by c :)

While we were thankful for Maylee's excellent care at Vanderbilt, it's so wonderful to not have to see doctors every day and not be making daily hospital trips!  God is good.  Maylee is as precious as can be and spends most of her time sleeping and eating, with some awake periods in the evening the last couple days.  We love gazing at her sweet face and every little smile in her sleep, and seeing her big curious eyes taking in everything around her when she's awake.  I saw a little dimple briefly in her cheek the other day, so she may have her daddy's dimples!  She's slowly making progress with breastfeeding and seems to be taking more milk when she does nurse, but she still isn't interested in nursing more than 10-15 minutes at a time, so she's still taking bottles after nursing.  It's challenging having to bottle feed and also pump at each feeding, but I've heard I just need to have a lot of patience... as one of my favorite nurses for Maylee would say, "she's not even supposed to be here yet."  It's wild to think she's still 2 weeks from her due date.  Ry is doing great with her (I'm sure it helps that my mom is here and he's still getting lots of attention... it's been a huge blessing to have her here with us) and does sweet stuff like wanting to give her a hug goodnight every night.  Maylee's next doctor's appointment is on Thursday, so we'll see how much she's grown then!

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Maylee Meert

When I first saw her I thought something about her looked like my dad. And my dad's mom's name was May.
Her nickname has always been Mei Mei (which is Chinese for "little sister" and pronounced "May May"). Mei Li is Chinese for beautiful. So we decided Maylee would be a great name.

Mei Mei was born early, at almost 30 weeks, while we were on vacation in Tennessee. We woke up around midnight Friday 6/3 and found that C's water had broken. We went to the local hospital in Crossville, TN. They didn't have facilities to take on an early baby, so we were transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

At 5 am C needed IV magnesium, which is used to try to stop labor. (And for the first time in two pregnancies she complained of being too hot!). The contractions were regular for a while, then tapered off in the middle of the day and we were encouraged.

By mid afternoon the contractions picked up again, and were painful enough that C needed breathing exercises to get through them.
At about 8:30 pm they found C was 4 cm dilated, and determined that she was likely laboring and the baby was probably going to make her appearance sooner than later. The contractions were getting progressively more painful at this point, but still didn't seem as bad as with Rylan.
Around 9:30 pm C was shocked to already feel the baby's head descending. We immediately called the nurse and soon a flood of people rushed into the room to prepare to help baby as soon as she was born. C had to hold on through one contraction and urge to push. For the next, enough was ready that they gave her the okay to push. And after 2 big pushes, just minutes later, she was born!

She weighed 3 lbs 9 oz and was 16.5 in long.

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Rylan Edward Meert

Happy birthday to me, our baby officially has a name: Rylan Edward Meert!!!

When he was born I immediately noticed something about him looked like, or reminded me, of Charlie's dad. I think it was his eyes. Edward was his middle name, and I like it.

Rylan is much more complicated. The two names at or near the top of our lists were Ryan and Dylan. When we asked a very dear friend for advice he suggested Rylan. After a few more days of intense negotiations we finally decided he'd be Rylan and made the phone call to make it official on my birthday, yay!

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BABY TIME!!!

Sorry, we have not picked a name yet, but obviously will soon. We were going to do that sometime this week, but he decided a week and a half early would be a nice surprise.

Our little boy arrived at 11am this morning after about 8 hours of labor. He weighed 6lbs 10 oz. and was 19 inches long.

He's sitting in my lap as I write this too. :)

Bonus fact: he was born on our 8th anniversary!

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