Kellan's Birth Story--Part Two

So far, Kellan eats like a champ! Much better at latching on than Ella and Lily when they were newborns. He's also had several wet diapers and bowel movements already. They hope for one of each in the first 24 hours and he's had 4 or 5 of each already. So all his systems seem to be working great. The only thing even remotely interesting that they have been keeping an eye on is that he makes little noises constantly while he's sleeping. It actually sounds like he's purring a bit. :-) It's the cutest thing ever. And they aren't too concerned about it, but they do check is O2 levels every now and then to make sure he doesn't still have any fluid in his lungs or anything. So far, his levels are all completely normal and he just seems to like making noise and being vocal, even while he's sleeping. (update since first writing this....he seems to have everything cleared out now. He's not really making the cute sleeping noises any longer.)

My dad brought Ella and Lily over just before supper last night and they were so excited to meet him and hold him. They were so good about taking turns and giving him kisses and loving him so much already. Lily in particular was LOVING holding the baby. She touched his fingers and toes and kissed his head. Petted his hair. It was adorable! His hands were covered up so he wouldn't scratch himself and this bothered her. She felt he wanted his hands out. :-) They were also excited because Kellan had brought a present for each of them. They opened up their bags and found they each had a brand new Pillow Pet! Lily's was a ladybug and Ella's was a leopard. They had really been wanting these and were thrilled to receive them.

We let the nurses take him to the nursery for a bit last night so we could get some real sleep. Everything has been going well today, but Kellan has had an eventful day and is now sleeping quite peacefully. Late morning, the OB doctor on call came in and whisked Kellan away to circumcise him. They give him some lidocaine so he doesn't feel anything, but they do strap his legs down so he can't move and the whole thing is quite the experience for him. He was pretty upset after he got back to our room. It took us a minute to figure out that his cord stump was also poking him. The nurse had just removed the clamp and the sharp edge was poking him. Poor little guy. Then, the pediatrician came in to check him out. Kellan was a bit upset about all of that too because he had to be undressed, poked and prodded, etc. He checked out totally fine with no signs of jaundice or anything else. After all of that, the lab guy came in to do his heel prick. When that was done, he finally was able to calm down and is now sleeping peacefully and deeply in Andrew's arms. Such a rough thing to be forced into the world and then be poked and prodded when all you want to do is eat, sleep and be held!

The girls will be here for a visit again in just a bit and we will be discharged tomorrow, hopefully by lunch. The Viking game doesn't start until 5:40pm so we should be home in plenty of time to relax and watch that. :-)

I also want to say thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes for ME! It's quite a special and memorable birthday this year. And though we won't be partying too much, I am going to enjoy a slice of cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory tonight conveniently located just down the road from the hospital. :-)

Here's a few more photos for you:

Kellan's Birth Story-Part One

Even though we were actually scheduled to be induced on Friday, I believe Kellan would have been born on Friday or possibly today anyway. When I went to bed on Thursday night around 10:30/11pm I was having a few contractions here and there. Didn't think too much of it until they kept coming. They were really mild and random, so I went to sleep. I woke up around 1am with stronger contractions and decided I should probably keep track of them. They came about every 10-13 minutes for the next hour. So I got to thinking we may be heading to the hospital earlier in the morning than we thought.

I woke Andrew up to tell him that we might need to leave in a bit. The doctor had told us to go to the hospital when my contractions were 10 minutes apart (instead of the 5 minutes they usually tell you) because I had pretty quick and easy labors with the girls. I told him to go back to sleep and I'd let him know if I thought we needed to go. I got up and made Lily's lunch for Mrs. M's class the next day and did a few other quick things around the house. And in that half hour didn't have a single contraction. So I decided to go back and lay in bed and see what happened. Well, even though I had a few more contractions in the next few hours, nothing like before. So we proceeded with the original plan to go to the hospital at 7:30am. I believe he was pretty ready to arrive and I was still having contractions every now and then. So I think he would have come on his own in the next day or two anyway.

We got checked in with no problem and the nurse started Pitocin at 8:30am. Dr. Larson broke my water around 9am or so and the contractions came on pretty quickly. I was about 2-3 cm dilated when they first checked. It didn't take long for me to get to 4cm and I received my epidural with no issues. I was dilated 4cm at 10:25am. The nurse told me to tell her if started feeling pressure and she was going to come back in 20 minutes or so to check me again. She was supposed to call Dr. Larson back to the hospital (she was at the office doing her regular check-ups) when I hit 8cm. Well, when she checked me at 10:45, I was already at 9cm! So the nurse ran off to call the doctor. His head was right there 15 minutes later when the doctor arrived and we started pushing right away. Three pushes and at 11:17am Kellan was crying his little lungs out! He had great color and checked out perfect for everything they look for.

I was a little worried going into this delivery because Lily's delivery was sooo perfect (and Ella's for that matter--though I had to push a bit longer for her), I figured there was no way we could have a delivery that topped that one. But I have to say, Kellan's did! I certainly can't complain about a less than 3 hour labor. And so far the recovery for me has gone really well.

Behind the Name

We are overwhelmed by the positive response to Kellan's name! Almost everyone has told us they think it's a great name. We really like it (obviously, since we chose it), but we weren't quite sure how people would react to it because it's pretty uncommon. Just thought I would put down a little about how we chose it.

Picking a name for this little guy was no easy task! For some reason, with the girls, I knew by the time I was four or five months pregnant what I wanted the name to be and lucky for me Andrew pretty much agreed on them. This boy, however, oof-da. Several of my top ten names were nixed by Andrew because of random associations he had with the names. Then, there were several of his that just didn't work for me. We looked at the top 1000 boys' names listed on the social security baby name site and pretty much nixed the top 20 right off the bat even though there were several we liked in there. We decided against a top 20 name just because we wanted it to be something unique (there are THREE Ellas in our neighborhood alone! Who knew that would be the FOURTH most popular name in the state of MN when she was born).

I also really liked Irish/Gaelic names for a boy so that helped narrow things down a bit. But we still couldn't agree. Can you believe that after looking through the top 1000 names NOTHING jumped out as THE name for either one of us?!

Then we started looking up top names in other countries just for ideas. We came across Lachlan, the number 3 name in Australia. And when I read the meaning of it, I REALLY liked it.

The boy's name Lachlan \l(a)-ch-

lan\ is pronounced LAHK-lin.
It is of Irish and Gaelic origin, and its meaning is "from the land of lakes".
May also possibly refer to a Viking ancestor or mean "bellicose".

I mean seriously, isn't that a perfect name meaning for a boy born in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and Viking Country?! We could call him Lach (Lock) for short. However, once we put it with Ella and Lily, it became quite the tongue-twister and we decided to try something else.

Nolan was our second choice, for no other reason than we both could agree on it and find nothing wrong with it. Then, I was reading my People.com headlines one day in November and there were several articles about some actor in the New Moon movie named Kellan Lutz. All of sudden, Kellan jumped out at me! Kellan Andrew Isaacson. Had a nice ring to it. It had the double "ll" from our names. It seemed perfect. We didn't pick it right then and there, and kept going back and forth with Nolan. But eventually, when we checked the name meaning and mulled it over for a bit, Kellan stuck.

Here's the meaning:
Descendant Of The Brightheaded One (Irish)
Powerful (Celtic)
Gaelic Meaning - Slender; fair.

Famous real-life people named Kellan:

Kellan Lutz-actor

Kellen Winslow: Tight End, Cleveland Browns

Kellen Clemens: Quarterback, New York Jets

Nicknames for Kellan:
Kell, Kale

I'm not sure if the "brightheaded" refers to "fair" or perhaps blond or if it means smart. But either way, I'm fine with that. ;-) And "powerful" is always good.

Here's another fun tidbit I found while looking up the name:

Based on our research, most people would imagine a person
with the name Kellan to be: Nice, smart and tough chap.
In one word, you might describe Kellan as a(n) "smart" person.

Not sure if we'll ever do a nickname for him...though, Kale is kind of cool. That's the lowdown on Kellan's name anyway. Just thought it would be fun to record our thought process here. :-)

We weren't for sure looking for a name with an "L" in it. But I have to say, with the third baby and everyone knowing by now we don't tell the name before the baby is born, it sure was fun to see what people guessed for the name. Many people realized our "L" naming convention with Holly, Ella and Lily. We weren't set on that for a boy, but did keep it in mind. People were coming up with all kinds of things. My dad and Clare and the girls took to calling the baby Isaac as they knew that would for sure be the one name we would NOT pick (Isaac Isaacson). And our friends down the street started calling the baby Wally because they couldn't think of anything else with two L's in it. And actually I sort of think that's cute as a nickname for him. :-) The name guessing prize goes to Sarah Gortenburg though who spent countless hours pondering names with L's in various places throughout the name. My favorite she came up with was "Lsarahl". ;-)

One more note, one major reason Kellan stuck with me is that it actually has elements of all four of our names in it. Obviously, it has Ella's whole name (which is why we picked the -an version of the name versus the -en version), then the L's for me and Lily and the "An" and an "e" from Andrew's name. The reason this struck me is actually thanks to Andrew's Grandpa Milt. Back when we first introduced Lily to Grandpa Milt, he made a comment that we should have one more so we could name the baby Leah because that had a letter from each of our names in it. For some reason that always stayed with me. And when I told Andrew, he liked that too, so if this baby had been a girl, her name likely would have been Leah Drew Isaacson. :-)

Meet Kellan Andrew Isaacson

I will write more about our birth story in the next few days, but for now, here are the stats and some photos. I'll probably upload a few more tomorrow. There were too many cute ones, and I'm ready for some sleep. Everything has gone wonderfully today. The girls were so excited to meet their brother!

Kellan Andrew Isaacson
7 lbs. 14 oz.
21 inches
11:17 am

Baby Update

Had a doctor's appointment this morning. After the disappointing news last week that I was not dilated AT ALL yet, this week I'm 1-2cm dilated! Yay!! The doctor was questioning whether I could be induced this Friday when I hadn't progressed at all yet. BUT, since I've started to dilate, Friday the 22nd is a for sure thing! If not before. But I highly doubt I'll go into labor before that. We'll see! Oh yeah, and she upped her baby weight estimate from 7 lbs. to 8 lbs. I knew it! There's no way I could give birth to a baby that weighed less than 8 lbs!

So look for some baby news around here in just a few days!

Basement update

Here's some basement progress photos. I know seeing these over and over again may be boring for some, but this is a good place for me to document the project.

The drywall is up....

Office and under-the-stairs closet/hallway

Stairway/doorway to bathroom and the TV wall in the family room

The guest room closets looking into the family room.

Then it's primed....



Here's the girls with Andrew testing paint colors in the bathroom:

And now it's painted and has doors (doors still need to be painted white)!....


It's really hard to discern the actual colors on the wall from these photos. But most of the basement is painted in "Pale Lichen" which is a greenish beige color. Above is the stairway (with railing now!) and the guest room doors.

The TV wall with shelves installed and the bathroom with a pale blue color.

And Andrew's office which is painted in a light taupe color.

38-week Belly Photo

There's a couple more belly photos, a family photo and a cute one of the girls with my belly at the Lily Bella site. Click here.

Christmas 2009

Sorry Christmas gets condensed every year. It's just such a daunting thing to document!

Our festivities started off with Andrew and the girls traveling to Lodi, Wisconsin (near Madison) to visit with the Isaacson side of the family. I decided I wasn't going to travel this Christmas just to lessen my holiday stress, relax a bit before Baby, and enjoy the last of any significant "me" time I will have until Baby is in preschool. They stayed over night at Aunt Gail's and had a blast with everyone!

After that, Nana and Papi made their way up here from Iowa to spend a little less than a week with us. They beat out the winter storm that made its way here and dumped a couple feet of snow on the ground. It was truly a white Christmas this year. No doubt about that.

We did our annual Christmas Eve at my Dad and Clare's, Christmas morning at Grandma Mazie's with the Engelhart's, and Christmas afternoon/evening with the Zawislaks (my mom's side of the family)--see photo slideshow below...

The 26th was spent relaxing, going through ALL the gifts and attempting to organize them. We also headed out to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakel. It was all right. The kids really liked it, but I think I preferred the first one better.

Andrew and the girls were supposed to leave on the 27th to head to Tom and Pat's house, but we decided to give the roads one more day to clear off. And their trip on the 28th went really well. The girls did great for being in the car 6 1/2 hours with Daddy driving. They had lots more gifts to open in Wisconsin and had a great time with Bubba and GrandPat. They visited with the Comandes both for gift opening and at Roma Lodge for New Year's Eve. And Andrew celebrated New Year's Eve at Ben and Jenelle's house for their annual NYE get together.

After their fun trip, they headed back to MN on January 2nd for one day of relaxation on Jan. 3rd before jumping back into school and the normal routine. All in all, a very successful holiday season!

And here is a slideshow of it all!

I believe if you click on the slideshow box, you can get to the actual photo album and see the photos larger if you like.

Skol Vikings...one more time!

To finish out Andrew's birthday weekend, we attended the Vikings/Bengals game with Cindy and Shawn on December 13th.

We had a ton of fun as usual and I'm feeling lazy so you just get a photo slideshow. :-)

Holiday Knitting

I decided I was going to do some holiday knitting this year. I'm not sure if it's some weird maternal knitting instinct since I'm pregnant. Or if knitting is just a really great relaxing thing for me to do. My mind was so preoccupied with to-do lists and things to take care of between holiday preparations and getting ready for Baby. Knitting is a really great thing to do to just escape. I usually do that with reading too, but for some reason, the last month or so, I cannot focus enough to get into books. So knitting it is.

I started off planning on knitting my stepdad some socks and my mom a scarf. Then I enjoyed the pattern for the scarf I made Ella's speech therapist so much that I decided to knit up another one of those for my stepmom. Then, in the middle of all that, Ella asked me if I would knit her American Girl doll mittens. Of course, I couldn't just make the doll mittens. So I added a hat and scarf for it as well. And of course, I could couldn't just make Ella's doll a winter set, I had to make Lily's doll a set as well.

Ella really likes everything I make for her and I hadn't made a hat for her in a couple years. So I decided to quick knit up a hat and scarf for each of the girls to match their winter coats. I found yarn at Michael's that matched perfectly so I couldn't pass it up.

Shockingly, I got ALL of that finished up by Christmas Eve morning. And everyone seemed to really enjoy their gifts. The added bonus of making something is that I didn't have to do as much holiday shopping in the stores. Well, I did make a couple trips to the yarn shop. But really, that's not quite a hardship. That's pure fun for me! :-) I also managed to knit up a few items for our friends' Matt and Allison's daughter Lilah for her Build-a-Bear Penguin we gave her for Christmas. But I didn't remember to take a photo of it before I sent it off.

Below are some photos of my finished projects.

Ella's dolls' winter set and her matching hat/scarf:





Here's Lily's doll's winter set (on Ella's doll--Lily was napping with her doll when I took the photos):





And here's my mom, my stepdad and my stepmom, respectively:

I will have to take a more close-up photo of my mom's scarf because you can't really see the details of the swirls very well in this picture.



And now I'm on to knitting up a few things for Baby!! I am sooo looking forward to taking photos of Baby when he arrives and I wanted to knit up a couple things to use in the photos and well, for everyday wear as well.

Skipping ahead...

So I realize that I still need to post about Christmas and a couple other things from December. I also want to get a school update on here for the girls...however, I'm going to skip ahead to Baby first, because that's where our focus is at the moment.

That's us at the Vikings Game on December 13th with my belly at 32 weeks.

I pretty much hate this photo of me above. But you know, I need to take it for posterity I guess. My 35-week belly. I took this myself with the timer on my camera.
I like this one a lot better. I guess I'd rather not look directly at the camera.

I had my 36-week check-up this past Tuesday and will go in each week now until Baby is born. The doctor checked me and no progress has been made toward labor yet. But that was no surprise, I didn't really think anything was happening yet. I've never gone early so I wouldn't really expect it with this one. She felt around the outside of my belly and made the claim that Baby seems a little on the small side, she said, like maybe seven pounds or so. HA!! Yeah right. I told her I would believe that he was small when he was actually born and weighed less than Ella (8 lbs, 12 oz) or Lily (9 lbs, 1 oz). I think I tend to hide a lot of Baby inside or something.

She also asked us if we wanted to set a date to be induced if he didn't come before. And of course, my response to that was an emphatic "yes!". So it looks like the big day will be Friday, Jan. 22nd (the day before my birthday and exactly one-week from my actual due date) if he doesn't decide to come on his own before that. I'm totally fine with being induced and would actually prefer it because I know what to expect. Both Ella and Lily were induced and Lily was a very easy delivery. So I'm crossing my fingers for a similar experience with this one.

To answer the question, "Am I ready to have this baby?" My answer is both yes and no, but getting closer to ready each day. I say that because I'm very ready to not be pregnant anymore and meet our little guy. However, we were hoping to have our basement project complete, the guest room moved down there, Andrew's office moved down there, and the baby's room all set on the main floor. It appears none of that will be done by the time Baby arrives. It'll be close, but a miracle if any of that is done. Sooo, we've been feeling a bit out of sorts and disorganized around here. It's not that big of a deal because Baby will stay with us in our room for a bit anyway. We've cleared out our vanity corner to set up the pack n play. We're going to turn the vanity into a changing area. We went to IKEA today and bought Lily a new dresser so that the one in her room that is really a baby wardrobe can become the baby's. We're going to move the baby wardrobe into our room too. So the baby will have his own tiny chunk of the house, until we can really get his room painted and put together.

I still need to make a Target run and get diapers, wipes, and all those sorts of things. That's on the to-do list for tomorrow. We also need to get the car seat cover washed and put back together. Once all of that is done, I think I can truly say, "Yes, we are ready for Baby."

Anyhoo, that's the latest. I'm hoping for Baby to stay put for another week or so. But we'll see what happens. Stay tuned!