The Hanique's: 2009

First check up

Yesterday Amy had her first check up. Everything was ok. She now weighs 4600 grams which is average and she's 56 cm tall which is above average. So she's a very pretty long legged girl :)
Here's some random pictures.

Amy and her cousin Tessa.

White Christmas?

It's been snowing this week... a lot. So I was hoping for a white Christmas but tonight the weather report wasn't that hopeful. It looks like it's going to turn into rain :(
Well, it was fun while it lasted. Here's some pictures of our view from the house.

Front yard.

Back yard.

Local church.

Bike.

My car... or what's left of it.

3 P's

After the big surprise this morning (see post below), Amy decided this afternoon to show us the true meaning of the 3 P's: Poop, Pee and Puke. As she was laying on the changing table and Daddy opened her diaper, there was the first P... lots of Poop everywhere! Even more than this morning! So Mommy came to help clean up. During the cleaning process there came another P... Puke... so much that she almost choked in it. When we finally managed to clean her from top to toe, there came the third P... lots and lots of Pee! So this time not only Amy but also the changing table and mattress needed to be cleaned up.
So a simple diaper change turned into a cleaning marathon. Ah, the joys of parenthood :)

Surprise

This is probably the most fun thing to do AFTER your mom just bathed you :)

She loves to bathe

Amy really loves bathing! She doesn't like to be undressed and she doesn't like to get out the bath, though. Very understandable :-)

Bathing

Dressed and warm again

Great grandma and great aunt

Very satisfied

Guillaume

The first night

It's 8 o'clock now, so yes, we survived the first night ;-) We should feed Amy every three hours, but we didn't need to set alarms. Amy appeared to have her own :-). Yesterday evening breast feeding worked, miraculously, but we weren't able to reproduce it during the night. So we tried every three hours and then Chenée extracted some milk which we fed with a table spoon. Amy likes it :-) She slept fine during the night. At one point she had some cramps, but after laying on my tummy for 15 minutes, she was fine again.

Stating the obvious: having this little miracle is amazing...

Guillaume

Amy

Yesterday (the 18th) Aimée Noëlle was born at 16:49. She's perfect :-D We call her Amy.

Short summary: They tried to induce labor on Monday and Tuesday. Monday failed and Tuesday seemed to fail, however, at 1.00 her water broke, after which "real" contractions started. At 8.00 she had 2 cm dilation, after which the doctor gave 2 more hours to gain 2 more cm. She gained 1 cm, so the doctor wanted to make an infusion to increase the contractions. But because contractions already hurt as much as Chenée could take, she first got an epidural to take away the pain (preparing her, getting her downstairs, connecting her to all the monitors, connecting the baby to the monitors, applying it, waiting for it to take effect and reinstalling her upstairs again took a few hours). This also enabled us to get some sleep.

The infusion worked like a charm. Three hours later we woke up 'cause she got the urge to push. 30 minutes later the doctor arrived, who confirmed full dilation and allowed Chenée to give in to the urge. 35 minutes later Amy was born in perfect health.

I'll try to give some updates, but we've got very little spare time now. For now: some pictures :)

Weather in Eindhoven

Time

Just born

Weight

Sleepy

Status update

This morning they applied the gel which did pretty much nothing. The dose she got at noon started doing something at 16:00. Contractions are getting painful now, but they are not so strong that they can open the uturus. There are two possibilities: they do get strong enough, in which case delivery will probably take place during the night, or -stating the obvious- they do not.

They won't be able to reapply the gel tomorrow, so that would be a day of rest. This morning they said she'd have to go home for a day, but fortunately she doesn't. They'll keep her here until the baby is born. (Taking her home would be irresponsible, so I wouldn't have done it anyway). There are no spare beds in the hospital, so tonight I'll have to go home.

Then Thursday they'll reapply the gel two times and again on Friday if necessary. If by then still nothing happened, they'll use the "blunt axe" (Dutch): they will force labor even if the body isn't ready. This has a considerable higher chance of resulting into c-section, which is a risk they're not willing to take at this point.

For more updates, see "Guillaume's twitter" on the left (press F5 to refresh), twitter itself (ghanique) or facebook.

Guillaume

Check up - almost there

This morning we had a check up. As always everything was fine.
Last Monday I had contractions and just when they became bad enough to go to the hospital... it stopped. So this morning the doctor checked if I was dilated and there is a start: 1 cm. It's not enough to induce labor yet, but they did another procedure to get the contractions to start again to speed up the dilating process. If nothing happens on it's own this weekend, they will induce labor on Monday. So we're almost there...

Sleepover

Tessa came to stay with us for the weekend so her mom and dad could have some time for themselves. We loved it and so did Tessa. Guillaume is teaching her the word 'vriendjes' (friends) and hoping that'll be the first word she says in stead of the usual mama or papa. Well, he did start early with teaching it, so who knows... :)
Tessa does seem to enjoy the 'conversations' with Guillaume and will give him big smiles or 'talk' back.

Cuddle time with aunt Chenée.

Watching tv together.

Vriendjes.

Nursery

36 weeks and counting...

Today we had another checkup. Our little girl is now 3 kg and is growing so good! Everything looked really good.
As for my pelvic pains... they're getting worse and there's nothing they can do about it. So I spend most of my time in bed. The doctor gave me sleeping pills for the night and told me to hang on 3 more weeks. After that they might have a chance on inducing labor if necessary. But since the baby is growing so well there's always a chance that she might decide to come early all by herself. I'm really hoping for the latter :)

Josh Wilson

I wish I could play like that :)
(With thanks to Maurice for showing me the video)

Grandma's birthday part 2 - High Tea

This weekend we went to a traditional English High Tea in an old farm. It was a birthday gift to Guillaume's grandma and all of her brothers and sisters were invited too.
I had never been to such an event and I can recommend it to everyone. It's a nice relaxing time. They serve different kinds of tea and there's all kinds of little snacks to go with it, including mini-sandwiches and scones with clotted cream... yummie!

Guillaume and Tessa are "vriendjes" (=best friends) already.

Grandma's 80th birthday

Guillaume's grandma had her 80th birthday on Saturday. To celebrate she took us all on a weekend trip to Giethoorn. It's a very little town and it's famous for its canals. In fact you can't even get to the center other than on foot or by boat. Each house is built on a separate little island and all the islands are connected by high narrow bridges. The bridges are built high so locals can still transport things to their houses by boat.