Baby Boy

There's This Boy Who Stole My

❤

He Calls Me Mom

I've seen this saying around and never understood it till our little boy was born. He's such a sweetie and we're going to love getting to know him.

1 Week Old!

Our little James has already been with us for 1 week. It has been heavenly to have someone so sweet in our presence. Like most newborns, he has done a lot of sleeping and eating. I think he is already doing very well with nursing. He is so calm and rarely cries.

I love all the faces babies make when they're stretching....

So peaceful!

James got his first bath. Jimmy did a great job!

I was the "Ali-holder" and photographer.

This girl is So in love with her brother! I love how excited she gets anytime he makes a peep! The first couple days she would run over to where he was, wait a second and then look slightly disappointed to see that he was still sleeping.

She is already dressing him up.

Jammie time!

Reading James a book.

And while we're on the topic of Mary Alice- this girl is TOO MUCH! She is such a character!

Her new thing is putting the swim cap on...

then walking around the apartment laughing like this.

She does not like things in her hair. In fact, she doesn't like anyone to have anything in their hair. She picks out my hair things all the time. So I was so surprised today that she not only wanted something in her hair, but she wanted all her bows and headbands on at the same time!

She can work the iPad pretty well. Kids these days!

This is her face when she gets to talk to daddy on the phone. She just beams the whole time! I love to watch her chat with him.
So, we made it through the first week. We are glad we made it through- Jimmy had a really hard week at school with classes and finals, I was alone with 2 kids for the first time (with LOTS of help from my friends here in the building and from church), Ali was learning to share the center of the universe, and James was learning how to survive in this world. At some points during the day I thought to myself, "This is it, I'm a 2-kid kind of mom.....and who even let me have this many?" But it was a great week and I loved spending it with my two little ones. Now we are looking forward to the next week when daddy will be home for Chinese New Year!

Our Chinese Birthing Experience

I'm not sure how to begin, so I'll just begin with the morning of Friday the 13th. We dropped Ali off at a friend's apartment in our building around 8:00 am. They have a little girl who is 1 month younger than Ali and we play with them regularly so I thought she would be comfortable with them. It was so hard leaving her. I started crying before we even left our apartment and couldn't stop until we were in the taxi. It was a busy time of morning, plus a lot of students were trying to catch taxis to go to school so it took us about 10 minutes to get one.

We arrived at the hospital at 8:30 am and our doctor and nurse were waiting for us.

Here is our sweet nurse, Clean Chen. She was so perfect! I love her!

They gave me a Hello Kitty gown to change into. So Chinese, I love it!

This is the only picture we have of our doctor for now. She had to run to deliver another baby as soon as James was born.

So, here's the story. I will try not to add too many details.

The doctor broke my water sometime between 8:45 and 9:00 am. The nurse monitored my contractions for about an hour. At about 10 am she started me on pitocin. By 11 am I was uncomfortable enough to want an epidural. I didn't really know how quickly this was all going to happen so I planned on settling in for a few hours. The nurses were saying he would be here by lunch time but that seemed so unreal to me after waiting 19 hours to see Mary Alice. I thought he'd be born by 5 pm at the earliest. I got the epidural, but I'm not sure I got an epidural. I mean, I know what it was like last time, and it did not have the same effect. With Ali, I had to have Jimmy move my legs for me. This time only my left leg got slightly tingly for about 30 minutes. I didn't feel the contractions as much but I felt everything below my hipbones. By 11:30 I was dilated to a 7 and the nurse called Dr. Xu. Dr. Xu got to the hospital about 15 minutes later. And stuck her hand in to feel how things were going. It must have been good because she called out something in Chinese and the whole room turned into a circus. Equipment was being wheeled in, my doctor suited up, they pulled handles up from the sides of my bed and foot plate thingys from the end. They slipped each foot into a cloth that went up to my knees, stuck my legs on the foot plates, told me to hold the handles, hold my breath and push. I had what seemed like 10 people yelling commands at me in broken English and then the counting started- "ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR...." with high pitched, Chinese accents. I couldn't feel the contractions very well but I felt all the pressure! I was pushing and there was A LOT of pain! I kept pushing and I didn't know what was going on except that it hurt so bad and I couldn't do it anymore. It seemed crazy! I knew I needed to push, because no one could do it for me, but I couldn't talk myself into doing it anymore. The head was just stuck and wasn't coming out. It was burning so much and I didn't know what to do. I was asking the doctor what to do and asking her to please help me. They just kept yelling at me to hold my breath and push. I was at the end of my rope and I just screamed and pushed. I screamed because it hurt, and I thought I was going to die, and I felt helpless. I could feel a little release from the pain as his head came out, then I pushed again and the rest of his body came out. It was over! Relief doesn't describe how I felt!

My face looks worried in the picture below because I was. Those 20 minutes before he was born were so crazy and as soon as he was born they quickly asked/shouted if I wanted to hold him right away. I said yes and they plopped him onto my chest. He hadn't even started crying yet and I had no idea what was going on. One of the nurses was rubbing him but he still wasn't doing anything. I told the doctor that I couldn't tell if he was breathing and she waved her hand at me. I didn't know what that meant- I guess it was supposed to mean that he was fine. So the pediatrician took him and he started to cry. I was relieved and started trying to calm down and process what had just happened. If we were at home I think the doctor would have done a little snip and the baby would have been out 10 minutes earlier. At the time I would have loved the snip, but I only required 1 stitch and my recovery is going to be so much quicker because of it.
As I look back on it, it was a great experience. It was hard, but it all happened as it should and overall it was very good. We have our little James and we love everything about him!

Here is a collection of photos that we took in the hospital.
They full on bathe the babies here. In the states, at least in Houston, they don't get the babies all wet until the umbilical cord falls off so this was new for us. Note: James HATED his baths.

Some of the pediatricians and nurses. My favorite was the pediatrician on the far right. She was so cute and sweet.

I love this sweet daddy! The only thing better than seeing him with 1 child is seeing him with 2!

James' little tag that they put on his bassinet.

Besides me suffering in the bed, you can see some of the equipment. Looks the same as home.

Was there not enough table room or do they always prefer weighing the babies on the microwave? I guess I could have moved the water bottle.

Sweetness!

The first meal they brought me. This is "pizza". Crunchy crust with slices of cheese semi-melted on top. We ate the whole thing and it actually tasted good by the end. We must have been hungry.



It was a crazy whirlwind of a delivery but the hospital stay was very relaxing and peaceful. No one came in to bother us from the hours of 8 pm to 7 am. It was awesome and we got so much rest! I loved the nurses. They were helpful, but not overbearing. This really surprised us because we're used to being malled anytime our child/children are in the same location as a Chinese person. The bathroom was not super clean. I won't go into detail but there were traces of the last patient. The bed was the most comfortable thing I've slept in since we got here!

So that's that. We're home now, and it's all a memory.... and a beautiful, sleeping baby laying next to me.

Ali Meets James

We've been waiting with anticipation to see how Ali would respond to James. It went so well and I'm relieved that she loves him so much. I was in my bed and James was in the bassinet next to me when Jimmy brought Ali in. She hadn't seen me since that morning and when she saw my face she smiled and wanted to come onto the bed with me. Before she reached the bed she looked up and spotted James. That was her new target. She pointed and said, "Baby". As soon as her feet touched the bed she crawled over and pulled on the side of the bassinet to get a better look. It was love at first sight! She likes babies but she usually isn't as interested in them as she was with James. We've been talking about him for months and it's almost like she understood who he was. We can say, "Where's James?" and she points at him or waves at him.

We put them together and she was so happy and cuddly with him. He looks slightly terrified. He might be right in feeling a little scared.

Then the kisses started. I don't remember if we even told her to kiss him before she laid one on him. Mouth open, of course. I'm hoping that mouth doesn't clamp down into a bite one of these times.

And then it was making sure he had all the right facial features- eyes, nose, mouth, ears. She LOVED looking at his feet and kept pulling his blanket up to look at them.

This is the day Ali met James and it went better than I imagined it would. I can't wait to watch these two grow up together and welcome more siblings into the family as time goes on. I love them and love that they love each other.

And they're already sharing so nicely! He let Ali lay in his bassinet and she was trying to share her snacks with him all day.

Welcome James!

James was born on Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:05 pm in Shanghai, China. He weighed 3.985 kilos and was 52 cm long (8.7 pounds and 20 inches). We are so grateful that he is here safe and healthy! We all love him so much and can't stop kissing his sweet face!

The First Week of the Year

(Love the black Chinese shoes!)

It has been a lovely week. It flew by and was filled with fun times and new discoveries. We just finished enjoying Saturday together.

We visited our new-found fruit market.

I love this one so much more than the other dark, damp place we used to go to.

Jimmy had to pick up something at the hardware store. This is not one aisle of the "hardware store", it is the whole store. They have so much random stuff crammed into these places.

We stopped in to Jiadeli to buy some eggs and paused at the meat counter. Scary.

I like to play a little game called "how many animals can I identify?".

One of the wives found a park not far from our place. Actually it's just down the street and around the corner from the new Jiadeli that we go to so we stopped by on our way to the store. As Ali touched these (DIRTY, GERM-INFESTED) X's and O's Jimmy said, "This would not have happened two months ago." So true. I would have never stopped at this park unless I sanitized it first. Oh, how I'm growing and changing!

She liked all the slides, but liked them even more if she could sit on Jimmy's lap. She not exactly a thrill seeker yet. I think she gets that from me. I always say I'm allergic to adrenaline.
Before we moved here we read an article about split pants. Chinese babies and children wear these split pants instead of diapers. They say that the babies are potty trained before they're 6 months old. You can see people holding children over trashcans and anywhere really. So we caught a little peek of this kid's split pants. Which reminds me, I need to put Ali's pants in the wash since she was going down the same slide as this kid's private parts.
Before school started we went to Yuyuan Garden, a place we went during our first month here. We wanted to pick up a red Chinese lantern for Chinese New Year. All of the shops were incredible! We LOVE our lantern and can't wait to hang it!
We've posted several pictures of the random carts that drive around town filled with cardboard and styrofoam. They also have carts that are filled with fruit...
and DVDs. This is the DVD cart that parks outside our apartment at random times during the day. We've bought "several" of these but I'm surprised at my serious self control since technically I could buy them whenever I want (for only 75¢).

They actually use these ladders:

Daddy must have been tired... but that doesn't explain why he's snuggling with the bear and the lamb. Cute!
This is a photo from New Year's Eve. We went to a friend's house for dinner but since everyone there had kids the party ended around 10 pm. Ali fell asleep on the bus on the way home and Jimmy and I hung out till midnight and watched the fireworks out our window. Since we're so high up, the fireworks were right at eye level for us. It was a pretty fun thing to see. January 1st isn't that big of a deal here but Chinese New Year is HUGE. It's a one week celebration and they set off fireworks around the clock all week!
This is proof that children are watching everything we do! Ali picked up my deodorant, pulled her shirt up and tried to put it on. I didn't even know she was watching stuff like this. Children are so precious and we have to be so careful about what we say and do. This also helped me realize that she could be learning useful things like her ABCs and scripture stories.... and how to put on deodorant I guess.
I love to see what things Jimmy comes up with. He's so creative and random. The perfect combination for Ali.