Zoe Madison

Meet Zoe. Born on Tuesday, Sept 19th, 2006 to two proud parents and an excited big sister. Weighing in at seven pounds, nine ounces and at a lenght of twenty and one quarter inches. Since this was a scheduled cesarean birth, the experience was very different from Haley's birth. At 5am, Nicole and I woke up and finished our last minute packing. We were at the hospital by 6am. Nicole was anesthetized and in surgery prep by 7:30am. Zoe was out and crying by 7:57am.

The one big negative to the cesarean is that it is a major surgery. Nicole needed to stay in the hospital the remainder of the week, and is still having some pain and difficulty moving a week later. We don't anticipate her to be back to her normal level of activity for at least another week. Overall, however, she does seem to be healing much quicker than last time.

Other than that, both mother and baby are doing extremely well. Zoe has taken well to breastfeeding and is putting on weight like a champ. She cries very little (I always feel like I have to knock on wood after saying that) and is allowing us to get a decent amount of sleep at night. (Knock knock.)

Haley has taken Zoe's arrival very well. She is more excited about being a big sister than she is jealous of the divided attention. So far. (Knock knock.) She helps whenever she can with changing diapers and takes any chance she can to hold the baby. (We make her sit down and rest the baby in her lap with one of us sitting next to her to help support the baby.) Her Aunt Carrey (Vicki's mom) sent her a new doll and a toy cradle, which allows her to mimic Nicole's care of the baby. While Nicole breastfeeds, she even goes so far as to hold her doll up to her chest and say that she is feeding baby from her "boobie".