Things have CHANGED!

We have a new home on the web... www.colesblog.ca - Same great content - just newer, cleaner, better.. :)

Come on over.

Gordie, Adrianne & Cole

Visit with the aunties

2 Weeks Old!

Some more pictures of our last couple of weeks...

10 days old

Today Cole's aunties are coming to visit from Alberta!

The many faces of Cole.

Hey all..

So - we are 5 days into this new journey and all is well and humming along sleeplessly :). I will give you a little walk through the week.

*Saturday evening - Irregular contractions start
*Sunday morning - Irregular contractions continue and become a bit more regular but still pretty spread out
*Sunday afternoom - head out for a distracting brunch & walk through H&M and the mall.
*Sunday evening - Things picking up & more intense. Get through the night with amazing support (Susan (mom), Janna & Midwife)
*Head to the hospital around 7AM
*Meet Cole face to face just after 1 PM, Monday, Sept 7/09.
*Thrilled that he has daddy's hair. Already hair product shopping for him...
*Tears, exhaustion, pictures, family & cuddling with our new son all are in abundance.

Tuesday - Cochran family over from the island and Anna in from Sun Peaks. Have a great day with them and Cole seems to be a big fan of everyone he met.

Wednesday to Current - much feeding, learning, sleeping, not sleeping, family, eating, cuddling, more learning, more eating, less sleeping...

All told - this has been quite the week thus far. We are absolutely in love with Cole and are so stoked for each of you to meet him. More photos & posts coming soon..

Until then, enjoy your sleep tonite. Cause I'm trying to :).

Gordie.

Cole Johnathan Yun Wah Cochran

We promise to post more pictures/information soon, but for now here are the basics.

Born Monday, September 7th, 2009 @ 1:10PM
8 pounds, 13 ounces
22.5 inches

We are all doing well... thanks for all your texts/phone calls/emails. We hope to talk to everyone soon!

Pre Labor Fun

Just wanted to quickly give everyone the latest update... We're going to White Spot for brunch!

But seriously... I think right now we are in the pre-labor phase of the journey. I've been having contractions since last night, but nothing too major (hence the blog post and the brunch). We're going to Coquitlam because for some reason I feel the need to go to Sephora today. So........ yeah nothing happening really. For comedic purposes, Gordie really wants the baby to be born on Labor Day. Hilarious. Perhaps his wish will be granted.

Due Date

Our due date came and went without much excitement... Technically our midwife is saying today is the due date so I'm hoping for some baby action at some point. I tried really hard to not think about the whole baby thing yesterday, but I am starting to get a bit antsy. My parents are here, Gordie's parents are waiting patiently in Victoria and I have a lot of well meaning strangers telling me how I can induce labor (it's not annoying at all).

Health wise, baby is doing well and so am I. We had what I'm hoping is our last prenatal appointment yesterday and found out the baby is probably between eight and nine pounds. Disturbing. Apparently it also has chubby thighs.

I actually feel great minus the crazy insomnia of the last week. I can't seem to sleep more than a few hours at a time, which is extremely frustrating as I know the whole "no sleep" thing is looming in the very near future. I have been waking up around 4:30 most mornings and basically doing whatever I can to make myself sleepy again. So far this morning I've read a magazine, stared at the wall and painted my nails. I'm hoping that doing this blog post will lull me back to sleep. Wish me luck...

September

So our baby did not surprise me on my birthday... too bad. I did have a really great day though. It's just hard to focus on anything other than the fact that any time now I will have to push a baby out of my body. Yikes.

Here's the latest, and perhaps the last belly shot. My friend told me yesterday that my belly looks like it's grown since last week so I thought I'd better document it. I didn't think it could possibly get bigger. An employee at a coffee shop told me I looked like I was about to explode. How kind. Who knows, maybe the next pictures we post will be of our little monkey...

39 Weeks

Today we had what may be our last prenatal appointment. Everything seems to be going really well, I'm healthy and so is the baby... It's heartbeat the last few times has been around 152, don't know if that's supposed to mean it's a boy or a girl...? Gordie is working long hours trying to finish up projects before the baby comes and I've mainly been stockpiling food for the last couple of days. My amazing friend Jodie came out for a couple of days and we made granola, muffins, banana bread, lasagna, cookies and enchiladas. Gordie's pretty pumped...

I haven't been doing anything crazy to induce labor (eating pineapple, drinking raspberry leaf tea, taking castor oil). My midwife and I both agree that when my body & the baby are ready, things will happen naturally. I also promised my dad, who's in Amsterdam, that nothing would happen until he's home... That said, I really think that the baby will come pretty much on schedule. Is that naive of me?

Maternity Photo Shoot

Nothing much going on here to report on... I am feeling huge and ready for the baby to come, although it's not allowed to make it's entrance until Grandma & Grandpa Hau come from Alberta. We'll see how that goes. Most people have predicted that we'll either have the baby early or right on the due date (something to do with my anal personality I think... hmmm).

Here are a couple of photos from the maternity shoot we did on Sunday.

Baby Room.

Hey all..

So at the request of my Mother, I have taken some photos of the 'nearly ready' baby room. All that is left is the baby & the wall decal that I designed of a tree branch with all kinds of little friends on it. I am sure we will have a photo of that once it's up..

Things are going well. Age is feeling much better than last week and we are pretty much primed and waiting. Sleeping as much as possible as we are planning for the opposite just around the corner.

So excited.

G

2 More Weeks!

This blog is mainly a picture update, which includes the promised belly shot.... Sorry it's only of my belly, but my hair was just not appropriately styled for a picture. I spent the day cleaning the kitchen - which felt like a sauna - and wasn't really feeling like putting up pictures of myself after that.

As far as the weird "under-belly" pain goes, I am doing much better. Even though I feel better, Gordie and Janna haven't been letting me go to AquaFit, which is somewhat frustrating. My amazing sister (who I love even though she won't let me swim) has been helping me out here and putting up with my extremely anal "nesting" the last little while... I don't really think it's nesting though, it's just me being my normal, freaky self. I don't feel like buying little baby clothes and folding them, I feel like disinfecting things. Yesterday, we cleaned out my kitchen cupboards and finally organized the million little bags of gluten free flours I had stuffed in there (you would appreciate it Sarah). I've been telling myself that I will have to let things go in the organization/cleaning department once the baby comes, but for now I will continue to clean with a vengeance.

We also finally got our crib mattress today, so the baby room is officially complete! I'm not going to post pictures of that today because Gordie has committed to doing a post about the baby room. Someone keep him accountable... I'm glad to have the room done though, because I have a weird feeling the baby will either be early or right on time. Anyone else have any guesses??? After all my tests last week, I'm apparently right on schedule as far as what my body is supposed to be doing to prepare for labor... Hopefully we won't have any baby news until next month!




My latest craigslist find... I'm tempted to just use these baby food trays for ice cubes.
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Two of my favorite people, making dinner... I was probably laying on the couch craigslisting at the time.

Baby Drama

I've been stuck sitting/laying on the couch for 3 days so I thought I'd post a little update for all our blog followers (does anyone actually read this?) I feel extremely narcissistic writing blog posts but maybe that will change when there is an actual baby to blog about. Regardless, I will share with you our adventure of the last few days...

It all started on Wednesday, which for the most part was a great day. I've really started enjoying my maternity leave and finally feel like I've started to unwind from work... I've been going to AquaFit in the mornings (where I'm the youngest person by about 30 years), hanging out with friends I haven't seen for a while, doing as much shopping for the baby as I can handle (shopping is not my forte), having naps every day and slowly starting to organize the house before baby comes. Wednesday was pretty low key until about 11PM when I got out of bed to use the bathroom (for the hundredth time) and had a severe pain under my belly. At first we just thought it was round ligament pain, which is the stretching of ligaments around the uterus as it grows. This pain is usually sharp and quite painful, but only lasts a minute or two. Unfortunately, the pain I was experiencing wasn't leaving. So after a shower (no help), a call to our midwife and some extra strength Tylenol (not much help either) we finally had a restless night of a few hours of sleep. By 6AM on Thursday we had both given up on sleeping anymore. I tried to take a bath to ease the pain a bit, which didn't do much and Gordie decided to phone our midwife again. She wanted to meet us at the hospital to check me over, but the maternity ward in Langley was full, so she came over. It's great when your midwife comes to you, you don't have to put on pants or get out of bed....

After being examined by the midwife, we didn't have many answers. The baby's heartbeat was great, it was moving around a lot, all my vitals were fine and it didn't look like the start of labor, which was a bit of a relief after a night of panic thinking we might be going into labor totally unprepared. We figured it was really strong Braxton Hicks (practice contractions) that would either go away eventually or turn into real labor. When we realized the pain was not going away, Gordie called my sister (who I now owe my life to) to come help out and get stuff ready in the house just in case the baby was on it's way. By 9PM, after a full day of extreme pain and not being able to even walk to the bathroom, I decided to call my midwife again and give her an update. She told us to meet her at the hospital so she could check me out more thoroughly and consult with an OB. So Gordie, Janna and I headed to the hospital. It felt like we were going for the real thing, except that we had no carseat, baby clothes or hospital bag packed. It was a good dry run though...

We ended up at the hospital for 3 hours and I was checked by both my midwife and an OB. They couldn't find anything so an ultrasound was ordered for the next day. Luckily I got a shot of Morphine and some other drugs to take home and we all had a good sleep. Yesterday was a better day, thanks to the drugs, but I was still in a lot of pain. We went back to the hospital for the ultrasound, which didn't give us any answers. The OB set me up with more painkillers and figured that the baby is just putting pressure on something they can't see. So now I'm just waiting for the baby to get off whatever it's laying on.

Luckily for us, we have amazing family and friends around us who helped us out... While we were at the hospital yesterday, my brother and his wife came over - Janna was still here, acting as my personal slave - and the three of them finished getting the baby room ready and made dinner. We also had friends drop dinner off the night before, which is seriously the greatest thing ever. Making meals and doing laundry are the last things you want to think about when you're in pain, and having people just come and take care of things for you is amazing. We feel lucky to have such great support...

So there it is.... the long drawn out story of our "we thought we might be in labor but it's just the baby being annoying" adventure. I'm hoping that by tomorrow I won't need painkillers and I'll be back to normal. Once I can stand normally, I'll post another belly shot and a picture of the now pretty much finished baby room....

Maternity Leave!!!

Today is unofficially my first day of maternity leave. Since today is a stat holiday (Happy BC Day) tomorrow will be the first day I can sit at home and think about how I'm not at work. I'm sure it will be fantastic. My plan was actually to work a bit longer, but my midwife's advice was to take as much time as I could and to rest as much as possible before the big day. And after a week of extreme weather and cranky, sweaty kids I'm so glad to be done. Of course, my idea of "resting & relaxing" usually includes a "To Do" list but I'm not letting myself work on that until tomorrow....

Anyway, here is a picture of the approximate size of our baby, as well as a nice fruit visual... One of the baby websites has produce comparisons for each month of fetal growth - who knew the baby is the size of a honeydew melon? I find this somewhat humorous and slightly creepy. Enjoy!

I think this baby looks a little annoyed...

I return..

Adrianne has stepped up to the plate for the last few entries and has left me feeling like I could be pulling my blogging weight a little more faithfully - so here goes.

We are just coming through the week of 35+ degree weather that has undoubtedly dominated the conversations of every soul in the lower mainland. It was quite the week. Our house sat at around the same balmy temperature as outside, and needless to say, Adrianne had a blast managing trying to sleep through the night. Our daily ritual consisted of the following:

- up at 5:30, have the first of 3-4 showers of the day
- breakfast (usually a cold smoothie)
- Take Age to work, stopping for an iced S.bucks to maintain the cooler body temp.
- Pick up Age for an Air Conditioned lunch break (as her work is more of a sauna than our house :)
- Home from work, shower
- Age off to AC (Starbucks or the Library)
- Out for dinner / AC.
- Stay out as long as possible.
- Home as late as possible and then another shower
- Age to bed with the following: fan cranking full tilt 2 feet from bed//3 ice packs wedged in between pillows//2 cold, wet towels acting as a blanket :)
- Then up the next morning @ 5:30.

That my friends, was our week. With all of the heat records recently shattered, it looks like the days ahead will be a few degrees closer to normal, so we may not cave on the Air Conditioner just yet..

Gordie

Picture Update

Baby bassinet I just bought on craigslist (don't worry, every fabric part comes off and will be properly sanitized).

This is the outfit I bought to bring home baby in, hopefully the baby's not too chunky because this kimono is pretty tiny.

Golden Ears picnic with Brody & Jodie... My first attempt with the maternity bathing suit. I thought I would float in the lake because of my belly, but I am definitely still a sinker.

Granville Island - 6.5 weeks to go...

Belly Shot

I know we are not that great at updating the blog, but there isn't really much to post except that I am getting huge.... Posting pictures of this is only something I can bring myself to do every month or so. So here is an updated belly shot, as well as a picture of the beginnings of a baby room (which is more of a guest room right now). I promise to update more when there's a cute baby to post pictures of.

Just wanted to give everyone a visual of the little furnace living in my tummy. I get pictures emailed to me weekly from a baby site and this one is supposed to be at 26 weeks. I've been feeling lots of kicks and Gordie's even been able to feel a few. As of today, we are 95 days away from our due date.... Crazy!

It's been really hot here for the last week and I am definitely feeling it. Gordie bought a fan last night which seems to help a little but still... I've been daydreaming about air conditioning. Today I went for my gestational diabetes screen so hopefully I won't be getting a call back. I actually enjoyed waiting for the hour between drinking the orange potion and getting my blood drawn, mainly because the building was air conditioned.

Tummy and baby room pictures to come soon! We promise...

Photoshoot

So, the star of this blog had a bit of a significant day a week back.. It was time to say hello to the camera for mommy & daddy... Apparently, this idea wasn't high on the priority list for our little monkey. When Age went with the ultrasound tech, I sat and waited... and waited... and waited. 

Adrianne came out with the update that apparently little monkey didn't feel like moving his/her head for a picture. Arms and legs were flailing, but our monkey just wanted to stay laying face down. The ultrasound tech told us we needed to put some food in Age's stomach, go for a walk, and jump around a little (Age, not me) to help prod some movement in the tummy.

Thankfully, this did the trick and we got the photos to prove it...

Say hello to our little monkey.

A Quick Update

I've decided to attempt a post even though this is mainly Gordie's thing. So until he posts our ultrasound pictures (which I won't even bother trying to do) here are some pictures. 

My parents got us a sweet stroller (thanks!) and I'm pretty excited about it. Being excited about a stroller makes me feel old, but it's seriously amazing. Maybe someday I'll post a video of its quick fold mechanism... 

Here we go...

Welcome to the blog. We have decided to join the many others who ambitiously set out to start a blog and then do updates every 6 months saying "sorry it's been so long since I have updated..." except for the fact that we hope not to be one of the many. We have a baby to blog about and are pretty confident that the process of having a baby will be that which has us dedicated to the cause..

To start things off, we have the 'tummy' shot of Adrianne as well as a shot of the first gift that awaits our little family addition. Age found this at a Kid's swap meet last weekend for $2. Bam. Daddy's happy...

Until next time (in the not so distant future...)