Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Today Maylee is three weeks old.  We are so blessed to have such a wonderful and beautiful baby.  She rarely ever cries.  Usually she just give one quick shout of "Ah" if we have not realized that she is hungry or needs attention soon enough.  Yesterday Richard was thrilled to let me know that she turned her head from side to side to follow his voice while laying on her back.  Sometimes she tries to talk to us and is learning how to make new noises all the time.  We also started reading to her yesterday.  She is getting more alert and even laughs sometimes.  We love our baby girl!

Maylee had her first doctor's appointment on Friday.  She weighed in at 8lb 4oz.  She did not like the doctor poking her and really did not like having her foot pricked and squeezed for the PKU test, but she is healthy and doing well.  It is good to know that.  Here are some more picture.  I am sorry some of them are so dark.  Our camera is not the best.  Richard and I are going to get a new one right away.

My oldest sister Carolyn was staying with us when Maylee was born.  This is a picture of her holding Maylee in the hospital the day after Maylee came.  She was so sweet to bring Richard snacks and spend time with me while we were waiting for Maylee to come, and to come sit with me the day after Maylee was born so Richard could go get some work done.

 
Ginny and Maylee in the hospital.  Jennie and Maylee in the hospital.

 
Here are Autumn and Andrew holding Maylee in the hospital.

 
Here is Steve (Richard's dad) holding Maylee in the hospital, and Savanah, Maylee's cousin.

This is a picture of my sister-in-law Jennie and her four kids who came to visit in the hospital the day after Maylee was born.  The kids love to hold their new cousin.

 
Jennie's kids brought their lizards over before releasing them back into the wild.

 
Pictures at home with family.  The picture on the right is of Richard's parents Steve and Mickey.

  
This is the Richards family on the left.  They lived in our apartment complex with us in China and are still some of our best friends.  Tim and Bethany Overton and their cute baby Gracie (right) invited us to dinner on Sunday.  Their baby is so cute!

  
Ben and Joanna Simon (left) came to visit us and see the new addition to our family.  Joanna is expecting early next year.  On the right are the Rickers.  I grew up with their kids in Texas and they came to Utah for their son's graduation and stopped by to see Maylee.

 
Maylee ready for her first ride in the stroller.  She slept through the whole thing.  I could watch Maylee sleep all day.  She is such an angel and is fun to watch.  She periodically makes sounds, funny faces, and stretches while she is alseep, but most of the time she is so peaceful.

 
Richard was taking a picture of Maylee and she grabbed the camera strap and tried to put it into her mouth.  She already has pretty good control of her hands.  This is Richard's favorite picture because Maylee looks like a Kung-Fu fighter.

This last picture is of Maylee and my cousin's baby named Branson.  He and his family just live a few minutes away in Spanish Fork.  He is about three weeks older than Maylee.  Hopefully they will be good friends.

Welcome Maylee Marie Robbins

On Tuesday, August 8th, we were blessed to become the proud parents of Maylee Marie Robbins, our little girl who was born at 6:21pm at the American Fork Hospital in American Fork, Utah.  Maylee weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces when she was born, and she was 20 inches long.  The delivery went very well.  Maylee was evidently anxious to be born.  Lisa had been due to deliver on Saturday, August 5th, but we expected that she would go right past that date and have to ultimately be induced on her delivery deadline of Monday, August 14th.  However, on Monday night, August 7th, for Family Home Evening, Lisa and I decided to get things ready for the hospital just in case Maylee came earlier than we anticipated.  We installed Maylee's car seat into the car we bought the previous Saturday, and we packed our hospital bag with clothes, Star Crunches, and other necessities.  When we were finished and it was time for bed, Maylee couldn't sleep.  She was kicking and moving around inside of Lisa's stomach more than we had ever remembered her doing previous to that night.  It was as if she were saying, "I'm ready, Mom and Dad!"  The next morning, Lisa's water broke, so at about 7:30am, we made the trip from our home in Spanish Fork to the hospital in American Fork, about 40 minutes away.

When we got to the hospital, Lisa had to be induced because she wasn't having contractions.  I tried to motivate her by having her repeat words like "can't", "don't", "we'll", "they're", and the like, but that still didn't have any effect on her ability to do contractions.  We thought Maylee would be born the next morning, which would have meant that she would share a birthday with her Grandma Graham.  Instead, she hastened things up starting in the late afternoon, and to the surprise of Lisa's nurse and the doctor (who almost didn't make it for the whole festivity), she started coming at just after 6pm.  Lisa had to push for only 11 minutes, starting at 6:10.

At the birthing class we had been attending for three weeks prior to Maylee's birth, we  listened to a nurse describe how senseless it is for a woman to give birth naturally (she even said she'd offer to pay the epidural cost for anyone who didn't have insurance), but Lisa still wanted to try it out.  She may still have been harboring some bitterness from a statement I made awhile back about her not being tough enough to endure football two-a-days in the Florida heat.  Anyhow, with the help of the bathtub, a birthing ball, a helpful nurse, and a legendary coach, she made it through with nothing more than a few weird noises and some serious looks on her face that may have made her sister-in-law want to postpone having kids for a bit.

Here are some pictures at the hospital and at home:

This is Lisa in front of our home in Spanish Fork.  It was taken the day before Maylee's birth (August 7th).

This is Lisa in the hospital.  You can tell she wasn't having major contractions yet, because she's smiling.

Here is our newborn baby, Maylee, only five minutes old.  She was as perfect as a baby can be.


The proud momma with her new little daughter, shortly after Maylee's birth.

Here's Richard with Maylee in the nursery (taken through a glass window), where the nurses checked out Maylee to make sure she was healthy, which she was.  You can see another baby container (not sure what they're called) in the bottom left of the picture.  It turns out there was another little girl there whose parents were going to name her Maylee (which comes from the Chinese term for "beautiful") as well, but their last name was May, so they named her Haylee instead.


Here's Maylee at home on the bed with her daddy.  She likes to get comfortable in her parents' bed, so we are trying to find out how best to get her to sleep in her bassinet or on her little mattress.

We're grateful to have little Maylee in our family now.  She gets to be the boss and set our schedule for sleeping and such, but she's a really good little baby.