7/14/08 Hospital Day 4

OK, I was only in the hospital five days but I told you we took a TON of photos! This is actually part one of day 4. On this day Lindsay came to visit for the second and final time. We got some really great pics of her with Brooke. Lindsay's reaction to Brooke every time was so great. Even now at home she is so IN TO her sister. We've only had a couple of "jealous" moments where I was holding Brooke and Lindsay pulled the "mommy hold you" card. Each time she has seemed satisfied to sit next to me and cuddle with her sister or help feed Brooke a bottle. I'm feeling very good about the way Lindsay has taken to being a big sister. I have a separate post I'm working on of the pics of Lindsay & Brooke.

Here is Brooke with our OB...same great lady who brought Lindsay into the world too!
This onsie cracks me up! Thanks Tracie & Alecia! Love this pic of Brooke too!
Brooke meets my boss Kevin!
Our friend Shannon dropped in for a visit.
Check her out! She already knows how to hold her paci! Smart girl!

Our priest Father Frank with Brooke. He will Baptize her soon. Father Frank has known Mike and I since we were dating. He married us and will have Baptized both of our girls. He is truly special to our family!
Mommy & her Big Girl!
Aunt Patti giving kisses and taking care of a little melt down.
Some friends of ours delivered this giant monkey to us for Lindsay!
I think she likes him!

Tomorrow is my two week check with my OB and Mike sees his vascular surgeon again...the fun never stops. Lindsay is going to get some QT with her cousins and Brooke is coming along with mom and dad. I will update more when I can on the current stuff. It's been a rough and tumble week. NO ONE got out of their pj's yesterday and we barely made it today. We did manage to go to the playground tonight and let Lindsay blow off some steam. Poor kid hasn't been outside in three days. I'm having some weird issues that I'm very glad I'm seeing the doc tomorrow. Maybe it's anxiety but I'm having trouble breathing and get out of breath just walking across a room. I feel like I should be doing much better than I am at this point. I got some extra sleep today but at the expense of Mike and now he's exhausted. I guess that's how it goes for the first few months though. One or both of the parents is always on the low end. It's just harder knowing Mike is still facing another surgery in about four weeks. I'm so thankful for all the help we have. I can't imagine going through this with no family around. Two kids at this stage makes one baby seem like a piece of cake! I'd never go back though...Brooke is another precious miracle and we're SO lucky to be where we are. The hormone stuff seems a little better since we got Lindsay home. Now if I can just FEEL better I would be so much happier.

Thanks again to all of my blog pals. Several of you have sent me private emails and I swear I am getting them. I've not had the time to respond like I should. It means so much to us to know you guys are praying for Mike and I and that you are enjoying our blog!

More soon!

Hospital Day 3

Our view from our room...pretty nice eh? Somehow I managed to get the top floor in the new section of the Women's Center! Sweet!
Brooke trys on her Snoopy outfit passed down from Lindsay
Chris, Aunt Kimmie and Brooke
I recreated this photo. I have one of me with Lindsay in this outfit.
Happy mommy & daddy with our new daughter
My nephew Michael and Brooke
Here's his girlfriend Deb with Brooke. We made a point to take pictures of each visitor for Brooke's memory book
Missy and Anthony's oldest daughter getting some baby time. Caylin is a natural!
Jessica dropped by for some baby time too! Jess, I have a new respect for you as a mommy of FOUR!
Some more of Mike's photo art. I liked this shot because it reminded me of Brooke's pregnancy ticker and Lindsay & Brooke are our "summer flowers"!

7/12/08 Hospital Day 2

Classic Brooke with the bottom lip sucked in.

Sweet Angel Baby
"What do you mean I'M the Little Sister??"
Tara drops by for a visit!
Lindsay's first visit to see her little sister! She ran straight to DADDY!
Grandmama holding Brooke

Lindsay is like her mommy...checks the toes out first!
I'd say we have one proud big sis!
Grandmama with all her grand babies. Can't wait to see how many years it takes us to get a perfect shot of this with all the kids smiling and looking at the camera! HA!HA! (Thanks Derek for cooperating!)
Lindsay was all smiles and giggles over Brooke. It was SO sweet!
Aunt Helen and cousins Adam (l) and Derek (R) get in on some baby time!

Derek loves both his cousins!
Adam gets his chance to hold Brooke by himself!Brooke meets her Uncle David!
Mommy finally gets Lindsay time. She was apprehensive to get on the bed with me.
During our visit the nurses came in and took out the epidural and iv's. YAY! I was able to get dressed which helped Lindsay want to be around mom more. I love the way Brooke is holding her hands in this shot.

Mommy & her Girls for the first time
Lindsay is very curious about Brooke.
Lindsay receives her gift from baby Brooke. Her own new baby and Graco carseat! This was a huge hit with Lindsay!
Too funny...little mama instinct already!
I'd say Brooks is one PROUD GRANDPA and just a little happy with the name we picked for his second granddaughter!

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!