Addison Grace Kehrli

Addison Grace Kehrli

Born Wednesday, September 26th at 11:02 a.m.

8 pounds, 9 ounces

18.5 inches long

 

The complete, unabridged tale of the arrival of Addison Grace (we are keeping this blog to update family and friends, but also as a way to document our life, so apologies for the detailed account, but we want to remember the first few days of our family of FOUR :))

We arrived at Swedish Hospital just after 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, September 26th, anxious to meet our daughter. As soon as we arrived, we entered labor and delivery triage, were given a room (the same one we were in for the version procedure the week prior) and I was hooked up to a machine to monitor our little girl's heartbeat. The nurses asked a million questions, I was given an IV and we waited... The charge nurse came into the room about 9:15 (15 minutes prior to my scheduled surgery) to inform us that a few other more emergent cases had come in and my scheduled c-section would be delayed. So again, we waited...

About 10:30 a.m. one of the anesthesiologists came into the room to explain the procedure and that's when things really started moving! My doctor came in, chatted for a bit and no less than 15 minutes later we were in the OR for surgery. To say that the entire experience was surreal would be an understatement. I was awake, with Bob in the room while doctor's and nurses prepped me for pretty major (routine, yes, but major) surgery. I have never had surgery before, but the way they show it on TV the patients aren't awake, listening to the doctors every word -- and just like on Grey's Anatomy they really do have small talk as they are performing surgery! I learned that my doctor of nine months had gotten engaged in April and the other surgeon took some great trips this summer -- all while, laying on an operating table, holding Bob's hand.

About 5 minutes after the surgery began, our little girl made her debut, butt first and not without a little drama :) Bob went over to her as the nurses cleaned her up. Prior to the surgery, we were told that once she had been with the nurses for a couple of minutes, we would get to hold her while they finished the surgery, but alas our little (still unnamed) daughter wasn't breathing quite right and had been cut on her buns when they made the incision to get her out. A surgeon was called in to look at her cut and then a neonatal nurse was brought in to assess her breathing.



Our little blue baby (cut buns and all)!

Getting oxygen (and some color back!)

All along we said that we would name our daughter when we met her. We arrived at the hospital with a short list of three names -- two that I really liked (one more than the other) and two that Bob liked. I thought we would end up with the cross-over name, but when I asked Bob what she looked like, while I was laying on the operating table and he had been on the other side of the room with our daughter, he said, "I think she looks like an Addison" (my favorite name, which has been a favorite since I lived in Palo Alto and drove across Addison Street on my way to Homer on a regular basis -- no, not because of Addison Montgomery on Grey's Anatomy ;)). I hadn't seen her much yet and still hadn't held her so we decided to wait to make a final decision...
 

The nurse wasn't super happy with her breathing so they decided it was best to monitor her for a bit in the NICU. Definitely not what we were expecting, but fine by us to make she was going to be OK. Bob asked if I wanted him to go with me to recovery or with our daughter to the NICU. Obviously, we decided he should go to the NICU and off they went while the doctor's finished my surgery.


Ready for her trip to the NICU...

Hooked up to machines in the NICU - she was the biggest baby in there by FAR!

Waiting in the recovery room while Bob and our little girl were in the NICU was the longest 2 hours EVER! When Bob arrived with an update, I was ready to be taken to a regular room and the nurses said we could stop by the NICU to see our little miss. The nurse had hoped they could just send her with us, but they wanted to watch her for a little bit longer...



Visiting the little miss in the NICU on the way from recovery to our hospital room...
She is about 3 hours old in this picture!

 

Just after we made it to our regular room, Dad and Robie (Pops and Mimi :)) arrived at the hospital. They asked what we had named her and after a few minutes of whispering between Bob and me, we decided Addison just felt right! I guess he had decided a few weeks back that he really liked that name and it fit our defiant little girl best.

Bob took Dad and Robie up to meet Addison in the NICU (one at a time). While he was upstairs with Robie, John and Margaret (Papa and Ema) arrived. Bob came back to the room with a great report and Addison in tow!



Addison with Papa...

Addison with Ema...

Addison with Mimi...
 

Addison with Pops...

Our first afternoon/evening was a bit of a whirlwind. Lots of cuddles with Addison, visits from nurses checking our vitals, etc. Late on our first night, Addison was taken to the nursery for a bath with daddy close behind to document the event!

Not too sure about the whole bath thing...

She LOVES being on her tummy!

Addison slept really well her first night. She woke up when the nurses came in to poke and again to meet her pediatrician in the morning, but otherwise she was a sound little sleeper. Fingers crossed this is a trend that will continue!

Mama and Addison waking up on her first morning!

The next two days at the hospital were more of the same... Lots of doctor's and nurses poking at us, checking vitals, etc. and visits from family and friends - Dad, Robie and the new aunties even came to watch the Husky game in our hospital room :).

 

Aunt Maddie with Addison - thanks for driving up from Corvallis to meet her :)

Auntie Chasie with Addison - who also made a major drive (from Pullman) to meet her!

Addison with her great grandma Sleavin (Bob's maternal grandma) -
this is the first Kehrli great-grandchild (Addison is #7!) she has met in the hospital!

Four generations...

Addison had a couple photo shoots -- one with her Aunt Maddie and Aunt Chasie (they were so cute with her!), and another with a professional photographer that makes the rounds for newborn shots at Swedish. She was MUCH more calm for her Auntie photo shoot ;)

 

Resting with daddy...

Wouldn't be an auntie photo shoot without some funny pictures...
as Chasie said, Addison is coming in HOT!

 

Proud grandparents - so in love with their first grandbaby!

 

Meeting Bob and Susan Wenzl - Bob and my dad have been friends for over 20 years!

We were discharged after two nights (pretty typical for a C-section at Swedish as long as mom and baby are doing well).

 

Time to head home!

Mt. Rainier in the distance... who knew we had a view from our room?!?!?
(Bob swears the mountain had not been out at all during our stay.)

One of the awesome nurses at Swedish - we had Tara for two day shifts and she was GREAT!

Buckled in and ready to head home!

Apparently Addison likes car rides as much as her daddy... asleep within minutes!

Addison with a bone for her pup... we figured it couldn't hurt ;)



Overall, the entire experience was incredible! Yes, scary at times, but in the end we got to come home with the greatest gift of all - a perfectly healthy little baby girl. We are so in love with Addison already and we cannot wait for the exciting times ahead. Here's to our next adventure - our life ahead with Addison Grace :)

We are READY!

Today is the day we officially become parents. To say its wild knowing that fact would be an understatement! For the last week every time someone asks me when the baby will be here and I can say, "Wednesday" (with certainty), I think about what that means...

After 5 years of being just the two of us, we are ready to welcome the love, joy and sheer craziness that comes with kiddos. We know there will be ups and downs, but as we have said for awhile now, we are ready to be ready! Ready for sleepless nights (hello, remember Bob's preparation watching the Olympics???), dirty diapers, big decisions, Saturday soccer games (yes, I know this will be awhile), family vacations, less time for ourselves, but most of all, sharing our lives with a little one.

Wish us luck - baby will be here in about 2 hours :) More updates to come - stay tuned...

Just add baby...

At long last (and after many requests)... pictures of the nursery! And since you waited so long, I am posting a lot of them :) Still a few finishing touches to add (a couple pieces of art, maybe an initial once we name her, a homemade pillow on the glider to match her bedding, etc.), but we are ready to bring our daughter home on Wednesday :)

Pictures of the nursery BEFORE...

The nursery is actually connected to our room (walk through a
hallway with our closets and bathroom and into the nursery)...

Deciding on a paint color... moving away from the lovely light green that
covers the top floor of our house.

Furniture pick up (Bob's little truck is EXCELLENT for some things)...

Thanks for helping, Tyler!

Painting in progress...

Assembling furniture, hanging curtains and picking a Fantasy Football team... the life of a new dad :)

Good thing we have such an excellent helper...

For those of you that don't know, getting the dresser into the nursery was not the easiest task. After Bob and Tyler schemed for about an hour (unpacking, measuring, turning, etc. before finally deciding that this dresser was NOT going to make it up the easy way), Bob started thinking of ways he was going to get the dang thing upstairs. With four tall, strong boys in town for our shower about a month after the initial moving attempt, Bob's plan was set into motion... Repackage the dresser, remove the windows from the back part of our bedroom, have two men simultaneously hoist said dresser up two ladders to two others waiting in our bedroom and VOILA! Man I am glad I married an engineer :)

One happy guy :)

And now the AFTER photos... LOTS of pink - this baby better show up as expected or we will have one pink loving boy (at least for a little while). 

Every little girl needs a chandelier :)
(BTW, Kenai TOTALLY thinks that giraffe on the rocker should be his...)

Very fitting that first completely finished room in our house is the bedroom for our little miss. Spoiled and stubborn from the start ;) Can't wait to meet her on Wednesday!

The countdown is ON!

We had an appointment with the doc today and found out that our stubborn little miss will be joining us on WEDNESDAY, September 26th (a birthday buddy for our friend, Stacy :)) Despite a few BIG moves last night, she is still sitting in my belly, checking out the world right side up.

We can't wait to meet her in less than a week! Stay tuned for more updates (and PHOTOS!)...

Flip That Baby!

As I alluded to in an earlier post, our little miss has decided to be a bit defiant. For awhile I have suspected that her head is wedged nicely in between my ribcage, but the doc felt my belly at an appointment about a month ago and noted that she was head down. Last week, when we went for our regular check up, the doc felt around and again thought she was positioned perfectly, with her head down. We did an ultrasound to confirm since the doc was a bit suspicious of the hard spot between my ribcage and sure enough, she is sitting up in my belly - NOT the way she should be at this point. Most babies flip by the 36th week and if they don't, they typically stay breech.

The doctor presented two options... 1) schedule a C-section for sometime between the 39th and 40th week or 2) try something called a version to flip her from the outside -- a procedure with a 50/50 success rate. The doc talked through the process, which involves a lot of pushing and maneuvering of my belly, and the potential risks, the biggest being that the baby may not tolerate it and we would have to do an emergency C-section immediately.

Bob and I discussed the options and thought a LOT about what we wanted to do. In the end, we decided that we would try the version and if it didn't work, be a-OK with a scheduled C-section, the best (and essentially only - at least with my doctor's office) next step for me and the baby. The appointment was scheduled for this morning so we left our house with our bags packed (just in case).

We checked in at the hospital and got set up in a room where the doctor hooked me up to a machine that monitored the baby's heart rate. The ultrasound folks were a bit behind so we waited for them to arrive, reading magazines and relaxing (although I will say, labor and delivery triage is not the most relaxing place in the world -- talk about an unnecessary preview for labor!) Once the ultrasound folks arrived things moved very quickly. They confirmed the baby was still breech -- "frank breech" to be exact, which is the most common breech position (65 - 70% of breech babies are frank). Essentially it means that her butt is shoved into my pelvis and her legs are extended straight out (feet near her ears).

The doctor tried to flip her one direction (head over the back) and twice more the other direction. She got her about halfway around at one point (mostly her head), but could not get her butt to move after repeated attempts to lift her bum out of my pelvis. So, despite the doc's best efforts, our little one has decided to prove her stubbornness before she even arrives -- remaining just the way we started -- sitting pretty, right side up in my belly. 

She tolerated the whole process quite well -- no elevated or dropped heart rate -- so now we schedule a C-section. They typically schedule for between 39 and 40 weeks and I will be 39 weeks on Sunday. We have another appointment with the doctor on Thursday where we will confirm our little one's birthday! Stay tuned for more on that front and thanks for the well wishes today! Punky Brewster remains PUNKY!

Nicknames...

While our daughter may still remain nameless (a short list of three ain't bad!), she has already earned herself several nicknames that I feel like we should acknowledge, and take note of, since I am hoping that NEITHER of the names included directly below remain after she actually joins us on the outside world...

"Full Of" -- While we were in Bend for Labor Day weekend, Robie and the girls were really trying to get us to give in and share the baby's name. We have talked openly about her middle name, Grace, and so as we continued to deflect possible first name options, the girls teased that her name was Mary or Hail Mary... I jokingly said, lets just call her "full of" and thus formed a new nickname! Being married to Bob, I had to continue the joke noting that she wasn't "full of $#@*," reserving that name for her dad :)

"Punky" or "Punky Brewster" -- Last week at our regular doctor visit we found out that our little one is breech. She simply didn't want to flip around and is "sitting pretty" as Ali said. We were given two options -- schedule a C-section or come in this week to try to flip her and if that doesn't work, schedule a C-section. More on that in the next blog post (coming shortly), but she has rightfully earned herself the name Punky!

We also call her "the little miss" and "baby K" -- she will likely always be the little miss, but once we choose a name for her, baby K will likely be off the books. We can't wait to meet our little one -- and finally know her name for ourselves!