The numbers have been crunched and the official results are in for the Baby D(ylan) Lottery. The commissioners have declared TWO winners - Auntie Brie and BFF Stephanie. As promised, they will get their choice of a bottle of wine, a bottle of champagne, or a six pack of microbrew. Thank you to all participants.* *If you have concerns about the point system, please send comments, questions or concerns directly to the commissioners:
On Monday the 15th, Darin and I had an appointment with our doctor who had just returned from a two-week vacation. While we were disappointed to hear that Baby D was still breech, it was great to chat with our doctor about options and get her perspective. She told us she was comfortable letting us wait as long as 42 weeks to give the baby an opportunity to flip. She also made it clear that we needed to go directly to the hospital if Darin started to go into labor so that we could avoid an emergency C-section.
We left the office under the impression that we'd bought ourselves a few additional weeks...which was nice considering we had our last few social events coming up on the calendar. I was looking forward to a tee time at West Seattle on Friday with some friends, and we were scheduled to attend my co-worker Andy's wedding on Saturday. On Tuesday night, we decided to have a date night and redeem a gift card at Matt's in the Market, one of our favorite Seattle restaurants (thanks J!). It was a stunning, Seattle summer evening capped off by a delicious meal.
Little did we know that this would be our last date night for awhile...
At about 2:30am the next morning, Darin's water broke. After about 10 minutes of both of us pacing aimlessly back and forth trying to process the situation, we were grabbing our bags, calling our parents, and loading up the car to head to the hospital. Darin wasn't having any major contractions yet, but that didn't stop her from encouraging me to 'drive faster!!!' across I-90. I think she was secretly hoping we would get pulled over so that we could tell the officer she was in labor and get a police escort the rest of the way to the hospital.
We arrived at the UW Medical Center and headed up to Labor & Delivery where the doctor who greeted us asked Darin if she was related to Brie (those of you who are familiar with Brie's social prowess will appreciate this tidbit). After a quick exam, they informed us that Baby D was still breech and that Darin was dilated enough that we were going to need to head in for a C-section right away, and that they were paging our doctor to see if she could make it in to do the surgery.
Dave and Rosie (Darin's parents) arrived shortly thereafter, with Darin's mom proudly sporting the 'Lola' shirt we'd given her at Christmas. Around 5am, they took Darin in to prep her for the surgery while I got suited up in my scrubs. They came and got me about 20 minutes later and told me they were about to start.
When I got into the operating room, I was thrilled to discover that our doctor had made it in. Darin told me that her presence had an instant calming effect on her. I held Darin's hand during the surgery until they told me to get my camera ready because the baby was about to arrive. Just before the doctor brought him out, she informed us that the cord had been wrapped around his neck...twice...which explained his reluctance to flip!
On their command, I peaked my head over the curtain and got my first glimpse of our beautiful new baby. Through a steady stream of tears, I announced to Darin that our mystery baby was a boy. I took several pictures of those first few moments of his arrival before heading over to cut his cord.
After they had a chance to clean him up, they brought him over for Darin to see and let me hold him while they finished the surgery. Darin was incredible throughout.
I escorted Darin and the baby back to the recovery room where Dave and Rosie were waiting, and I got to surprise them with the news by asking them if they were ready to meet their new grandson. A short while after I got to share the same news with my mom, who was speeding up I-5 en route to the hospital.
Within the first few hours of his arrival, we decided that Baby D was going to officially become Dylan Reynaud Knapp. He had arrived at 5:49am on August 17th, 2011. He weighed 7 lbs. 15 oz. and was 21". He was instantly loved.
The last four days have been indescribably special. He is everything we hoped for and more, and it has been incredible to share his arrival with our friends and family. We truly appreciate all of the love and support we've received throughout this journey.
I've done enough writing at this point, so I'll let you see what the last four days have been like in pictures. This is Dylan!
We got some less-than-ideal news this past Monday when Darin found out our baby is breech. The past few weeks, she's experienced a constant pressure in her right ribcage. She thought this was just Baby-D practicing karate kicks. As it turns out, it's actually the baby's head.
From the get-go, Darin has been hopeful that she would be able to experience a natural birth. We were originally going to have the baby at a birth center until Darin's cardiologist told us that her heart condition necessitates a hospital birth (Darin had open-heart surgery at age two to address a heart murmur). While she's incredibly healthy and has not had any complications with the murmur, she is still a 'high-risk' pregnancy, so they want to have her in a hospital where they are prepared to handle the situation if her heart reacts adversely to the stress of giving birth.
It was a smooth transfer of care over to UW, and we've built a good rapport with our doctor there. Unfortunately, our doctor has been out of town the last two weeks on vacation, and Darin was on her own at her appointment Monday when the attending doctor delivered the news about the baby being breech. It is past the point where the doctors can manually rotate the baby for us. She was told that it was 'possible but not probable' that the baby would flip on its own in time for delivery and that she should consider scheduling a c-section. Based on our goals for the birth, this was the last thing she wanted to hear.
After recovering from the initial disappointment of the news and consulting a variety of resources (thank you Kristin, Jenny, Karen, Meghan, Christine, Elise and Penny), Darin has taken it on as her personal mission to get the baby to flip. So far, this includes the following regimen:
Water: Swimming/pool handstands
Gravity: Lying on her back with her feet/hips elevated
Music: Playing music below the waist to encourage the baby to flip
While there is no definitive research on #7, I can't see how it could hurt...and it clearly makes Darin happy.
Truly, none of these have been proven to work, but we'd like to say we've given it our best shot. Another piece of advice we were given was to recruit positive thoughts from our friends and family. So, if you have a moment, Darin's belly is currently accepting good vibes.
Darin and I found out she was pregnant right before Christmas. The holidays were an ideal time for us to share our big news. What made it especially fun was that it was going to be the our first joint family Christmas. Brie was flying into town from San Francisco and the Reynauds were making the trek down the I-5 corridor to join the Knapps for the holidays.
Darin could hardly contain herself when we picked up Brie from the airport. Brie was in the middle of crushing the PBJ sandwich we brought her when Darin surprised her with the news that she was going to be an 'Auntie'. We told her that we were going to need her to keep it a secret for a few days so we could surprise our parents with the news that the hypothetical grandchild they'd been hoping for was no longer hypothetical.
Having our families together for the holidays presented the perfect opportunity for us to surprise our folks with the news that they were going to be grandparents. For the reveal, we decided to buy a special onesie for each of our moms and have them open them on Christmas Eve. For my mom, a Blazers onesie, and for Rosie, a UW onesie. We also got each of them a more personalized gift. For my mom, we got a Christmas ornament that said 'Grandma Rose'. This name has a special meaning for her because she also had a Grandma Rose who she idolized growing up. For Rosie, we picked up a t-shirt from Tom Douglas' Lola restaurant in Seattle, because 'lola' means grandma in Filipino.
We spent the evening doing our best to keep the secret under wraps. This was especially difficult considering the amount of wine and champagne that was being passed around. I was literally drinking for two, trying to sneak drinks out of Darin's glass so that no one became suspicious about her not drinking.
After opening a few presents, we asked our moms to open their gifts together. Brie and Elliot helped us with the surprise by filming their reactions. It didn't take long before both of them realized what was going on, which was followed by a series of shrieks and some tears. I'm pretty sure our dads were crying too, but it is possible that each of them had something in both of their eyes at the same time. Needless to say, the reveal ended the present opening for the evening as everyone agreed that the baby news was not going to be topped...although everyone still agreed that we needed some dessert before calling it an evening.
