked up on the floor. The nurses could see how everyone was progressing from any room on the floor.

The nurse examined me again at about 6:50 and I was at 8 centimeters dilated and moving really fast. Then I started to get nauseous (which happened with both of the other kids too when I was getting close to delivery. So I was having dry heaves and very intense contractions at the same time. Then, during all of that, my water broke. The nurse looked at it and said something like, there is some blood in there, very casually. After a brief pause when we were waiting for her to say something else, I asked her if that was bad. The nurse said no, it was just because I was progressing so fast. At this point, the nurse called the doctor to come into the room because she thought I was getting close to delivering.

The doctor (who was my OB, and just happened to be on call at the hospital that day) came in and the nurse told her that 10 minutes ago I was 8 centimeters and 90% effaced and moving quickly. At that point, the doctor said that I needed an IV. The nurse tried to say that I didn't need one, but the doctor was pretty adamant that I needed one. So another nurse went to get an IV. While we were waiting, the doctor left the room again. Then I started feeling the need to push. So the nurse hit the call button again and yells "Get the doctor in here, she's having the baby!" While we were waiting for the doctor to come back in, the nurse told me to push if I felt the urge. When my doctor came back in, she was really confused that I was feeling the need to push and said something like, "Why didn't you tell me that she was so close?" and the nurse responded that she had. Then the nurse just said it was a misunderstanding and calms everyone down. It was about this time that the other nurse comes back with the IV, which is now completely unnecessary. I started to push and then got yelled at by the nurse because I was yelling instead of putting that energy into pushing. After a few pushes, the doctor discovered that Lucas was "sunny-side up", which means that instead of Lucas's face pointing towards my spine, it was pointing towards my belly. At one point, after Lucas's head was out, the doctor and nurses told me to stop pushing. Chad told me later that there was a loop of umbilical cord around his neck. After they un-looped it, I pushed a few more times, and at 7:08pm, Lucas was born.

Lucas is only about 15 minutes old in this photo. 

After about 15 minutes on my chest, they took Lucas to check him out, weigh him, and measure him. He was 9 pounds, 9 ounces and 21.5 inches long.

From birth, Lucas's hands have been bigger than Raina's, even though she is 3 months older! Here's a good shot of his hands right after birth.

Later, Lucas got some eye drops and his first vaccines. And then we moved from the delivery room to the Mother-Baby Unit about two hours after Lucas was born.

After we got to the Mother-Baby Unit, Chad left to go get some food, as he hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime and he was starving. The nurses were good about getting me food to eat after I had Lucas, but Chad had to go out to get his own.