first visitors

grandma and grandpa lee and aunty vicky came for a visit! grandma and grandpa made it just in time to see the birth of lucas...whew. grandma stayed for over a month to help take care of us. boy, were we spoiled! :P

some snapshots

catching some rays

after being home for just two days, little lucas had to return to the hospital for some "suntanning." we discovered that he had jaundice and needed to spend the night under some phototherapy lights at the hospital. it was really hard for us to see our little boy go through such an ordeal at just 4 days old, but he was all better by the next morning and we were able to bring him home again...for good this time.

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sent from above

it finally happened...my water broke around 8:30 am saturday morning, february 19. i was both excited and nervous at the same time! i was sort of in shock that it was actually happening - we were about to have a baby!

i was talking on the telephone with my mom who, ironically, was calling to ask me to change her flight schedule so that she would arrive to the tri-cities sooner. she wanted to be sure she wouldn't miss the birth of her grandson. after a very brief conversation, i quickly got off of the telephone with my mom and called allan, who was on his way to have breakfast with some friends. luckily, he had the cell phone with him! while i waited for allan to return home, i telephoned my doctor to let him know what was going on. he told me to relax, take a shower, grab a bite to eat, and meet him at the hospital. so, that's what we did.

we arrived at the hospital around 10:00 am. i found out that i was 3 centimeters dilated, which made me very excited. i was three-tenths of the way there! however, the excitement quickly subsided. by 4:00 pm (6 hours later) i had only dilated another centimeter. at that time, my doctor suggested that i be given pitocin to speed up my contractions. i wanted to wait a while longer to see if i could do it on my own - without the help of any drugs. so, we waited another two hours. by 6:00 pm, i was still only 4 centimeters dilated. so, my doctor insisted that i be given pitocin. at that point, i decided to go ahead and have an epidural since my contractions had gotten pretty bad. it took three tries for the epidural to take effect...sheesh!

lucas elijah tuan arrived at 7:25 am on sunday, february 20, 2005. he weighed 7 pounds 2.3 ounces and was 20 inches long. he was beautiful and perfect, more than any parent could ask for. we thank God for such a special blessing and sweet, sweet bundle of joy.

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2.54 cm in an inch

we went to our weekly doctor's appointment today. this is our 38th week and things are still looking good! my blood pressure is still low, the baby's heart rate is normal, the fundus height is 40 inches...so there's no need to worry. we also learned that i am 2 centimeters dilated! the braxton hicks contractions are working! my doctor said that the little guy could come any day now. our next appointment is on tuesday, february 22. i'm hoping i'll have dilated another centimeter or two by then. :P

by the way, did you know that 2.54 centimeters make up one inch? allan casually pointed it out to me when i commented that 2 centimeters was about an inch. it's interesting the things we store in our memory.

ready or not

we installed the car seat into our minivan today. (can you believe we own a minivan? we love it!) so, whenever our little guy decides it's time to meet the world, we know that the hospital will allow us to take him home. :) allan also put together the stroller and high chair. i think we're ready for a bigger house already.

we also put the final touches on our nursery. the only thing we're missing is our changing table. we can't wait to bring our little boy home!

a special day

i had a GREAT day today! some friends of ours threw me and allan an awesome office baby shower today :). Thanks, C, D, & R! allan and i feel incredibly blessed to have such great friends who care about us both outside and inside of work. thanks to all of our friends' and co-workers' thoughtfulness and generosity, we are set for our little boy to arrive. we were missing some essential items such as a stroller, play yard, etc. until today. whew! just in time...

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my day was made extra special with allan's homecoming. he's been away for the past two weeks and i finally got him back tonight! we had everyone praying that our son wouldn't arrive until allan returned...praise God for His goodness. so, tonight i have allan back with me safe and sound. i should be able to get a good night's rest, aside from the aches and pains of pregnancy, which will soon be over.

cockle-doodle-doo!

happy chinese lunar new year! so, you may already know, 2005 is the year of the rooster. i don't put much weight into these things, but this is how the sign of the rooster is described...

these quick thinkers are practical and resourceful, preferring to stick to what is tried and true rather than taking messy, unnecessary risks. roosters are keenly observant. it's hard to slip anything past a rooster, since they seem to have eyes in the backs of their heads! this quality can lead others to think the rooster is psychic. this sign enjoys a keen attention to detail that makes it a whiz at anything requiring close analysis. roosters make great lawyers, brain surgeons, and accountants, to name a few of this sign's possible occupations. above all else, the rooster is very straightforward and rewards others' honesty in kind...

not so bad. we will have ourselves a little rooster very soon!

by the way, the little one is having the hiccups as i type! so cute...

to doula or not to doula

i had dinner with a girlfriend tonight who recently had a baby girl who is simply adorable! my friend shared with me her personal birthing experience and gave me lots of tips and suggestions on how to make my own birthing experience as...enjoyable?...as possible. she was GREAT. her outlook on her experience was extremely positive. dare i say it has made me more eager about my own upcoming experience? maybe that's stretching it a bit.

here's an interesting thing that came from our conversation...the idea of having a doula in the delivery room to help me and allan through the labor process. a doula has come to be referred to as "a woman experienced in childbirth who provides continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to the mother before, during, and just after childbirth." i have heard great things from friends who have had a doula at their side during labor. so, now the question is, "to doula or not to doula?"

a sweet fairy tale

my very good friends here in the tri-cities threw me a baby shower today and i had so much fun! there's something about a group of women getting together to celebrate the birth of a first child that is truly touching. a big THANK YOU to my friends for planning such a fun and special celebration for me.

so here's a short fairy tale that my creative friends penned for me and my little one at the baby shower (each sentence was written by a different woman who was not able to see what the previous woman wrote!)...

"once upon a time there was a girl named yolanda. this beautiful young woman had a baby the day after allan arrived home. he crawled to the kitchen and pulled open the drawer to play with the pots and pans. yolanda and baby loved to look in each other's eyes and enjoy each other's smiles. the baby cried all the time and finally allan was able to cheer him up! this baby boy was so dearly loved and his mommy got to stay home and care for him everyday. then one day the boy went to school. the baby has yolanda's nose, allan's mouth. as the tuan's boy grew older and entered his teen years, he respected his parents and never talked back because you know this is a fairy tale. one day little baby wandered into the deep dark forest and met a strange little dwarf who gave him a riddle to solve. he came back from his adventure and to his mother's surprise, he brought back a beautiful princess. he was truly blessed to have such fine parents to raise him and teach him all of the ways of the Lord. and the lovely young lady and her handsome prince lived happily ever after with junior :)."

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going gray

we are officially one month away from our due date of march 2. yikes! of course, i'm feeling extremely nervous. i guess all of that "you can do it" and "it'll all be worth it" stuff i've been saying to myself hasn't really worked. oh, and through all of my dreams of giving birth and whatnot, i've developed a gray hair! i found it the other day as i was getting ready in the morning. it's pretty prominent to me, but i don't think anyone else can see it. i guess this is just the beginning of being a parent (i.e., getting older).

hungry? grab a snickers

i went out this afternoon to run a few errands. while i was waiting in line to pay at one of the stores, i suddenly got very hot and lightheaded. i began feeling weak in my knees and my heart started beating really fast. out of nowhere, hunger hit me and i started shaking, literally. for all of my friends out there who are pregnant (and there are many!), this is a reminder to keep snacks with you AT ALL TIMES! i don't think hunger has hit me like it did this afternoon any other time during my pregnancy. i felt like i was going to faint right there at the checkstand. fortunately, there was a rack of candy bars within arms reach. now i appreciate the slogan for snickers candy bars..."hungry? grab a snickers." i did so gladly!

weighing in

beginning in the 30th week, we've been seeing our doctor every other week as opposed to once a month. we went to an appointment yesterday afternoon and learned that i'm still holding up pretty well. yay! my blood pressure was pretty low, which was a good sign. but since my ankles and feet are pretty swollen, the doctor is slightly concerned that i may get pre-eclampsia. fortunately, my blood pressure is low so the chances of it are slim. whew. i was dreading having to step onto the scale, and for good reason. within the last three weeks i gained not three, or four, or even six...but a whopping EIGHT pounds! incredible.

he continues to be very active throughout the day. in fact, sometimes i can just look at my tummy and see it ripple! then i think to myself, was that a foot? an elbow? his little behind? it makes my heart melt when i see and feel it. :) i can hardly wait to meet him!

uneasy

i am beginning to feel really uncomfortable as i keep getting bigger and bigger. today marks my 35th week, which means that i only have 5 more weeks to go. whoa! the baby is supposed to gain a half a pound per week from this point until he's delivered. that means i'm just going to continue growing until the very end. plus, my ankles and feet are constantly swollen now. earlier, they would only swell if i stayed on my feet too long. now, they're just swollen all the time. it makes it hard to do anything but sit back and kick up my feet. i'd love to do that, but i still have to go to work and get some things around the house in order. i can say that though pregnancy has had its fun and amazing moments, i am ready to meet our little boy!

"in-take"

we went to our "in-take" interview at the hospital tonight where we had a chance to tour the Birth Center and talk to a labor nurse about our birthing preferences, ask questions, and just to get a feel of where our baby will be delivered. it was a great experience. the best part was getting some tips on how to avoid back labor as much as possible. she described it as "loading the baby into the dock correctly"...funny, huh?

a view of the birthing room. looks cozy, doesn't it? :P

a look ahead

so i had another dream last night about our little boy's birth. this time, he had already been delivered and i was holding him in my arms all tightly swaddled-up. funny thing is, i didn't have any recollection of the delivery or the pain. one other interesting thing, he was born on february 11 - that's almost three weeks early! we'll have to see what the doctor has to say at our next visit.

i finally measured myself over the weekend. i'm now 41 inches around...yikes!

some privacy please

my friend offered to help me sew a few things for the nursery this weekend. thanks, S! we picked out fabric and sewed a cushion for the rocking chair, re-upholstered a foot stool, and sewed curtains for the window, which will make for some much-needed privacy down the road. it took us a little longer than expected (except for the foot stool - that was a breeze), but everything turned out beeeautiful. yay! we also had some friends come over to help finish up some home improvement projects that have been long-delayed. thanks, B and N! you guys are such a blessing to us. i'm beginning to feel a little less panicky about the arrival of our little guy.



for those of you out there who like apple juice, you must try Snapple Apple. i have been craving apple juice like crazy, so my friend S brought over a bottle of snapple apple for me to try. it was delicious...as if you were eating a real macintosh apple. yum.

aaaahhh

i've been getting lots of knots in my shoulders and upper back area lately, probably from working at the computer all day. so, i decided to treat myself to a prenatal massage. i was looking forward to it all day today, and it was wonderful! she worked on my neck and shoulders, then my legs, and finally my back. she even had a table with a hole cut out in the belly area so that my tummy would fit right in when i laid down. except, there was a slight problem. due to the fact that i'm vertically challenged, my head wouldn't reach the face donut they offer you when you're lying on your stomach! that didn't stop us, though; we made do. but i found it kind of amusing. i'm always surprised at the times i'm reminded of how "petite" i really am.

oh, and i've begun nesting. each night, i find myself going on purging sprees - getting rid of anything i haven't touched in the past year.

a shower for baby

on december 28, while we were home for the holidays, my sister and our friends threw us our very first baby shower. it was so special and so much fun! thank you to the girls who planned such a special night for us. the thought and love you girls put into it did not go unnoticed! thank you, also, to everyone who came to celebrate with us and shower us with gifts for the baby. we especially loved the storybooks you shared with us...they are a perfect beginning to our little boy's library.

epidural anyone?

along with eight other very pregnant couples, we attended a 7-hour birthing class offered through our hospital, Kadlec, this weekend. overall, it was very informative. i haven't decided whether i'm more scared or less scared now that i've gone through the class. i can say that i'm now more determined to wait and see if i'll really need an epidural. maybe it's just my naivete or maybe it's my over-optimism, but i don't want to go in having the expectation that i'll get one.

i also started having braxton-hicks contractions last night. they kept coming sporadically - 5 minutes, 9 minutes, 6 minutes, 11 minutes apart. they weren't painful...just...uncomfortable. i know they're nothing, though, compared to real contractions. what am i in for?

on the road

we hit the road for christmas, traveling to both northern and southern california to visit our families. i ended up faring quite well given my physical state. other than some swelling and backaches, i didn't have any problems...praise God! we had a great time celebrating the holidays with both sides of our immediate families this year. a scary thing happened - i was walking back to bed from the bathroom one night (with the lights off) and tripped over my suitcase! luckily, and amazingly, allan was right there to reach out his arm and catch me. we don't know how he did it because he was fairly sound asleep. but, just as i was lunging forward about to hit my head on the nightstand, his arm came in front of me and caught me. whew, that was a close one.

:: a peek at some of baby's first christmas presents ::

baby socks to keep little feet warm
pee-pee teepee to protect mommy and daddyduring changing times