Maya Abigail is born

This morning, Maya Abigail was born at 6:05 AM. She weighed 7 lbs 6 oz and measured 19.5 inches. Due to lack of sleep, I'll leave it at that and provide more details later. For now, here are a few photos.

The Baby Shower

Last Saturday we had a baby shower for Christina and baby Maya. It was quite a fun event. We held it in our home instead of renting someplace. That was nice because we had a much more comfortable environment, had plenty of time to setup and prepare, and I think it ended up being a much more personal experience. It was also an advantage not to have to lug all the gifts home.


Preparation

First thing to do was make out invitations. We looked at buying invitations from the store, but they were all just too generic and not very exciting. Instead, we decided to make our own invitations. That allowed us to customize them to the theme of our shower (which was actually the theme of Maya's room): butterflies and dragonflies.



For each of the guests we wanted to have some party favors. We bought some little scented hand lotions for everyone and then we decided to give out something handmade, too. To go with the theme of the shower, we made little butterfly candy bags. They were made with clothespins, paint, glitter glue, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and snack size zip-storage bags. Each one was done with a unique combination of colors.





We put some balloons out in the yard



and Bob drew some artwork on the whiteboard (with little time to do so)



Guests

There were just over 20 people there (including the 3 kids, myself, Bob, and Christina's dad and grandpa).


Danielle & Tanya


Aunt Cindi & Jenny


Debbie


Beve, my Mom, & Sandy


Aunt Jo & David


Christina's Grandma


Amanda, Clara, & Christina's Mom


and, of course....the guest of honor


Games

There were 5 games at the party. The first game was to guess the belly size. Every guest makes a guess at how big Christina's waist and belly measure and cuts a string to that length. Then an official measurement string is cut and everybody's string is compared to this. The closest guess wins. Amanda won that prize, guessing only about 2 inches too big. Danielle was the only person to guess too small. Everybody else went too big....way to big, in fact.

The second game was to name as many baby items as possible in 5 minutes. Danielle won this game with 46 items.

The third game was my own personal favorite. As guests arrived, we gave them a tour of baby Maya's nursery so they could get a good look at the decoration. Little did they know, about an hour later we'd be testing them to see how much they saw.


click the photo to see all photos of the room.

While everyone was finishing up eating, we hit them with the surprise, handing them the following 10 question/28 answer game card.



(note, the photos of the room linked above are from a few weeks prior to the shower, so a few questions concern things that are not visible or had changed in that time). The winner of the game was Amanda, with 20 correct answers. Second place was a tie between Danielle and Debbie, with 15 correct answers each. Third place went to my mom, with 14 correct.

The fourth game was the Baby Egg Game, and it was also quite interesting. At the beginning of the shower, each guest received one sealed, plastic easter egg. The rule was that they had to protect their egg for the entire shower, but they could not stuff it in a purse, pocket, bag, etc. They had to keep it out in the open. If you found an egg that wasn't being watched, you could steal the egg. Whoever had the most eggs at the end wins a prize. The game almost ended up as a 3 way tie (if I recall correct, Aunt Cindi stole Jenny's egg, Danielle stole Tanya's egg, and Sandy stole somebody else's egg). However, Danielle left her 2 eggs unwatched and Sandy got both of them, giving her the win with 4 eggs. Then each person opened their eggs, and one egg contained an INSTANT WINNER ticket. Sandy also had that egg, giving her 2 prizes for this game.

The last game was Baby Shower Bingo. You fill in a bingo card with the names of items you think Christina would receive as gifts. As each gift was opened, you marked off that item on your card. When you got a Bingo, you win a prize.




Finally, in addition to the 5 games, we had a diaper raffle, where each guest receives raffle tickets for the diapers they bring as gifts.



The winner was Debbie, and she received a gift pack full of sweet pea scented beauty items (shampoo, body wash, bath salts, etc) and related items.




Food

We had a nice, filling lunch (more like dinner) with fried chicken, mostaccioli, meatballs, taco salad, salad, bread, fruits & vegetables, etc. And for dessert we had a mousse-filled cake.




Gifts

Everyone was quite generous, and we had a ton of gifts to go through. We got an incredible assortment of clothing. We also got a bunch of diapers and number of other baby items (bouncer, rocker, sleep positioner, co-sleeper, diaper bags, toys, etc), along with some cash/gift cards, and a bunch of books. We also received two incredible hand made gifts. The first was a toy box from Bob and Amanda, and it had been decorated with hand painted butterflies and dragonflies. The second item was a cross-stitched quilt from Sandy, decorated with animals, a train, and baby carriages and toys. Both gifts must have taken an incredible amount of time and effort, and both will be treasured.

Below are some photos to give you an overview of what we got. There are photos of the clothes (but not all the other non-clothing gifts) that each person gave (except somehow I'm missing a photo of what Amanada gave), and then all the toys and all the books. I don't have summary photos of all the other items we got (they're packed in the closet for the moment, to keep the nursery in order until we get a chance to go through everything). However, just about everything should be in the complete set of photos from the shower (the link is down further). If I'm missing photos of anything...blame Bob, because he had the camera.






























Conclusion

A big thanks to everyone who came, gave us wonderful gifts, helped organize, brought food, etc. It was all very much appreciated, and I can think of no better way to have thrown a more memorable shower for us.

Here is the complete set of photos from the shower: http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/baby_shower

Maya Abigail - her name has been decided

As I posted back in February, we had an easy agreement on her name but ran into a conflict on the spelling. It didn't take us long to figure out and agree on the middle name of Abigail, but the first name spelling has been a sticking point for about 4 months now. However, we've now come to an agreement in the last week. Her name will be Maya Abigail Frazier. Coming to the final decision was difficult, but it only entailed me relinquishing all rights to choose the name of our next child :).

Now the baby room is pretty well finished, so I'll post photos soon. The baby shower is set for this Saturday. We've got 3 weeks of birthing classes left, and the breastfeeding class was done last week. The house is pretty well in order. Our monthly, semi-weekly, and now weekly OB visits have been going well. Typical progress, nothing out of the ordinary, she's turned head down as she's supposed to, fluid levels are fine, etc. We haven't had any more ultrasound photos to post (this week was the first ultrasound we've had since March, and we didn't get any photos of it).

Fetal Echo + More Ultrasound Photos

Today we went in to have a fetal echo done. Because I was born with a heart valve defect, and in about 1/4 of cases it has a genetic cause (with about 90% of those people passing it on to their children), they wanted to take a look at the baby's heart to see if she had a similar problem. They got a good look at all the valves and everything looked fine. They are normally shaped, they fully open and close, blood flow is typical, and the size/shape of the heart and chambers is normal.

They also did another ultrasound after, so there's 3 more photos below. Since the 3D ultrasounds were normal, the fetal echo was normal, and the blood tests have so far all been normal, this should be our last visit to the perinatologist, so from here on out it should hopefully just be normal ultrasounds.


Maya/Mya at 22-weeks


Mouth open



Foot

We're going to have a girl

Today we had our 18 week ultrasound done. It was quite interesting, as they did a very detailed examination and we got to see a lot. But most importantly, we got to find out the sex, and it's going to be a girl. I'm quite excited, as I was hoping for a girl.

Now we need to start working on the name. In a way that was easy because when we both listed the names we like, we both had the same name as our favorite, so there was really no debate there. However, there is a disagreement on how to spell it: Mya or Maya.

Anyway, here are the Ultrasound photos from today



A baby girl



Legs



Baby foot



Head and hand



Head - 3D Ultrasound



Misc

First 3D Ultrasound

About a month ago, we went in for our first 3D ultrasound. It was actually very interesting. The detail and realism that you see is just absolutely amazing. Unlike a traditional ultrasound, where you sort of have to use your imagination to make out the features of the baby, the 3D ultrasound is really about as close as you can get to an actual photograph. We felt very lucky to be able to experience something most parents don't get the chance to see.

Unfortunately, it was a bit too early for them to make out any of the details they wanted to examine (it was only about the 13th week), so it probably didn't turn out to be the most productive examination. We are going back at the 18th week to have another 3D ultrasound done. Hopefully that will show them what they want to see.

We weren't given digital copies of the photos. They are supposed to put the digital copies from both exams on a DVD for us the next time we go in. They did give us some hard copy printouts. While they do appear to be more detailed than what you see in a typical ultrasound, they don't show nearly the detail we saw on the monitor. Hopefully when we get the digitals they'll be a lot better.








Update:
We got the digital copies of the photos finally. However, we only got 1 photo from this visit and it wasn't a 3d shot.

Hearing the baby's heatbeat for the first time

We went in for our latest doctor's visit this week. It was a quick and easy exam, but the coolest part is that, for the first time we actually got to hear the baby's heatbeat. The doctor put a microphone on my wife's belly and moved it around. At first all you could hear was the loud sound of blood rushing through the placenta. The doctor thought he might have trouble finding the baby's heartbeat over it this early in the pregnancy, but then he found it...that little, racing heartbeat. It was a very cool experience. On our earlier ultrasounds, we got to see the heartbeat but in a way hearing it was even better.