She's Here!

Megan wakes me up around 3AM telling me she's been having regular contractions for a couple of hours now.  Remember, this is about 2 weeks before her due date (9/16).  We lay in bed until around 5AM using her iPhone app to record the frequency and duration of the contractions.  Finally, after much debating, we decide it's time to go to the hospital.  I give my mom an early wakeup call to come over so that Stella can sleep and then go back to their house.  After mom got to our house around 5:30AM, we went to the hospital where we played the "admitted or go home" game.  I managed to capture Megan's enthusiasm for this quite well (picture on the right).  We were there for at least 2 hours until they decided that we would be admitted and we were going to have this baby!

Megan was given an epidural (one of her first requests), but there was a complication with the execution of said epidural.  The anesthesiologist made a mistake where too much spinal fluid would be slowly leaking out and would almost definitely cause her to have a spinal headache.  While most people see the anesthesiologist once or twice, she became our best friend checking in very regularly to see if there is any way she could make Megan more comfortable.  They gave her additional drugs to combat the headache and suggested to lay as flat as possible.  Sure enough, within a few hours, Megan started to have neck and headache pain (which we go on for about another day).

Besides the spinal headache snag, everything else went pretty smooth and we were blessed with Charlotte Jane (Charley)'s entrance into the world at 5:28PM.  She weighed 8lbs 10oz and was 20.5" long.

Later that evening, my parents brought Stella up to the hospital and she got to finally meet her little sister (something we were all really excited about).

She was so proud and happy!  I meant to take more video, but I did manage to capture when they first saw each other and Stella proclaimed her as "my baby":

Charlotte's Nursery

For Charlotte's nursery, we went with a similar style as Stella's as far as a light base color all around and darker stripes on the wall with the window as well as the bathroom.  However, for Charley, we went with a purple theme (whereas Stella's room is pink):

 

Megan found some cute owl based artwork that she framed and put on the walls (Grandma Peters financed this):

For furniture, we couldn't find a crib in the Wichita area we liked, so my Dad and I ended up picking up her crib and chest of drawers from Buy Buy Baby in Oklahoma (we saw the crib/chest we liked when recently visiting a Buy Buy Baby in KC).  We also "stole" the rocking chair, ottoman, and changing table from Stella's room (we have a new chair for Stella on order which Grammy financed):

First Glimpse of Little Sister

We decided it would be cool to take Stella out of school early, so that she could check out her little sister during the sonogram we had scheduled today.  It's hard to describe her reaction, but it really warmed our hearts.  She was so excited, proud, and amazed by the live sonogram of her baby sister!

Stella's feedback from the video was that the baby was wearing glasses and had teeth!  We got a big kick out of this.  Here's a profile pic from this sonogram session where you can kind of tell where she was getting this impression from due to the hollowed out looking eyes and would kind of looks like teeth in the jaw area:

Also, as Megan suspected, the sonographer said that she could see hair (which she indicated is rare to be able to tell in a sonogram):

Naming Convention

Megan and I have gone back and forth quite a bit on names for our future daughter.  We finally settled with Charlotte and plan on calling her Charley.  Besides the fact that we just like the name, it's also after my late grandfather Clarence Charles Peters.  Charlotte is the feminine form of Charles which means "strong man".  So, we interpret Charlotte to mean "strong woman" which we know she will be! 

For a middle name, we chose Jane after my mother's middle name.  Charlotte Jane Peters rolls off the tongue nicely!

Gender Specific

I really like the above profile that the ultrasound technician was able to get today.  The baby's starting to look more human and less alien like.  More importantly, we found out today that we'll be having another princess to occupy our home!

Another Closeup

Today, we got another unexpected glimpse of the baby.  The doctor was having issues with getting the heartbeat, so they ordered a sonogram as a precaution to check the heartbeat that way.  Everything was fine, the baby was just hiding from their traditional approach of getting the heartbeat.  Although the circumstances made us a bit nervous, it was nice to get another unexpected look at the baby so soon after the last one.

Sonographic Debut

We've been looking forward to this day since we found out we were pregnant a little over a month ago.  There's something about seeing tangible photographic (sonographic) evidence that just makes it so much more real and exciting.  At this point, the estimated age of the baby is 10 weeks.  Even this early, it's amazing how you can make out the baby's features, including the tiny little arms and legs.

Ardent 2.0

Although the picture isn't very clear, hopefully the message is.  Another baby!!!  Today, we found out we'll be blessed with another boy or girl!