Max is 3 weeks old!

Our little Max is 3 weeks old today. My mom, who has been staying with us since Max's birth, went back to Canada today. That means our little family of 4 is left to fend for ourselves. No more gourmet yummy cooking every night by my mom! We still have to go to the pediatrician tomorrow to check Max's jaundice, again. The doctor wants to continue to monitor his jaundice level even though we know that it's likely caused by the breast milk. I just want them to stop pricking his little heels!

Play guess the baby

When Max was born, we thought that he looked just like Jalen when he was a baby. But as time went on, we've started to notice how Max looks different from Jalen. Still, let's see if you can tell the difference. See comment for the answer.

Baby A

Baby B

Jalen reads Good Night Moon to baby brother Max

Max is 2 weeks old!

Max started on photo-therapy on Feb. 5. Since then, a nurse visits our house everyday to get his weight, temperature and blood sample to check his billirubin level. It's so sad watching them poke his little heels everyday. His jaundice didn't improve much after being on phototherapy for a week. So based on the doctor's recommendation, we did a trial of giving Max only formula for 2 days. This meant that I had to pump every 3 hours for those two days. What a chore! So at night, Rick would give Max the bottle while I pumped. Fortunately, the trial paid off and his jaundice improved dramatically after 2 days. So today, on his 2-week birthday, the doctor said Max can be off the lights. They will come visit again tomorrow to take what I hope to be the final blood sample to show that his jaundice didn't get worse after being off the lights.

Some temporary break from the lights.

Daddy doing bottle duty.

Jalen plants a big kiss on baby Max.

We took Jalen and Max to Bellevue Square on Sunday. Max slept the whole time.

Max is 2 weeks old and out of the lights! He's now 7lbs 5oz, up from 6lbs 6ozs since he started light therapy.

Max is 1 week old!

Baby Max is one week old today! When I think back to the first week we had Jalen, it was all a blur. We had to feed him every 2 hours and each feeding took about an hour. I felt like a zombie from sleep deprivation. With Max, things are a little easier because we've been through this once before. However, around last Thursday Max started to develop jaundice. It made him very lethargic and he refused to nurse. I would try for 10 minutes to get him to nurse then finally giving up and feed him using a bottle. So I had to spend all day and all night pumping. Pumping is my least favourite thing to do. It's back breakingly uncomfortable and it means I'm not bonding with my baby. Max started phototherapy for his jaundice on Friday night, which means he's been confined to his bed except for feeding and diaper changes. There's a nurse that comes to our house everyday to check on him and draw blood for daily lab test for his billirubin level. His jaundice has been improving since Friday but he will probably stay on the light for another couple of days. The nurses are also certified lactation consultants so they helped to get Max nursing again. Which means, yay, no more pumping!

Max emerges from his phototherapy pod!

My three boys.

Max is starting to gain more baby fat!

Introducing Max, aka "Speedy"!

Baby Locke #2 had a due date of Feb. 12, 2010. I had planned to work until Feb. 5, 2010 to give myself a week of head room. However, as of Jan. 27, I was already 4cm dilated. We were preparing for baby to arrive any day. In fact, I was quite anxious for baby to come because I was getting increasingly uncomfortable. On Sunday, Jan. 31, I spent 1 hour on the elliptical machine at the gym, hoping to get things kick started! However, to my disappointment, there was no sign of baby and I begrudgingly went to work on Monday.

On Monday Feb. 1 evening, I went to pick up Jalen at Ricky's parents house in Seattle and we went to a Sichuan restaurant for dinner. Around 7:30pm I started feeling slightly painful contractions. I had been getting Braxton Hicks contractions for a week, so I wasn't sure if this was the real thing or not. After dinner, I gave Ricky a call at 7:54pm to tell him to come into Seattle just in case. I was timing my contractions and they were coming around 2 - 4 minutes apart. However, they were still mild and I didn't have trouble getting through them.

Ricky got to his parents house around 8:30pm and suggested that we leave for the hospital right away. I didn't want to be overreacting so I paged the oncall doctor. She suggested we come in after I told her the contractions were 2 to 4 minutes apart. The worst thing that can happen is that they'd send me home. So I said good night to Jalen, and Ricky and I left for the hospital. I figured that we still had plenty of time because these contractions were nothing compared to what I remembered from the last time.

As soon as we got into the car, around 8:45pm, my contractions all of sudden became really intense. It took a lot of cursing and screaming just to get through them. I was thinking, oh my God, how did I get through these last time? By the time we got to the hospital, I was hanging on for dear life. Then, something felt strange and I thought the baby was coming. I felt the urge to push. I yelled to Rick, "something is happening!!" He drove the car to the ER entrance where he quickly summoned help. That strange feeling I had was my water breaking. The ER staff brought over a wheelchair. I took one look at it and thought "you've got to be kidding me". Rick said, no we need a stretcher. I don't know how they got me onto the stretcher but I just remember being wheeled into the hospital and up the elevators. I was grabbing onto the sides of the stretcher as I screamed through my contractions. I was doing my best to avoid pushing.

The triage nurse examined me and said, "oh, there's the baby". They were going to try to get me to the delivery room but thought better of it. Because in the next minute, the baby slipped out. I was not even pushing! I was in such shock. They handed the baby to me and Rick said "it's a boy!" I was sobbing from shock and relief. I can't believe what a close call that was. I was officially checked into the hospital at 9:05pm and the baby was born at 9:06pm. If we were just a few minutes later, I could have had the baby in the car!

Rick and I didn't know the sex of the baby ahead of time. We were not so secretly hoping for a girl and had finally settled on a girl name just days ago. But we still had no boy name! After getting to know our new baby son for a little while, we decided to call him "Max". Just Max, not short for anything. We like that it's different sounding than Jalen so he will be his own little man.

Welcome baby Max, mommy and daddy love you so much already!