3 - It's the magic number

Well it's been 1 week since the birth of Joslyn and all is well. I wanted to share with all of you my point of view of the birth and the last week at home with Mom and baby.

It was Saturday night around 10:30pm when Kate's water broke. I was pretty calm considering all the anxiety I had felt over the last 9 months. We packed up the car and headed to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital and were checked into our room by 11:30pm. The nurse said because Kate's water had broke that if she could not go naturally they would have to induce. Of course they were going to give her 24 hours before they would induce.

Kate and I were a little concerned because we had been practicing our Hypnobirthing and were excited to put it to use. Maybe excited is the wrong word to use. I was a little worried about being able to use hypnosis on Kate, especially in front of the nurses coming and going. I had my scripts prepared and at bedside and I read them to Kate. These scripts help Kate enter hypnosis and manage her discomfort. I repeat my scripts and she also used her ipod to listen to a couple of other scripts. But generally speaking, they say the hypnosis helps you delivery your baby faster and with less discomfort. In fact during one of our practice sessions a few weeks earlier I tried a test with Kate while she was in hypnosis. The test was that as we went along I told her I was tying large helium filled balloons to her wrist. The balloons lifted her wrist to where she could not keep her arm on the chair. Slowly her arm raised up in the air until I started to cut the balloons one by one. After the practice session Kate told me she was alert to what I was telling her but no matter how hard she tried she could not lower her arm until I told her I was cutting them one by one. At this point I was pretty much convinced that this could work.

Needless to say, I believe the hypnosis worked because when we arrived at the hospital at 11:30 Kate was 2cm dilated and by 4:15am she was 10cm and ready to push. I think the nurse was caught a little off guard by this. We'd asked the nurse to not inform us what Kate's dilation was, so we had no idea how far she along she was already when she said she felt the need to push. The next thing you know it's 4:45am and our midwife has arrived and has given the ok to push. Half an hour later Joslyn was making her first appearance.

She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I shed the first of many tears. Joslyn spent the next hour on Kate's tummy for skin to skin contact and her first breast feeding before they took her away to be given the once over. At this time she was handed to me and I held my baby girl for the first time. Again more tears, alot more tears. It was simply overwhelming the love I felt for Joslyn and Kate at that moment.

The last week has been just a wonderful blur. Kate is starting to feel a lot better and Joslyn seems to be following a little bit of a schedule. Hopefully she will maintain this schedule! I am looking forward to sharing all the wonderful things Joslyn and I will do.

As always thanks for all the support and thanks for reading!

Hello World

My name is Joslyn Adele Mahoney and I am the newest member of the clan! I was born July 20th, 2008 at 5:16 a.m.. I weighed 7 lbs 12 oz and was 20 inches long. I was so excited to meet my mommy and daddy that I couldn't wait until my due date July 31st. So if you guessed I would be a girl and that I would be early you were correct! My daddy is telling me to thank everyone for checking the blog and that we will be posting more pictures of me and the family in the next couple of days and weeks. But since I've only meet a few people over the past couple of days I'm guessing most of you would like to see a picture of me! I have asked my daddy to help with this because I'm not sure how to do that yet. Daddy assures me that in a few years I will be showing my grandma and grandpa how to work the computer. For now I'm just happy I know how to type! Anyways below is a slide show of a few pictures mommy and daddy took of me. Some aren't very flattering but once I got cleaned up I look pretty cute or at least that's what everyone has been telling me.

Thanks for reading my first post and I look forward to meeting all of you very soon!

Joslyn-

Soon?

Well, it's Friday afternoon, and I'm at home. The last few days have been very weird... Baby Thunder is definitely working her/his way down (lightening), as I can breathe a bit better but walking has become harder and now have to pee every 3 minutes with an urgency I've never before known! I've also been having periodic Braxton-Hicks contractions, which are pretty much painless tightening and release of my uterus, for the last couple weeks. (think "practice" contractions) In the last few days, sleeping has become pretty darn tough because of the frequency and strength of these contractions. Normally they get better during the day, but that too has been escalating the last two days--yesterday at work was not fun!

So, here I am today, hiding out in the basement at home. Other than being uncomfortable, I'm in good spirits. Papa Pete is doing well too, though, it seems to be hitting home with us both that we might actually be close now:)

We'll keep you all posted as things happen.

Love you lots!

Kateo

Stylin' Daddy!

I finally finished Pete's Father's Day gift! The anticipation makes it that much sweeter, right?;) For those that don't know, I like to sew--not clothes really, and definitely nothing with a pattern that I have to buy in the store. I've found that I just don't have the patience for things that require me to follow directions.... Instead, I make things like diaper bags, curtains, funky pillows, etc where I sketch it out before hand and adapt on the fly:) So, each project is different than the last, and I learn something new every time.

So, on to Pete's gift! It's a messenger-style Daddy D-Bag--the colors, materials and external design were all chosen by the man himself, I was just responsible for the assembly. He lovingly calls the main fabric "Bass Boat Red". It's a heavyweight red vinyl w/red glitter sparkles in it, accented with white pleather racing strips; the inside lining/pockets are sport nylon. The final touch is the seat beat clasp on the shoulder strap--I scrounged around a salvage yard here in SLC to find it:) It was a fun project! (note that clicking on an image will allow you to see a bigger version)

SLC to ATL

Hi All,

It looks like the Mahokenatez Clan is on the move! Kate and I along with Baby T will be moving to Atlanta, GA. We will make the move in late October early November. I am guessing we will start to look for housing in September. The upside to the move is that we will now be a 12 hour drive from family and friends back home in Wisconsin. The downside is that we have made so many new friends here in SLC that we will miss. Kate and I have had a hard time making this decision. I even spent a few hours in the ER because the anxiety was too much. But even after all of that we are looking forward to this new opportunity. As details come forward we will be sure to post them here. As always thanks for reading!!

The Fit is go!

After dumping several thousands of dollars into Turbo Negro (turbo black Volvo XC70) and still not having everything fixed. Kate and I have traded her in for 2008 Honda Fit. We picked it up on The 4th and have put a 115 miles on it. This is my first new car! the Honda had 15 miles on it when we picked it up. Below are a few pictures of my new car! I'm excited about the 34 MPG considering the Volvo only got 19! Anyway - thanks for reading and stay tuned - Big news coming up!