Born at approximately 10pm, Wednesday August 18th, weighing 6 pounds 15 ounces (3.15kg), we’re proud to announce our daughter: Geneveve Robinson. It’s a variation of the spelling for Genevieve (I like having just one vowel to remember even if every ‘e’ is actually a different sound, yay English), Eve for short, and a name Kim’s had picked out forever. We haven’t decided on a middle name for sure yet. Amazingly, she was born on her due date, at least according to the estimate based on Kim’s last period. The ultrasound estimated the 16th, so either way it was really close.

The birth was a great experience at Andaluz Water Birth Center. Contractions started at 4am, we went to the birth center at 8am when the contractions had been 4 minutes apart for about an hour, and Geneveve arrived at 10pm. 18 hours in total, which from what I can tell is kind of average (it’s hard to find good statistics that include early labor since it can vary so much). It was an intense, long day, but we had awesome midwives, Dana and Monica, to help us through everything. Kim labored in just about every place and position possible, and ended up delivering Geneveve in the big tub. I caught the baby and handed her to Kim to hold.

There was still a lot to do after the delivery that ended keeping us awake until close to 2AM, so we’re tired and resting today. We had to get out of the tub, do all the momma and baby health exams, deliver the placenta, weigh and measure the baby, get a quick tutorial in breastfeeding, clean up the room (thankfully the midwives did all that beautifully), and what seemed close to the most important thing to me by that time, eat. I was exhausted and famished by the time it was all done, so I can only imagine how Kim felt. We had some sandwiches and a bit of Thai food that had been waiting for us for a few hours, and finally fell into a fitful sleep with the new baby.

Geneveve is doing great, sleeping a lot, only crying so far right after birth and when her diaper needs changing, waving her arms around like a symphony conductor, cooing and gurgling, and sucking on everything you give her with mucho gusto. I accidentally let her too close to my nipple at one point while I was asleep with her on my chest, and I’ll remember not to do that again. Kim’s also doing great, but very tired and still catching up on sleep. Hopefully the upcoming massage will help her get the aches out for some good sleep. Today is all about resting and being taken care of, which is awesome. All our food is ordered in for us, and there’s great ladies available 24/7 for postpartum care, advice, and whatever else we need.

I’m really excited to have a daughter and can’t wait to introduce you to her.

Kim, Ubu and I went camping at Siouxon Creek near Mt St Helens  this past weekend.  This was the first weekend in a while that Kim hasn’t had to request time off from work to get away on Sunday, so we had the whole weekend together.  The reason Kim’s not having to request time off is that she’s taking leave of work to enjoy the last month of pregnancy – by going off into the woods to sleep on the ground.

The hike and camp is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, but the road was washed out last year. It’s in pretty good shape now. It’s a nice, easy kind of hike since there’s campsites within a 1/4 mile of the trailhead, and there’s not a lot of elevation gain. I carried in all the heavy equipment, making two trips in to do so. I was able to just overload my backpack on the way out and get it all in one trip.

Besides the nice, wooded trail there’s some waterfalls a few miles along. We hiked up to where Kim was comfortable on Saturday, and Sunday we hiked out to go see some other short trails with views of the mountain. I think we did over 10 miles worth trails in the two days.

Being pregnant didn’t present too many problems (mostly having to carry lots of pillows), and got us excited for figuring out how we’d be able to go hiking and camping with the baby once it comes.