7/11/08 Happy Birthday Brooke Marie!

7/11/08 - 38 weeks 5 days pregnant - 2.5 hours til baby is here!
Mommy is ready for surgery!
8:57 a.m. our daughter is born!
Mike gives me my first good look at our baby girl.
Proud Momma!
Here we are all together! I love this photo. We didn't get this shot when Lindsay was born.

8lbs 7.3 oz (oddly Lindsay was 7lbs 8.3 oz)
Daddy knew to get feet pictures for Mommy! Look how long those toes are! We were shocked!
Looking a little more cleaned up. She didn't get her first bath til the nursery because her blood sugar was just a tad low. The nurses had to feed her first and check it again. Once it was where they wanted it they were able to bathe her and bring her back to us.
"hmmm...what should they name me???"
In recovery waiting for a room!

Finally! Mommy & Baby get a room and baby is all clean and yummy!
I LOVE that NSH has the "girly" hats now. They didn't have these either two years ago. SO CUTE!
Check out the hair!! I thought Linds had hair but this is WAY more. I'm hoping she keeps it and it stays nice and thick. Maybe she'll have mommy's hair? Also curious to see if it lightens up like Mikes...time will tell.
Aunt Patti gets her baby time!
Aunt Missy getting her lovin's too!

Missy, Kim, Mike Brooke & Me! Yes, we did name her by this point. Mike and I decided 100% on the name once we got in the room. But I'll tell that story in a minute.
"I love my cousin Donna!"
Daddy still has his touch!
I got this button for Mike when I ordered Lindsay's Father's Day tee-shirt. I think it's pretty fitting! I surprised him with it at the hospital. Just a little something funny!
WOW, I can't believe we have another precious daughter to love!!

Well, there you have it day one minus the icky surgery pictures. I didn't feel the need to post those here. They no longer allow video in the O.R. so it stinks that we have all that for Lindsay and not for Brooke but we did take a ton of pictures. As a matter of fact, when I uploaded everything from the hospital stay it was over 300 photos. Gotta love digital. Now comes the daunting task of deciding what to develop for the baby book!

The morning went great. Got to the hospital at 6:30 and was off to surgery by 8:30 on schedule. It's funny that Brooke and Lindsay were both born at 57 of the hour. With Lindsay we went to the OR at 12:30 and she was born at 12:57 and Brooke was born at 8:57. How's that for consistency Dr. Soufi!? My doc was awesome! I feel great! I'm certain I was not moving around quite this good five days out from my last section. My only trouble right now is sleeping. I've been in some sort of insomnia mode since about a week before giving birth. I sleep for a few hours and then I'm up every hour the rest of the night. I cat nap for 30 minutes or so and then I'm wired. Tonight I'm giving in and I'm going to try some prescription sleeping meds so we'll see how that goes. Otherwise, we're doing pretty well. Right now Mike and I are enjoying some quiet time with just Brooke. We are dying to get Lindsay home but I need to feel a little better physically and have some sleep first. Hopefully we'll have her home by the weekend.

Brooke's first pediatric visit is tomorrow so we're looking forward to showing her off tomorrow at the office!

Brooke lost her cord on Tuesday as we were dressing her to come home. Aunt Patti unswaddled her and it was laying there in the blanket! I was amazed. That took two weeks for Lindsay. Frankly, I told Brooke she needed to SLOW DOWN. No growing up too fast! Hello? Losing the cord at the hospital? I didn't even have time to mourn that milestone! I have a feeling she's going to grow up even faster than Lindsay. I'm trying to drink in every bit of her, every day!

So, I'm sure you're all wondering how we finally named her. (Sorry Katie I know you were disappointed!)

Brooke was a name we were considering but did not want to share openly unless we were actually going to do it. We didn't think it would be very nice to tell grandpa we were just "thinking" about naming her after him. We still had not decided for sure that morning. On the way to the hospital we were discussing Sarah, Brooke and Katie. I told Mike I would consider Sarah if he really wanted it but not Sarah Beth. I asked him what he thought of Sarah Brooke. About that time we were arriving so we agreed to wait and see if she looked like a Sarah Brooke, a Katie Marie or a Brooke Marie.

Mike dropped me off at L&D to check in. The woman behind me was looking for her daughter's room. She walked up and said "I'm looking for Sarah Brooke _____". My jaw hit the floor! I mean that is NOT a common pair of names and I had just thought of it out of the blue in the car. I spoke up and asked her if she really did just say Sarah Brooke and shared our name dilemma with them. She told me her daughter goes by Brooke.

So, after Mike parked I told him the story and we had a good laugh at how weird that was. As we got settled into the pre op room my nurse walked in and said "Hi, my name is Brooke and I'll be your nurse this morning". SERIOUSLY???!!!! We were really freaking out at this point. So then I admit to Mike that although I like Katie it's seems like there are a lot of Katie's running around (no offense to my blog Katie's...) and the final coincidence happened in recovery. As we were looking at the baby mulling over names again, they rolled another mom into the cube next to me. The nurse said "what's her name" and the mom and dad proudly say "Katie".

We just kind of smiled and Mike said "I don't really think she looks like a Katherine" and I agreed. So long story short we waited til we got to the room and we ran through a few of our other back ups just to say yes or no that she didn't look like this or that. We wrote down Sarah Brook and Brooke Marie and looked at them on paper. Both of us really liked Brooke Marie and the fact that she'd have two family names (my middle and Mike's dad's) and Lindsay has two family names as well...it finally FELT right! It took us 9 months but we're both thrilled with our choice and happy to call her Brooke Marie Bresnan!