Introducing Our Newest Sweet Pea

Introducing our newest sweet pea, Zeph Owen!

Zephie was born on October 12 after a verrrry short and slightly dramatic labor. I went to bed at 10:30 thinking 'are these real contractions?', woke up at 12:30 thinking 'yep these seem pretty real', and then things escalated quickly, and he was born just 1.5 hours later.

The drive to the hospital was pretty dramatic complete with driving the wrong way down the hospital loop, and abandoning the car at the ER...but baby was born maybe 15 minutes after arriving at the hospital, so in retrospect there wasn't much other choice.

With Kai, I was in labor for a good 24 hours before he was born, so it was very surprising to have such a short labor! We are so glad my mom was staying with us to watch Kai because we wouldn't have had time to drop him off anywhere else.

We are all recovering well and adjusting to a new family of four.

Kai absolutely loves his little brother and gives him lots of gentle hugs and kisses. Zeph always calms down and stares up at his big brother when Kai is around. It is so sweet!

The name Zeph is inspired by 'zephyr', which means a calm western breeze. I was reading Kai a coastal British Columbia ABC book when I was pregnant and the baby was kicking like crazy.

We got to the letter Z, which was for 'zephyr', and something about the word stuck with me...strong but soft at the same time.

Both Ben and I preferred Zeph to Zephyr for a boys name. And it seems like a good name for a grown up man...some of the cute baby boy names I liked I just couldn't picture on a grown man.

It is so crazy how much Zeph looks like Kai did as a newborn...I sometimes get confused and call him Kai!

In fact they look so alike, I'm thrown off when Zeph has different preferences. For example Zeph just LOVES tummy time, whereas Kai would scream about 10 seconds into it.

I'm so excited to find out what other differences there are between them.

I had a difficult time adjusting to having a baby first time around, and was expecting it to be equally challenging this time.

It is both easier and more difficult second time around. Knowing how to nurse makes this 1000% easier, and having been through this stage before makes things smoother for sure. I'm more confident, faster at changing diapers, and so far handling the sleep deprivation much better this time.

But having to balance two kids is tough and I wish I had more one on one time with Kai.

Plus, I know we're only 1.5 weeks in and last time, 3 weeks was when the fussy stage and reflux hell hit us hard...so I'm bracing myself. But, having been through it before, hopefully we will know what to do should we have another fussy baby.

And the big thing that I know as a second-time mom is that 'this too shall pass'. Everything, the sweet stuff and the not so sweet stuff. So I'm enjoying the snuggles and taking lots of photos and trying to enjoy it all.

Thanks for reading through!

I have blog posts & recipes scheduled out until the end of December, and will be slower to check in and answer questions/comments. Thanks for all your well wishes! They mean a lot to us 🙂