Pre-Baby Day 3 and beyond

Well.... that didn't really go to plan. Day 3 was supposed to be such a fantastic Katie day. I had planned on going to my doctors appointment in the morning heading to the store, getting dinner makings and freezing them prior to the baby coming. Next was to get my hair cut, get a massage, get a facial, and then come home and relax.

Of that list of lovely things I only made it to the doctors. Got there and they told me that our little guy was hanging out in low fluid and his heart rate was a little lower than they would like so they told me to do to the labor and delivery ward to get it double checked. And that is where I spent the next 6 days.

I was under evaluation for 3 hours, then the second doctor confirmed that our little boy was low on fluid and the best course of action was to start an induction of labor. The induction lasted 3 days...finally delivery via C-section. My labor experience ran the gamut of labor experiences. I basically got to go through everything but pushing him all the way out, although I did push for 3 hours before they made me stop. FYI nothing hurt until the water breaking (which was in itself not bad) becuase I ended up with horrific back labor pains. I finally gave in after about 2 hours and got an epidural (mostly because the baby wasn't even close to coming out).

Our little boy (Jason Bourne Kuplevich) was born on 6/15 in New York, NY. He was exactly one week early, weighing in at 6lbs 15oz and 47cm long. He is and was all arms and legs. He is the cutest little guy and he is all ours! We are so thankful for him and even with the day 2 scare of him having jaundice (which cleared up after a day in the baby tanning booth aka "lightbox") he is perfect, if not a bit sleepy.

Day 2 - Pre baby

Slept in again, making sure that I book those extra hours now so that I have some in the reserve for when the baby comes and we stop sleeping for awheil. :) Played on the computer a little bit, practiced some Russian. I got the house all ready for our robot vaccum cleaner to do it's thing and I walked Igor back to work, he came home for lunch today :).

After dropping Igor off at his office, I hiked around the city for a little while until it got too hot to be outside then came home and set up our new robot mop. I watched it do it's thing and despite being in the top two on the market this little mop just is no subsitute for good old fashion mop methods (either hands and knees or even the swifter. I had to follow behind it and reclean the floor. It really more just pushed the dirty stuff around than actually cleaning it. Oh well we tried and to be fair our robot vacuum is amazing (thanks again dad!!).

So after getting all hot, sweaty, and tired I went down to the swimming pool and soaked for a little bit then layed out on the sun. Now I am just lounging around the house, waiting for Igor to come home to play.

Tomorrow will be more eventful, I have a doctors appointment in the AM to see if this baby boy is coming anytime soon and then I have made some other plans for the rest of the morning.

Stay tuned. 

Day 1 - Off of work and before the baby comes

What better way to spend the first day of maternity leave than sleeping in...umm, ok so I do that almost every day, since I work on California hours and don't usually start my work day until 11:30 - 12 noon NYC time. All the same I got to sleeping in later and not worry about having to make sure that I was home from the store or wherever I decided to go at a certain time. That was pretty nice.

So when I did end up getting up I did my usually Monday morning thing. I set up our Costco delivery for the afternoon (for those of you who don't know the closest Costco to us is 1.25 hours away and if you go there in person you can only buy as much as you can carry, which in terms of Costco means not much); made myself breakfast, then headed out to the grocery store. I have been contemplating for the last several weeks about making a cheese cake, so I bought everything that I needed to make an authentic German cheese cake (get this, the video was even in German, had to do a lot of conversions and use google translate to work out the instructions). I also made a bunch of marinated chicken and left a couple in the fridge to make dinner for Igor.

German Cheese Cake

Marinated Chicken

Maybe not the most productive day in the world but pretty good.

38 weeks and counting

Below was taken this week (weeek 38 = 8,8 months). Me and my basketball are 2 weeks from our estimated due date (aka the rumble), but I'm thinking we just might do this a bit early...guess we shall all see.

We are basically ready now. Have pretty much everything that I/Kristin (and her awesome baby list) could think of that we might need in the first weeks. Yes, we are putting baby in the corner, but it's his corner and it's nearly ready for him, complete with decorations (thanks Kristin!!). 

This was my last week of work. Now to make some good home cooked meals, freeze them, relax, and pick up my mom from the airport on Thursday. 

April Shower

So my sister Kristin threw me an awesome camp themed baby shower in April. Had to be April because I wasn't coming back to California after that since a 6 hour plane flight being 7.5 months pregnant and having swelling feet really didn't sound like a great idea. On top of which the as I was having a little trouble controlling my blood sugar the doctor said no more travel anyway.

So, the baby shower was small, intimate, and perfect in every way. My aunt Vicki drove all the way down from Redding (3.5 hours north of Benicia where we had the baby shower), my mom came in from New Mexico, which was a two-fer for her since my nephews birthday was around about the same time, and my friends from work and climbing came too! Here are some great pictures of the day.

The Past Year...

So slacking complete a lot has happened in the last....well, ok, over a year.

Igor quit his job at FitBit, got a new job with a quantitative hedge fund in NYC, we moved to NYC, Igor had surgery on his knee after ripping his meniscus (he is pretty much all better now), we found out we were having a baby, we found out that baby was a boy, we visited California one last time in April where my awesome sister threw me a baby shower, and now we are in the last month before the little guy arrives. We still don't have a name for him, though it is likely to be Jason, as I am losing the naming battle (go figure).

For fun here are some big pregnant lady progress pictures starting way back in December all the way to today. Funny thing is I thought I was "sooo big" in the beginning and now, looking back at those same photos, I think..."isn't that how I looked everyday?" Oh well, prespective I suppose.

December 2017 (3 months)

Jan 22, 2018 (4 months)

Feb 03, 2018

Feb 05, 2018

Feb 17, 2018

Feb 21, 2018 (5 months) 

March 01, 2018

March 20, 2018 (6 months)

April 28, 2018 (7months)

May 07, 2018

May 19, 2018 (8 months)

I have about 4 weeks left of working, which isn't coming fast enough in some sense. I built our little guys crib this afternoon (see my handy work!), which means I feel a little bit more prepared for him to come, although I still am getting all the necessary stuff, but have to be careful since it needs to have a place. See below for my storage work so far. Thankfully, amazon and costco are just a same-day or 2-day delivery away so there really isn't much to worry about. I can always order stuff that we need from the hospital, if it comes down to it.

Little Crib

Diaper station

0-3 month clothes

bottle storage

Stroller storage

For those who haved seen it here is our little home in NYC, which is , for obvious reasons in a state of change. We live on the West side of the city about a 10-15 minute walk to Central park. That said we are only in NYC for another few months and then we will be moving most likely to New Jersey where we will have a bigger, cheaper, quieter place. But for now our place is great. It's 4 blocks from the hospital, which is perfect. It will take a total of 10 minutes to walk there or 2 minutes to drive (probably faster to walk, as we don't own a car anymore....wayyy too expensive).

bathroom

Kitchen

Living room

bedroom

bedroom hudson view