It’s January 18th, I’ve finished chores for the day and both kids are down.  I have a warm drink, and nothing needs immediate attention.  What to do?

It then dawns on me that I haven’t written anything since Sam was born, and years from now, he’ll be asking why I didn’t write anything about when he was born?  Oops.

Thinking back over the events since last summer, I cannot remember a time when both Evonne and I have been this busy, given the events leading up to the move, the move itself, having Sam come along, and then Erica entering the Terrible Twos (TT).

I remember watching ‘The March of the Penguins’ and seeing the parent sit there in the worst winter weather anywhere on this planet- with an egg perched on their feet.  They have to go without food for months to take care of that one egg, while their mate travels miles, on foot, through some of the worst terrain to get to open water and while facing predators, feed like crazy to be able to feed their chick upon return to the nesting site. 

The thought crossed my mind- “are they nuts?”  Why would they go through all that?  Why not swim up to Australia and have a nice life there?

So yeah, during the tough times we sort of ask a similar question.  It’s funny how you hear that 2 kids are more than twice the work.  You don’t understand that until you go through it, and then it feels like 100X the work.  Taking care of one kid seems like Club Med, but for whatever reason, the second one changes the dynamics, and if your older one is still in diapers… then Ai Yah!  As one parent put it when asked what having 2 kids is like- “it’s terrible!”  🙂

Everyone also says that it’s tough now, but it will get better.  Maybe they are saying that just so we have hope and won’t flee to Australia… but we can see that once Erica is out of diapers and the TT stage, things have to look up… or will it be like month #2 of an Antartica blizzard with an egg on your foot? 

Anyways, I hope to get a bit more time to write about stuff.  For sure there’s lots going on, and the days/evenings are pretty full.  I found the birth announcement for Sam, which I’ll post here for the record.  Also for the record, Sam is doing very well, and he’s a good baby.  I’d say he’s “Textbook” for those who use the rating system from “Baby Whisperer” book.

This morning we woke up and was running through our plans for the day-  a nice brunch, pick up some end of season sale items from Canadian tire, have a nice afternoon nap, head on over to Caris’ birthday, movie, etc.

Then E tells me that she’s feeling some “cramps” since 7:30am.  Ok… it could be the Pecans and ice-cream we had last night, nothing to worry about.  We’re not due til September 13th.

Then the cramping becomes more regular, maybe a ‘3’ in intensity.  I start packing and rounding up stuff for the hospital real fast, just in case.  Around 11am, E places a call to Burnaby General- moderate cramps, but every 5 or 6 minutes.  She can still talk through them, so Burnaby General advises to wait until they are every 5 minutes and last a minute.  I then head off to McD’s for a breakfast run and when I return, things get a little more intense.  Gulp down food fast, we’re heading in after breakfast.

At this point, we’re very grateful that Elaine and Lauren stayed for one more night instead of going home last night as planned.  After we ate, I packed everything up and we headed out.  Elaine then took Erica to stay at Grandma’s.Finally, a chance to gun the big Merc down the road, but E reminds me that we’re not in “that much of a hurry”  🙁  We left the house at noon, and hit construction along the way, but still managed to arrive at 12:20.  I drop E off at admitting and parked the car.I run back to admitting, and find that it’s closed- go to Emergency.  I scanned Emergency for E, couldn’t find her so I assume she was already admitted.  Up to the Birthing suites.  E was already being monitered for the non-stress test, and the nurse tells me to go back to Emergency to check her in.  Run back down, deal with the chaos in Emergency to get the paperwork done, and back up to the suites.  When I go there, E was GONE from the monitoring bed, so I stood there waiting for help.  A nurse tells me to grab our stuff and head to #7, which looked really familiar, and it turns out it was the same room Erica was born in!

They had already broke her water, and she was on the bed with her old friend- laughing gas.  Ok, this is going to happen a lot faster than last time, so… I’ll get the ice chips.  No CDs, no tennis ball, just get down to business.  Lots of 60-70 second contractions about a 90s apart, full dilation, transition phase, pushing about 30 min, and at 1:57pm, Samuel Harry Lau was born Sept 6th, at 7lbs, 1oz!

Again, witnessing the pain of birth left me speechless, and seeing our son being born, and taking his first breath was every bit as special as the first time.  I’m going to grab some ZzzzZzzz, grab some essentials, take care of the cats and back to the hospital tomorrow.  We should be home Monday AM if all goes well.  Mom and baby are doing very well, and attached is a picture!

(Apparently when E arrived that the birthing suite, the nurse (Shirley) said that E looked a bit too comfortable, meaning she may be early… however they would take a look since E was Asian.  Apparently they expect things to move along very quickly if you are Asian, and the second one is supposed to be faster since your body “knows” what’s happening.  At this point, E was 6cm dilated, and they decided to break her water to move things along even faster.  Our Doctor this time wasn’t Carrie, but Dr. Dy who looked liked she just came from a Yoga class and did a great job. 

After we Sam arrived, we hung out for a bit and went downstairs to Maternity.  What a difference!  There was only one other family and we got a room to ourselves!  The other interesting thing was meeting the nursing staff, some of which we recognized from our first time through- and since it was our second time, they left us alone a bit more.  We stayed the one night, and was discharged the following day.  In and out in just over 24 hours.  One final note- how did E respond to the laughing gas?  I would say she was a bit less chatty than last time, but I found her asking questions of a “personal” nature of the staff (Where do you live, are you single, are you seeing anyone, etc.)  Ironically, she does this after a few drinks as well)