We be Parents

Today marked an important milestone for Hazel – her hundredth day since birth!  The hundred days celebration is popular in Korean culture and dates back to the times when infant mortality rates were low and making it through 100 days was a sign that the baby was likely to survive and thrive.  Nowadays the hundred days celebration carries is both a celebration of the baby and the parents…survival is a two way street!  Some people have a big party to celebrate the hundredth day, but we decided to take it easy and enjoy the day with Hazel.

Yenari did, however, dress Hazel up in her fanciest princess dress:

In addition to this being a celebration of her age, today also marked the last day of Yenari’s time off of work.  Tomorrow Yenari heads back to work at her full schedule of 4 days a week at the hospital.  She works the evening shift from around 2:30-11:30pm, so her going back to work will also mean some big changes for me!  On the weekdays we’re going to have a nanny taking care of Hazel until six and then I’ll take over until around midnight when Yenari gets home – scary!

The major part of the preparation over the past several days has been trying to get Hazel used to eating from a bottle.  Shouldn’t be too hard right?  How hard could it be for a baby to eat from a bottle?  Ummm….apparently quite hard!  This has been one of the most difficult times we’ve had in the last…100 days.  As soon as a bottle comes near Hazel the screaming and crying begins.  She’s gotten a hold of it a few times and eaten a few ounces, but she doesn’t seem to remember or want to eat the next time around.

On Saturday we fed her only with the bottle until 9pm…she probably drank a couple ounces of milk over the course of the day – a tiny amount compared to how much she normally eats.  On Sunday we tried to follow the schedule that she’ll have once Yenari goes back to work – breastfeeding until 2pm and then the bottle until midnight.  We all survived it, but there was lots of crying and Hazel only ate a few ounces.  It’s really difficult as a parent to watch your baby cry because she’s hungry and to not give in and let her breast feed.

Over the last week we’ve done our part in supporting the economy by purchasing just about every bottle and nipple on the market…from the local Babys R Us to the local Japanese market…we’ve seen them all.  None of them have provided the miraculous breakthrough we were hoping for, and I’m guessing that we won’t find one that will provide that miracle.  Hazel seems to be able to eat from a bottle when she needs to, she just doesn’t seem to want to do it too often.  My hope is that with more practice and with the reality of no mommy in site, Hazel will resign herself to eating from the bottle and overcome this challenge for all of us!

So, here’s to Hazel’s hundred days, a good return to work for Yenari, productive eating for Hazel, and me surviving with Hazel at night 4 days a week!

Double post Sunday!  Today Hazel celebrated her 11th week…or maybe it was we who celebrated – she pretty much just tagged along with us all day.  She slept in late and let Yenari get some rest while I caught up on some work in the late morning.  We decided to celebrate with a lunch at Yenari’s favorite sushi restaurant in the Bay Area: Pink Godzilla in Santa Cruz.

So we made the not so long, but long for lunch trip down to Santa Cruz for our late lunch and Yenari ate like a champ, taking down all of the sushi that she couldn’t eat when she was pregnant (still staying away from the high mercury stuff).  Lunch was excellent and Hazel slept the whole time, allowing us to devour the food without having to keep her happy.

After eating, we drove up to Felton to visit Rebecca, Troy, and their 4 week old baby boy Ewan.  We hadn’t met Ewan and they hadn’t met Hazel, so it was a big baby fest!  Ewan’s a big boy – despite her 7 week head start, Hazel is just about the same weight as Ewan and his feet are even bigger than hers!  Here they are together with their mommies followed by the foot comparison shot!

Yenari thinks that in this picture Hazel is checking her watch to see if it’s time to wake up Ewan!

In the foot comparison Hazel’s on the left and Ewan’s on right.  Though they’re about the same size, it’s amazing what a difference 7 weeks makes – Hazel feels a lot more ‘solid’ and obviously has much better control over her head.  On holding Hazel, Rebecca said that Ewan is a lot more ‘floppy’.  Amazing how much they change over the course of a few weeks.  We had a great time visiting with Rebecca, Troy, and Ewan…trading baby stories and just catching up.

Normally when we go to Pink Godzilla we stop at the nearby A&W to pickup some root beer floats.  We hadn’t done that earlier, and Yenari was eager to fulfill our eating destiny, so we decided to stop in Campbell to pickup our root beer floats (and a bacon cheeseburger for me!) before heading home.  Tastey tastey.

We topped the evening off with a visit from my mom and Duncan who had just gotten back from their weekend excursion in Monterey.  Here they are, playing with Hazel on the couch:

And lastly, here are a couple nice smiley photos I took today:

So, it was a very fun-filled day for us today…we’ve finally realized that we can actually go places and do things and she doesn’t go wild and crazy, so here’s to more fun-filled and exciting days to come!

Last Saturday didn’t start off in any spectacular way – I made Yenari French toast for breakfast, got a haircut (had to make a good first impression with the baby), and just hung around the house.  It was nearing dinner time and we were debating where to go for dinner – we had been going out to dinner almost every night, doing it while we still could!  We eventually decided on a Jamaican place in Palo Alto.

We left for the restaurant around 6:30pm and Yenari almost immediately started having some light contractions.  She had similar contractions the previous night and the previous Monday and thought that like those, these weren’t the real thing.  We got to the restaurant and ordered – a jerk burger for me and a hearty jerk chicken and oxtail combo for Yenari.

Oxtail and Jerk Chicken (picture from Yelp)

As we waited for our food the contractions got stronger.  Our food was delivered and we started chowing down.  We had the stopwatch on my phone tracking the contractions and Yenari was tapping it closer and closer together.  She had to get up from the table to walk around outside – for those of you who have seen Yenari eat, it is certainly a rare circumstance to see her leave a plate of food she likes still full – this seemed like a big sign!

Yenari came back inside, had a couple more bites of food, and then said that she was going outside again and that I should get the check and have her food packed up.  I got everything settled, Yenari went to the bathroom, and as we left the restaurant the manager said (innocently) ‘Hope you have a great night’!  I slowly led Yenari back to the car, and we drove back home, tapping the stopwatch every 5 minutes or so.

Once home, Yenari asked me to give her the leftover jerk chicken from the restaurant and began eating it between contractions.  Once done, we decided to take a short walk as we’d heard that if it is false labor then walking will reduce the pain/duration of the contraction.  We made it about 100 yards before we had to turn back because of the pain.

Yenari paged the doctor and got a call back a few minutes later.  Our medical group has a bunch of different offices and they share the OB on call duty across the doctors.  We had seen the 3 OBs in the Los Altos office, but that night a doctor from Portola Valley was on call.  Yenari explained to her how she was feeling and the length / duration of the contractions.  At this point they were coming every 4 to 5 minutes, but they weren’t exactly regular.  The doctor thought that Yenari was in early labor and suggested that we head to the hospital within the next hour.

Because we live about 20 minutes from the hospital (Stanford’s Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital), we started packing the remaining things into our hospital bag – toothbrushes, cameras, etc.  Yenari was still unsure whether this was the real thing and kept telling me that I didn’t need to really pack everything up because we’d probably be turned back at the hospital.  Yenari hopped in the shower for a few minutes, we packed up the car, and we head out to the hospital at 9:21pm.

On the way to the hospital Yenari started feeling much better, the contractions seemed to slow down and were lighter, so she was sure that this was a false labor and that she’d be embarrassed at the hospital when she (a nurse) would be sent home.  We made it to the hospital by 9:42 and found our way to the labor and delivery unit by 9:50.  At the nurses’ station they asked her ‘And you’re here for?  Ultrasound? Did your baby stop moving?’.  When Yenari said she thought she was in labor the woman behind the desk almost rolled her eyes, as Yenari looked happy as can be, still joking around, and definitely not like she was in labor.  They asked if this was her first baby, she said yes, everyone seemed sure that this wasn’t the real thing, but they wanted to check her out anyway.

Our nurse, Rose (who was super nice throughout the whole night), brought us into the examination room, attached a fetal heart monitor and a monitor to measure the contractions and started them up.  She confirmed that the contractions were about 5 minutes apart, regular, and of the appropriate intensity then she did an internal exam which showed she was still 4cm dilated.  She left for a minute to call the doctor and came back to tell us that the doctor wanted her to stay – this was the real thing.

After a while we were led down the hall to the delivery room, a big room with the delivery bed, lots of monitors, all sorts of gizmos for taking care of babies with problems, a flat screen TV, and a nice window seat for me to sit and rest on.  After getting settled Rose explained how everything would work and asked if Yenari wanted an epidural – she had decided earlier that she did, so they had the anesthesiologist come in for a consultation. Rose also hooked up an IV for Yenari so that they could pump her full of fluid (she was slightly dehydrated) and Pitocin (a drug to make the labor move along faster, almost a requirement if you’re getting an epidural).

Yenari in the delivery room

Once Yenari was all plugged in, we decided it was time to call our parents to let them know they’d be grandparents soon – I called my mom and dad and Yenari called her parents in Korea.  The next hour or two flew by without us really noticing.  Yenari was talking with Rose about when to get the epidural and she wouldn’t make an outright recommendation, but did say that people who get it early in labor are often able to sleep or at least save up energy so that they can be in better shape for the pushing.  Yenari thought that saving energy was a good plan and ordered the epidural.  At 1am the anesthesiologists came in, prepped her, and poked her with the big needle to insert the epidural.  Within minutes, the contractions that were causing a pain level of 5 out of 10 had dropped down to a 1.  She was still able to feel the contractions, but she was feeling the pressure of the contractions and not the pain.

Yenari awaiting the epidural needle

For the next 2 hours, we both tried to sleep – I was mostly successful, but Yenari wasn’t – she got rest but wasn’t able to sleep at all.  At 3am, when Rose came to check on her she said that the contractions were progressing really and she turned off the Pitocin drip.  The doctor had asked Rose to do another internal exam at 5am, but since she saw a different type of contraction that indicated ‘active labor’ she decided to do it at 3:25.  She found that Yenari was 7cm dilated, fully effaced, and the head at station 0 (see diagram below).

Baby head station diagram

During the exam Yenari’s ‘bag of waters’ ruptured.  Since her water broke and since things were moving fast, Rose paged the doctor to let her know that is was going to be sooner than originally thought.  She also prepped the room for the delivery, preparing the sterile field with the sterile equipment, verifying the baby warmer / scale were working, and generally getting everything in place.

The doctor showed up at 4:25 and did another internal exam – this time Yenari was 9.5cm dilated (10cm is desired for pushing) and that the head was at station +2.  She said that she would be back in an hour, but that Yenari should call the nurse if she felt a really strong urge to push.  For the next half hour, the urge to push grew, and Yenari told Rose that she felt ready at around 4:45am.  Rose did a quick look and said that she could see the baby’s hair!  And she guessed that the baby would be out at 5:30am.  She called the doctor, who arrived around 5am.

When the doctor arrived she also took a quick look inside and asked if I wanted to see the baby’s head – I took a look and Yenari got jealous and asked if they could bring in a mirror.  They wheeled in a massive mirror and set it up so that she could see.  They tried taking it away after this brief exam, but Yenari said that she wanted to keep it there for the rest of the delivery so that she could see her baby coming out!  The doctor gave a refresher course on pushing and said that first time mothers typically push between 2 and 3 hours.  She said that for many first time mothers the first half hour of pushing is when the mother figures out how to push.  Yenari was shocked that it would take 2 to 3 hours and glad that she got rest.

As the next contraction was coming the doctor said it was time to push.  I was on Yenari’s right side holding her feet up, keeping her head down to her chest, and encouraging her as best as I could.  Rose was on the other side holding her left leg and the doctor was front and center.  She gave the 3 pushes the first contraction and the doctor said that she was doing great…Yenari thought that was just her way of encouraging her to keep it up.  The next contraction came one minute later and Yenari pushed 3 times again.  From the mirror we could both see the head almost all of the way out!

The doctor seemed shocked that things were moving so quickly and asked Yenari to slow down so that she could get prepared to catch the baby.  She wasn’t expecting the pushing to be done in just a few minutes!  Slowing down wasn’t really an option for Yenari – this isn’t something where you can decide to really take a break.  The 3rd contraction of pushing came.  After one push the head was out (with one of her eyes open!), and after the second push the baby was out! All the way! In 5 minutes of pushing!  I think all of us were in shock that it was done so fast.    The doctor asked if I wanted to cut the umbilical cord, handed me the scissors, and I cut it.  The baby started crying and looked to be in great shape.  The clock read 5:11am, the baby was born, and Yenari beat Rose’s guess of 5:30am.

Within a couple seconds, the doctor put the baby on Yenari’s chest while she delivered the placenta – she asked Yenari not to push as hard, but still she managed to get it out in one push.  After the placenta was delivered, Rose brought the baby over to the scale and baby heater and got her stats: 7 pounds 10 ounces, 20 inches long.

Yenari and the baby, just after birth

Heating up the baby!

7 pounds, 10 ounces

The doctor kept on saying that Yenari didn’t know how lucky she was, and that she had pushed for 3 hours in her own pregnancy.  Both the doctor and the nurse said that Yenari was made for having babies and that they’d see her next year!  The whole thing was a pretty remarkable experience and also a lot more civilized than I expected – she didn’t cry, scream, curse, or insult me.  I feel lucky that everything went so well and so fast, I know that it isn’t this easy for everyone.  The epidural certainly made a big difference, but that is not to discount the amazing job Yenari did with keeping a positive attitude and pushing like a champ!

We were already pretty much set with a name for her (thank goodness she was a she and not a surprise he), but wanted to see her face before we made the final decision.  After seeing her we decided to go with it: Hazel Yoojin Neustaetter.  Yenari had basically chosen the name Hazel before she even met me (I guess I was just a means to an end?) and I also really liked it.  We wanted a Korean middle name so that Yenari’s family in Korea could call her by that name and so that she would have a stronger connection to Korean culture.

A lot more happened that morning, but we needn’t bore you with more details – you deserve a prize if you’ve read this far anyway!  We’d like to thank everyone who supported us throughout the whole pregnancy and birth experience.  An extra thanks to Rose, the doctor, and everyone at the hospital who helped us.

The happy family, at least two of us

Nope, she hasn’t gotten rid of me – she’s just got a whitey of a new variety – a new car!  On Saturday, my 30th birthday, Yenari thought the best way to celebrate would be for us to go out and buy her a new car…definitely an awesome birthday present, just not for me!  Here she is with her new beaute – a 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid:

Yenari with her new whitey

So now I’m definitely on the road to being a grownup – 30 years old, married, preggers wifey, and a family car!  No official belly shot this time, but she did just move past 30 weeks – that’s 3/4 of the way there!  Yenari is all dressed up in the picture because we were going out for a fancy dinner.  My mother and grandmother teamed up to give me a gift certificate to have dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

The food was great – here are some photos of the meal we had tonight:

Deep-fried green asparagus and onions with mustard Chantilly

Fish and shellfish ragoût with fava beans and chervil

Grilled Marin Sun Farm grass-fed beef rib eye with cabernet sauce, sautéed new potatoes

In our excitement on seeing the dessert we dug in without taking a photo, but I managed to get a shot of Yenari finishing off the ‘Bittersweet chocolate fondant with candied kumquat ice cream’ that topped off the great meal.

Yenari finishing off her dessert

Yup – I was there too – don’t I look so mature now that I’m all grown up?

me!

Chez Panisse sign on the way out after an excellent meal

We’re trying to sneak in as many nice dinners out and as much quality time as we can be for the impending (doom?) excitement that should be heading our way in 10 weeks or so.   Thanks to ‘moms’ and nana for a great birthday present!

Long time no posting – I’ll make it up with a painfully detailed post!

Yenari had a rare 3 day weekend this past weekend so I decided to take off Friday so that we could do something fun.  We decided to return to our roots – LA.  I was born in LA, but more importantly, LA has the biggest Koreatown in the US and thus the best Korean food in the US…and Yenari is definitely a fan of Korean food, so we settled on an eating tour of LA’s Koreatown.

We drove down on Friday morning, stopping at In-N-Out Burger (the only non Korean food for a few days!) and eventually making it to our hotel by around 2.  Once settled in, we headed down to Koreatown and drove around to get our bearings and eventually made it to a Korean salon where Yenari got a haircut.  Here she is mid-haircut:

Yenari getting her hair cut

Yenari knows several Koreans who live in the Bay Area that travel down to LA regularly to get their hair cut by people who ‘know how to cut Korean hair’.  After the haircut (the outcome can be seen in some of the other photos) we lazed around for a while and eventually headed out for dinner.  Yenari’s cousin (who also lives in the Bay Area) has become an expert in LA Korean restaurants and gave Yenari and cheatsheet of her favorites which we dutifully followed.  Our first pick was OnDal 2, known for their spicy crab soup.  They first serve the soup, you eat the crab, then they cook homemade noodles in the broth, and then they cook fried rice…all stages are pictured below:

Ready to start the crab soup dinner at OnDal 2

Crab soup closeup

Homemade noodles in the crab broth

Fried rice made from the crab broth

This was a truly excellent meal – each step was so good and so filling that we were stuffed beyond belief.  Yenari and I both can pack away a lot of food, but we had no chance here – we took about half the rice back to the hotel and passed out at about 9:30, exhausted from the eating (and maybe a little from driving 5 and a half hours).  I awoke at 7:30am to the sounds of Yenari chowing down on the rest of the rice!

After a passing out again from the great food, we eventually got up and decided we needed to be a bit active, so we headed down to the pool for some swimming.  Yenari has been convinced that she’s turning into a whale, so she figured it was time to bring it too fruition.  Here goes the swimming!

Yenari in the pool at the hotel

After the swimming we headed down to Koreatown on the subway for a late lunch at Myung Dong Kyoja, a restaurant from Seoul that opened up a branch in LA.  Yenari used to go the the restaurant in Seoul so she was interested in trying out the noodle soup and dumplings that she remembered eating there.  Here they are – both of ‘em excellent:

Steamed dumplings at lunch

Noodle soup at lunch

After lunch we took a long walk all the way across and through Koreatown to the Galleria shopping center – a massive Korean supermarket and mall – Yenari was in awe of all the things that had there and decided that a return trip with a car was needed.  Before leaving the city we did make that trip back and stocked up on lots of stuff that the Bay Area Korean markets don’t have.

For dinner we just kept on going with the Korean theme, dining at Dong Il Jang, a BBQ joint.  We went with a BBQ beef dished that we grilled at the table.  This wasn’t the standard marinated beef (bulgogi or kalbi), but instead was very high quality unmarinated beef that is just grilled and the dipped in sauce made of sesame oil and salt, eaten with a simple Korean salad.  It was great, and just like the crab dinner the night before, ended up with fried rice being made at our table.  Here’s the food!

BBQ beef at Dong Il Jang

Fried rice cooked at the table at Dong Il Jang

After stuffing ourselves with beef and fried rice we walked across Koreatown for another spot on Yenari’s cousin’s list – Pinkberry, a frozen yogurt place.  I don’t like frozen yogurt, so luckily I wasn’t tempted to add to my already loaded stomach, but Yenari was….here she is daintily going for the first taste:

Yenari taking the first stab at her froyo at Pinkberry

and then diving in head first for the rest!

Spoons are too slow

She actually didn’t eat the whole thing sans-utensils, just took off the pointy top part that way, but its not too difficult to image her just tearing into it.  With the noodle soup, dumplings, BBQ beef, rice, frozen yogurt, and a heck of a lot of walking under our belts, we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

Yenari started off our last morning in LA by swimming again, we packed up, checked out, and then we headed out for our last meal in LA, a stop for some abalone rice pooridge at San:

More food!

Abalone pooridge for breakfast

After the tasty meal – the first non-massive meal of the trip – we headed back to the Galleria market for shopping and then headed out of LA.  On the way out of town we stopped at one of my favorite places in LA – the Getty Museum.  This was my third trip to the Getty in the last 10 years.  While the exhibits are great – we saw a couple good photography exhibits on portraits and early California photography in addition to the permanent collections of 16th – 18th century paintings, my favorite part about the Getty is the outdoor space, gardens, and architecture.  It is a beautiful place, perched up on a hill (you need to take a tram to get to the top) with great views of LA and great open space.  Here we are:

At the Getty Museum

The gardens and museum in the background

and yup, proof that I went on this trip too!

Yup, Greg was there too

And with that, after a great 2 day trip to LA, fueled by stomach busting quantities of Korean food, we hopped (as best we could after that much food) into our car, and made our way back home.

Phewf…the mega post is done – congrats if you made it this far!