Emily One Week Old and "Cool" Like Her Sister

We've had our sweet Emily home just over a week and things are going great! She has continued to be super sweet and pretty laid back. We had our first couple of post-discharge from the hospital doctor's appointments last week. When we were discharged from the hospital we knew that we were going to have a couple of follow up labs and appointments about Emily's bili (jaundice) levels as well as a an appointment with an orthopedist to check her hips.

We had our appointment with the orthopedist first and were very glad to know what we were probably dealing with this time around since we needed to address Kate's hips right after she was born also. Sure enough Emily wants to be just like her big sister, decided to camp out in Momma's tummy in a breech position and decided that she wanted to be one of the "cool kids" that wear harnesses too (See our post on Kate's hip dysplasia). As a quick explanation--since she was sitting with her head up instead of down while in my tummy her hip joints are not properly formed at birth. The place where the ball should fit into the socket is loose (the orthopedist likes to say the joints are shallow) therefore they put the baby in a little harness that forces the ball into the socket like it should be and since baby's bones are so malleable the problem easily corrects itself with no trouble/pain to the baby. We quickly learned with Kate and see again with Emily that wearing the harness is no big deal at all. It definitely doesn't bother her and if anything I think that she likes being held in a position, kind of like how infants love to be tightly swaddled. So you may notice over the next several weeks (she's estimated to need it for 6 weeks) she may look a little like she has football pads on under her clothes. That's just the little harness under there.

Emily's biliruben levels were slightly elevated before we were discharged from the hospital so over our first weekend home we made a couple of trips to the lab to get her levels checked and after a little increase the numbers seemed to start to level off. So we had another trip to the pediatrician last Monday to get levels checked and check her weight. Bili levels were still slightly elevated (just in a "need to monitor" zone but nothing that the Dr was concerned about) and our little piggy is definitely gaining weight. We had things checked again on Friday and today and she has gained over a pound since birth already. That's a lot when you only weigh 7-8 lbs to begin with. Birth she was 7 lb, 11 oz, before we left the hospital she was 7 lb, 8 oz, last Monday 8 lbs, 4 oz, Friday 8 lbs, 9 oz and today 8 lbs 12.5 oz. The steady increase makes the nursing Momma feel pretty good. Everything else looks great and we aren't due back for another check up for a couple of weeks.

We are trying to start to settle into our little routine with our two girls. Makes it pretty easy with Nonna here helping with everything!! We are so blessed to have her here helping out! It will definitely be a reality check next week once she's gone but I think we'll make it just fine. We have two little girls that could not be more perfect in my opinion! It really just keeps getting better and better. Kate continues to be a great big sister and seems to be adjusting to all the changes as well as we could ask for. It is crazy to think that just a week and a few short days ago we were still a family of 3 and Emily was still just hanging out in my tummy, but now that she's here it's hard to remember what things were like without her! We hope you enjoy a few of our recent pictures.

Emily sporting her harness

This is how Emily spends a lot of her time...happily snoozing. You can also tell in this picture that she's already getting to be quite the chunky monkey

Emily got a visit from her Aunt Dana and Uncle Kevin, who will also soon be her Nanny and Parrain (Godparents), and cousins Braxton and Karoline

Kate playing outside with Karoline and Nanny

Daddy and his girls before bed time

The rest of the pictures are from my attempts at an at-home photo session with Miss Emily. We got a few decent ones.

Welcome Home Emily!!

We were lucky enough to get to come home Friday afternoon. We are so thankful that our doctor was a fan of letting me recuperate at home so that we didn't have to stay in the hospital over the weekend. We were able to start settling in at home and had a chance to visit with family and friends over the weekend.

Our first few days at home have been great...practically perfect!! Emily is so sweet and laid back and Kate has been the perfect big sister that I knew she would be. She has been super sweet and interested, but not too interested, in Emily and doesn't seem to mind sharing her Momma and Daddy with her new baby sister. We had to go back to the hospital Saturday morning for some lab work (everything's good) and as soon as we got back home Kate asked me if she could hold Emily. I asked Nick if he had talked to her about it and he hadn't, she just came up with the idea all on her own. You can tell when Kate holds Emily and looks at her that she's proud of her little sister. It's absolutely amazing that somebody as young as Kate can seem to grasp what is going on and welcome Emily into her life so openly. I cannot even begin to count all of our blessings!! I am absolutely in love with our newly updated little family!

Loaded up and ready to head home!

Welcome home Emily!!

Papa and Nonna arrived Thursday. Papa stayed through the weekend and we are so lucky that Nonna will be staying for a couple of weeks.

Emily checking Papa out

First bath at home. Momma and Daddy weren't nearly as stressed out as we were for Kate's first bath at home.

All clean after her first bath

Kate holding Emily for the first time. She was so sweet!

Giving Emily a kiss

Sweet sisters! I love my beautiful girls!!

Amelia and Anne Marie checking out baby Emily

Anne Marie and Aunt Lori meeting Emily

Claire and Aunt Brandi hanging out with us on Saturday

Daddy snuggled up with Emily

Momma with her girls

Kate leaning in for a kiss. I really can't believe how great she has been! Kate loves her little sister!

Happy Birthday Emily Alice!!!

We are very excited to introduce Miss Emily Alice Speyrer. Emily was born at 1:23 AM, weighing in at 7 lbs, 11 oz and 20 1/4 inches long. As I posted just a couple of days ago, we were fully expecting to not be meeting Miss Emily until our scheduled date of the 15th but she had other plans for us! Last night while relaxing at home my water broke and and set things in motion for today to be Emily's birthday. I was very surprised, actually in shock I think, that my water actually broke since I believed this be a pretty unlikely scenario given the fact that Emily was still breech. Luckily we had pretty much everything together and were able to call on close friends, The Levys, to watch Kate (who was sound asleep) until Pop Pop could arrive to stay with Kate for the rest of the night. Water broke about 10:15, arrived at the hospital at about 11:15 and Emily was born at 1:23.

We have had a perfect day as our newly formed family of 4. Emily has been very laid back and relaxed so far. She is nursing like a champ and hardly cries for anything...of course we know this can all change at any moment but she has been happy as can be so far. We have continued to comment all day on how much Emily looks exactly like Kate did when she was born. You'll have to take a look for yourself and see (See Kate's birth blog post). Emily got to meet her big sister mid-morning and that went great as well. Kate was very excited to meet the "bee-bee" and was very sweet, even sharing a couple of kisses. We finished off Emily's birthday with the continuation of our tradition of a zero birthday party. Nonna, Poppa and Pop Pop helped us celebrate with a cookie cake and a couple of rounds of "Happy Birthday" in Emily's honor. Kate loved the singing and the cake and, thanks to those two things, probably thinks that having a little sister is pretty fun since it comes with parties and presents (Emily had a gift for Kate for when they met) and cake.

All in all it was a perfect day even if two of the biggest planners (Nick and myself) were thrown for a loop with this unexpected birth date! We enjoyed our intimate birth experience as just the three of us and are head over heels in love with our newest addition! We are unbelievably blessed with both of our girls and can't wait to see their sisterly bond grow as they get to know one another better.

Emily Alice weighing in at 7 lbs, 11.2 oz

Proud parents!

Emily meeting Big Sis, Kate for the first time. Kate was very sweet!

Emily meeting her Pop Pop

Kate checking out the birthday cake as we all sang "Happy Birthday" to Emily.

The happy family of four!

Emily at almost 38 weeks

I went to the doctor for my 37 week appointment last Thursday. All is still looking good and still looks like her birthday will most likely be the 15th. We had an ultrasound and got a glimpse of our girl. Nick and I agreed that she seems to look like Kate as best we can tell. It was hard to get a very good look at her face and/or profile though since she is wedged up so high in my ribs. Measurements are also a little tougher to come by since she is breech but every head measurement that was taken came in at greater than 97th percentile. The other measurements (belly, leg, etc) weren't quite as big and the overall weight estimate was 7 lbs, 9 oz, but the ultrasound tech said that the estimates can be off as much as a pound. We (actually Nick) remembers them being off with Kate. We were thinking she was going to be a little bigger than she ended up being (7 lbs, 0.5 oz) but I do remember them telling us that it was really hard to measure her for the same reasons (head jammed in my ribs :)). We'll know for sure in just a few short days all of the little details about her. We are very excited, anxious (Nick) and just READY (me) for Emily to get here! We will have one last appointment this week and if there's anything to report I will be sure to post it. Otherwise look for an update next Monday after Miss Emily's arrival! Keep us in your prayers that things go smoothly! Here are a couple of ultrasound pics that we thought we'd share:

I know these can be really hard to make out but this is her face looking right at you. Looks like she has some chubby cheeks.

This is basically the same view as above, the tech just tried to back up a bit so that you saw more eye lid instead of eye socket. We were able to see her eyes moving around in one of the shots that we got though. Amazing!!

Kate - 21 Months and Counting

I can't believe that Kate is 21 months old...for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious is that she is only 3 months away from turing two and I can't believe how fast time is flying. Secondly, all I have been able to think about her turning 21 months is that all through my pregnancy I have been telling people that the girls will be 21 months apart and now we are here! So obviously Kate is less than a week away from becoming a big sister! She is talking, talking, talking non stop right now. The funniest part is that in some ways we have kind of reverted back to some jibberish. In the beginning it was all jibberish, then she got really good at one and two word recognizable phrases and now I think she is trying to mimic conversational talking so she's adding jibberish in with her recognizable words. So it will be a string of jibberish and the two or three recognizable words will be at the end of her rambling. You just have to be patient and wait for them. It's pretty funny. Kate loves to count and has for some time now. She used to count with the numbers all out of order, but now we can catch her counting to 12 in order with no help. We think she's pretty smart. We are still working on colors and while most things are still "yeh-yo" (yellow) she's actually getting purple right a fair amount of the time. Kate has also always been a dancer and really enjoyed music but over the last few weeks she has found "her song" that she wants to dance to every day and once she gets started, before the song can even end she's chanting "again, again!" Her song of choice is Knee Deep by Zac Brown Band and Jimmy Buffett. Love the song but anything can wear on you after you hear it a thousand times. The dancing is the best when it's solo, but she's also gotten to where she likes to have a partner for much of her dancing. Her favorite partners are Mike the Tiger and any baby doll that may be close by. And if she's tolerating other music on the radio she will still definitely let us know if she wants us to change the song or not.

Well our next Kate update is sure to be different as she settles into life as a big sister, or I guess more like life that will have to be shared with a little sister. We all know it's going to be a big adjustment but hope that Kate handles it as best she can. Here are just a few recent pictures and a couple of videos.

Kate enjoying her new table and chairs in her room. She was excited to sit at the table and is dying to eat at it.

Kate swimming at her friend Adi's birthday party

August 15 - A Good Day for a Birthday???

Well me and Miss Emily are entering the home stretch of this pregnancy. As of today, I am 37 weeks and officially full term even though pregnancies are technically measured out 40 weeks. I am going to the doctor weekly and everything continues to look good. I went on Thursday of this week and we have made no progress as of yet and we went ahead and scheduled the c-section for Monday August 15 at 8:00 AM. Seems like a great day for a birthday to me! But then again at this point just about any day seems like a great day for a birthday to me. I guess Miss Emily will be the one to decide if the 15th is going to be her birthday or if she would like to come and see us sooner.

We have continued to get ready for her arrival. My mom came down and surprised me for my birthday the weekend of the 17th. We spent a few days shopping for a few little things that I needed for Emily. Nick also got all of our baby items out of the attic and Mom and I washed clothes and put together bouncey seats, swings, etc. After that weekend I felt like we were in great shape as far as being ready for Emily's arrival. Then we had a little excitement this week that motivated me to get some bags packed just in case. I had regular contractions for a few hours one evening. But my trip to the doctor for my regularly scheduled appointment confirmed what I had already figured out...that it was just false labor. I like to think of it as God's way of reminding me and Nick that we need to be ready whenever. So now we are ready, ready with bags packed and everything.

And to close with an interesting side note--Nick pointed out last night that the next tropical storm is to be named Emily. The depression that is in the Atlantic right now that looks to be most likely named Emily is tracking towards the Caribbean and Cuba right now and then who knows. Nick said if it tracks into the gulf, develops into a hurricane and causes destruction maybe we should consider changing Emily's name. I laughed and said as long as it took us to decide on Emily, we are sticking with it, hurricane or not! So we're just waiting here on Hurricane Emily :) We are ready for her to disrupt our lives. We just hope it's only the Emily I'm carrying or that if there is a hurricane Emily that it either stays away from here or that the two Emily's don't decide to arrive at the same time! Oh well. Out of our control but a pretty interesting coincidence don't you think?

We go next Thursday for our 37 week appointment and what will probably be our last ultrasound. I will be sure to post another update including any ultrasound pics that we are able to get next week.

Kate Has an Announcement...

In case you need a translator for Kate's video, she is trying to tell you that her baby sister's name is Emily! We have finally decided after changing our minds several times, debating over different names and living with Emily for a little while to make sure it feels right. As with Kate's names, we really wanted to try to use family names if we could agree on one. Emily is after Nonna, my Mom, who is actually Emma Lee. She was named Emma after her maternal grandmother and Lee was after her Dad, Leo, who was often called Lee.

Kate has been referring to her baby sister as Sissy for a while now but pretty recently has been able to tell us that her name is "Emma-me". The video clip at the end where she is banging the spoon she had spontaneously broken out in an "Emma-me" chant that night that was pretty funny.

Of course now that Kate is comfortably in her big girl bed, we have been able to get the nursery set up with her old furniture. Here are some pictures of the nursery in progress. It's in pretty good shape, just a couple more pictures on the wall are needed and it will be done. Next we'll need to start getting clothes, swings, bouncey seats, etc out of the attic. We're really getting ready for our newest little girl! I had an appointment with the doctor this week and there's not much to report which is a good thing. We should be a little over 5 weeks from a scheduled c-section date but we haven't scheduled anything definite yet. We'll have an ultrasound in about 3 weeks and then maybe we'll start to firm things up with the scheduled date. Of course Miss Emily could decide she needs to meet all of us on her own schedule too so we'll see!

The name just went up today