Introducing Lauren Taeko

Apologies for the lack of posts this first week of the new year … but as you are about to see, we’ve had good reason!

I’m very happy to announce that 2013 has kicked off in high gear for the our family. On Friday, we welcomed Lauren Taeko into our family! She arrived a few weeks early, but is completely healthy, weighing in at a respectable 6 lbs 14 oz and measuring 20 inches long. Christine is doing great as well – if you ignore the trip to the hospital (more below), number two was definitely a lot smoother than the first go around! And Maile Girl is, of course, over the moon excited and happy.

Lauren was actually Christine’s middle name before we married. We love the name and thought we’d run it back for our baby girl. As for Taeko. First, it is pronounced “Tah-eh-ko” – but say it all together, no stressing of syllables. The “T” is in remembrance of Christine’s father’s father, Tsukasa, and Christine’s father’s uncle, Tatsuo. I (Matt) never met Tsukasa, but I did have a chance to have a few visits with Uncle Tats before he passed and am thrilled that Lauren will be carrying on his memory. The “eko” part is also the same characters that we used in Maile’s middle name, Chieko. We liked that subtle bond for our little girls.

So what’s the deal with the “trip to the hospital” I mentioned above? Well, as you know from the blog, we’ve spent the past couple weeks down in Anaheim visiting Disneyland with Maile and her cousins, Katie and Emily. The doctor gave us the all clear so we went down on Christmas Day with plans to stay until January 4th. Christine and I drove while every body else flew.

The trip went great – not too many rides for Christine, but we had a blast with the girls and Christine was a rock star lugging herself and “Lauren-to-be” all over Disneyland, California Adventure and Legoland. Christine and I even managed to squeeze in a night away on January 2nd – one last hurrah. On January 3rd, we woke up relaxed and Daddy said to mommy’s belly – “okay, you can come now” with mommy quickly adding “… once we get back to San Francisco of course.”

Unfortunately (for now anyways), it appears Lauren is a very dutiful little girl. At about 2:30 PM on the 3rd just as Daddy and Maile were about to jump in the pool Christine noticed some “leakage” – it wasn’t a lot, but it was enough that we called the doctor. She didn’t have any contractions or any pain, so the doctor suggested we head back to San Francisco. By 4 PM, we had packed up and jumped in the car. Maile stayed with Grandma and Papa with plans to fly back as planned on the 4th.

About 2.5 hours into the ride, we decided to stop at an In N’ Out for dinner. Christine got out of the car and we immediately realized that her water had broke. Daddy scarfed down his double double, loaded up some gas and got back on the road. Despite the fact that I was driving a “tad” over the speed limit, the next 5 hours basically crawled by – definitely the longest drive Christine or I have ever done.

Luckily, we rolled into San Francisco at 11 PM without further incident and headed straight to the hospital. After some tests, the doctors confirmed that Christine’s water had indeed broke and we were on our way. Contractions finally started around 6:30 AM and by 8:30 AM the nurse said we were fully dilated and ready to rock. Lauren was born at 8:59 AM on January 4th. Healthy. Beautiful. Amazing.