Natalie Elizabeth Jean Baker graced us with her presence at 5:23 am on August 9th, 2011. She was 7lb 15 oz and 21" long. She has beautiful long brown hair with blonde highlights. She is perfect.
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| This is the first photo of the two of us. Notice how mom is looking. Very tired but happy to see her new daughter. |
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| This is Natalie a bit more cleaned up. The hat she is wearing went straight to Rocky so he could get used to her smell. He had it in his cage and slept with it the whole time. He has been great with her. Natalie loves the hands by the face. She was like that in one of her ultrasounds and she was like that coming out too. Thanks hun!! |
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| This is both of us a little more cleaned up. |
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| Natalie had some temperature issues at the beginning. So they wrapped her up in a couple of blankets and put some warm ones on her to increase her temp. We did some skin to skin as well to help her out. It worked. This happens a lot with newborns. Her eyes look swollen because of the Vitamin K drops they put in. She looks like a bruiser already. |
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| Natalie showing her true colors. She gets herself so red in about a second when she is upset. She had the cutest little cry in the hospital. She sounded like a wookie. |
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| Here she is getting weighed and measured. Can you tell she likes it??? |
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| Another picture of her with the warming blankets. |
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| The first photo of dad in color. Natalie loves daddy time. |
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| This is the same photo as above but in black and white. Looks cool. |
I went into the hospital on Sunday the 7th because I was having some lower pelvic pains and wasn't sure what was happening. They checked me out on the fetal monitor and everything seemed to be doing ok. Then they looked at my history of high blood pressure and the cholestasis. My blood work had come back and indicicated a high level for the cholestasis but nothing that would raise a red flag before now. Since I was so close to the due date, and after consulting an expert at Dartmouth, they decided it would be best to induce me as nothing was happening up until this point. They tried several methods which I will not go into detail and we had some issues with a lot of them. By Monday afternoon, they broke my water and got ready for stuff to happen. Not much was happening. They ended up putting me on Pitocin to induce the contractions and boy does it. The contractions were very intense and plentiful. I ended up requesting some help and they put me on Stadol which takes the peak off the contraction. That helped a lot and about early Tuesday morning Natalie entered our world. She had the most beautiful head of hair. She was perfectly perfect. Chris was sooo helpful through the entire thing. He was always there giving me words of encouragement, always filling my water and giving me juice when I needed it. I could not have made it through without him. She was weighed and measured and we spent some quality time together as a family having her skin to skin with me. The pictures above are all of us still in the hospital. She doesn't look all that pretty but who does after all that.
We called both sets of parents and they came to visit later that day. We were in the hospital for the next 2 days. Throughout the whole stay we had the most fabulous staff at Wentworth Douglas Hospital attending to us. Even though you could hear that a lot of babies were being born in the time that we were there, we felt like the only ones there. They were very knowledgeable and helped us out a lot.
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| Here is our first family photo. I was really not sure about sizing. I picked out a 3 month dress and it was so huge on her. She was swimming in it. You can't tell from this photo but the dress goes about 2-3 inches below her feet. Oops. Who knew? |
We were finally able to go home on Thursday afternoon. It was the first time that I had seen the outside since Sunday morning. That is a long time to be in a hospital. We headed home. The first night was rough and I didn't get a lot of sleep. Chris decided the next morning that Natalie needed some outside stimulation so she had her first disc golfing excursion on her 3rd day of life.
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| Here she is getting her first hole in one. |
She loves being in the car seat and the stroller. The stroller is awesome. We have had a lot of visitors. Chris' mom came up the following Monday to help me out and then my parents were here for the rest of that week.
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| Here she is being held by her Rancourt Grandma. They loved spending time with her. It was so helpful having them around. They helped me have lots of successful shopping trips. Grandpa was the car seat carrier whenever we went somewhere. He also took Rocky out whenever he needed to. They are awesome grandparents. |
We have been taking a lot of photos of her different faces. She has been to the grocery store several times and been really good. She went to her first cook out on her 5th day. She got to go disc golfing again and I went with her. That was the most that I had walked since I sprained my ankle. We went to a new parent support group and got to meet a lot of other little ones and their parents. That was really interesting for me to ask questions of other moms who had already been through this. Life has been pretty good for Ms. Natalie so far. She went to her 2 week appt yesterday and the pediatrician said she was fine. She has gained back her birth weight and then some. She weighed 8lb 5oz.
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| This is her after the doctor's. She did not enjoy the doctor's too much because she was hungry. She had also visited my coworkers Cathy and Lena and my other friends at Community Action. They had been waiting and waiting to see her so we finally made the visit. |
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| This is just a funny photo of her arm sticking out. She loves the hands by her face. Not sure what she was doing here but it was the most comfortable position for her at the time. |
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| Another angle of the above photo. |
Some of my favorite faces and poses that she does:
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| Her deep thoughts look. |
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| She is just sooo cute!!! |
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| Mom and Natalie with their matching double chins. This is her Little B Princess onesie. Dad's favorite. |
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| My friend Becca helped me bring all of her newborn to 3 month clothes down stairs so we didn't have to keep going up stairs to get them. This is one of the dresses that was super cute. It is nice because it covers her giant cloth diapers. |
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| This is Natalie yesterday on her way to Drew and Becca's baby shower. When we got this outfit, I was not all that excited about it. Everything about it is so anti me, but seeing it on her she looked sooooooo cute. I love it. It is, however, not that easy to get on and off so the before and after it is not a pretty sight. Once it is on, she looks absolutely adorable. |
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| This is the face I get after she eats. She is just so content. I love to stare at her face. She looks like a little buddha. |
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| Another of her right after eating looks. So happy. |
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| This is her exhibiting her Moro reflex. All babies are born with it. I call it her Super Woman pose. |
