See all Aiden photos here

On October 23, just as I was going to bed, my water broke. I wasn’t sure at first, so I kept waiting for labor to start. No luck. By 6am, when I was sure my water had broken but labor hadn’t started, we went to the hospital. They assessed that the baby was ok and asked me to return when they had more nurses. Because my membranes had ruptured prematurely, I had to be induced into labor.

At 1pm, I was put on the oxytocin drip. By 8pm, labor was still pretty manageable… because my body hadn’t started laboring on its own yet. Within 2 hours, all that changed. After being on the maximum drip for 30 minutes, my labor kicked into overdrive. My contractions became painful and back-to-back, almost no down time in between. The drip was stopped but my body kept up the same pace. Being only 3cm dilated at the point, and having such intense contractions, I opted for the epidural. This was not something I wanted to do, but I’m glad I did. Thankfully there were no complications as a result. Just 3 hours later I was ready to push and an hour later our baby was born! Within a half hour he had latched on and was a loud and happy baby.

Through the night, while recovering from the labor and epidural, we learned to take care of our baby. And tried to come up with a name. We had a short list, at the top of which was Aiden. It was the one name that Ianiv & I both independently put on our individual lists and it still felt right. One of the other names on the list was Riley and, when reviewing the list, it stood out to Ianiv. When I heard it at this point I instantly thought it should be a middle name, and so we quickly landed on Aiden Riley for our new little boy.

We stayed in the hospital until Sunday afternoon then returned home. Ianiv’s mother and sister both stayed with us at this time to help take care of Aiden – and us – as we adapted to our new family. It was great to have the support. Aiden has been a wonderful baby so far – very alert, very strong. He could roll onto his side from day 1 and can hold his head up for quite some time! Amazing to watch him grow and learn.

Though we got off to a good start with breastfeeding, that has remained our largest challenge to date. Aiden is a very good breastfeeder but my milk supply has been slow to come in. His weight dropped quickly after we returned home and he’s yet to return to his birth weight, which is past when he should have done so. Partially this was due to his placid nature, but partially it’s just difficult to monitor his weight at home. We have had some nurse visits, but they are swamped with H1N1 stuff, and community drop-ins are not every day. It was therefore a few days before we realized he still needed formula. Now he’s back on track and should resume his growth pattern within a couple of days. But oy, so stressful! Meanwhile, we’re doing everything we can to get up my own milk supply – lots of fluids, good food, pumping, Domperidone, fenugreek and nursing tea. We’re trying it all. Right now I’m producing about half of what he needs. Hopefully that improves soon.

Aside from these hurdles, we’re adapting well to life as a family. Aiden has already been out for coffee twice! Any surprises there? ;)

Baby Blogaholic, predicted by the RoutanBabymaker3000

Our families are all very excited about the big news. My doorbell just rang with flowers from my mom and the first teddy bear!

So, we did it. We booked a holiday. We’re headed off to the Caribbean for a cruise this March!

We’ll be sailing with Royal Caribbean for an 8-night trip with 4 ports of call. We chose a cruise that had a private island stop (Labadee) so we could have one full day of being lazy on a clean, quiet(ish) beach. The other ports also seem pretty interesting. I wasn’t really into choosing a cruise that stopped in Cozumel, but otherwise it was really difficult to choose the cruise. We ended up with this one because of the timing and the length more than any specific port. Anything would be great – the point of this vacation, unlike our last 2 trips to Europe, was just to RELAX.

It’s a bit of a pain to get to Florida (no direct flights) from Vancouver, so we decided to at least make it cheaper (half the price) by flying out of Seattle. Bit of a pain, but really worth it on the cost savings. We have a day before and after the cruise in Ft. Lauderdale in order to line up with the flights, but that’s just a lovely extra bit of time away.

This is my first cruise experience (Ianiv has been on two) and I’ve been dreaming about it for YEARS. I love the water and I have always wanted to do something like this. I’m just a little bit excited. :)