Thursday, May 24, 2007
A special note...
To the anonymous honorary uncle who sent my new son a "Sex Cannon" bib...you win "best present of his life so far" award. Pictures to follow.
Home again...
Yeah, so liveblogging the birth...not my first priority. But all went well. I've added a postdated post from the day of birth, the note I sent to friends and family is replicated here and I plan to record my recollections of the 8 days in the hospital little by little as time allows.
Ruth, Theodore and I arrived home last Friday. Since then we've been trying to keep up with the boy's stomach while still getting some sleep. Little guy lost more weight than the docs were comfortable with when he was in the hospital and had a touch of jaundice, but never required any interventions more severe than extra food, which Mommy and the formula can have been able to provide. He's filling out nicely and we hope the pediatrician won't be calling DCFS on us after tomorrow's visit. :) Every day he seems to be more aware of what's going on around him.
Ruth was ecstatic to be back in the outside world after 8 nights in the hospital. Her blood pressure, after dropping initially, rose again before we left the hospital, so doc has put her on blood pressure medication and is keeping an eye on her. Otherwise she is feeling better and getting around better every day, and already thinking about schoolwork again.
Grandma and Grandpa Avelis arrived Sunday afternoon for a 2-week stay and have been absolute lifesavers for our sleep and sanity. Mom, Dad and the two of us are getting everything done I'd planned for before the baby was born, and they're getting to know their grandson.
I'm doing...OK. I've been taking on much of the late night duties (and doodies), which has been much harder than any book or well-meaning advisor could ever get across. The last week and a half have passed in a flash, but I'm trying to savor every minute, even when those minutes are very loud, messy and seem to last forever.
To answer everyone's first question: Ruth is calling our boy Theo or Teddy; I'm calling him Theodore, Theo, or Ted depending on what feels right at the time. So just pick whichever one you like. We figured when we picked a name with a million diminutives we were giving up the right to insist on one over another.
Second most common question: His name isn't John because we liked this name better. :) Not to mention that having grown up "III", I think saddling a kid with a "IV" at the end of his name would just be cruel, unless perhaps his family summers in a yacht moored off St. Tropez.
And now that I've bored you all half to death, YES, there are photos. And if a proud papa can brag for a moment -- After his recovery from a bad case of conehead at birth, we have one seriously cute kid.
First is a slideshow of our hospital pics from the first few days. 2nd is the same pictures on Shutterfly (in case you can't view the slideshow, or wanted to order prints of a 5-minute old cheese-covered conehead). Link three and link four are pics my Dad has taken since he's arrived. I already have 50 more pictures on the camera to download...just something else to fall behind on during these early weeks.
Thanks to everyone for all your good wishes and love.
Ruth, Theodore and I arrived home last Friday. Since then we've been trying to keep up with the boy's stomach while still getting some sleep. Little guy lost more weight than the docs were comfortable with when he was in the hospital and had a touch of jaundice, but never required any interventions more severe than extra food, which Mommy and the formula can have been able to provide. He's filling out nicely and we hope the pediatrician won't be calling DCFS on us after tomorrow's visit. :) Every day he seems to be more aware of what's going on around him.
Ruth was ecstatic to be back in the outside world after 8 nights in the hospital. Her blood pressure, after dropping initially, rose again before we left the hospital, so doc has put her on blood pressure medication and is keeping an eye on her. Otherwise she is feeling better and getting around better every day, and already thinking about schoolwork again.
Grandma and Grandpa Avelis arrived Sunday afternoon for a 2-week stay and have been absolute lifesavers for our sleep and sanity. Mom, Dad and the two of us are getting everything done I'd planned for before the baby was born, and they're getting to know their grandson.
I'm doing...OK. I've been taking on much of the late night duties (and doodies), which has been much harder than any book or well-meaning advisor could ever get across. The last week and a half have passed in a flash, but I'm trying to savor every minute, even when those minutes are very loud, messy and seem to last forever.
To answer everyone's first question: Ruth is calling our boy Theo or Teddy; I'm calling him Theodore, Theo, or Ted depending on what feels right at the time. So just pick whichever one you like. We figured when we picked a name with a million diminutives we were giving up the right to insist on one over another.
Second most common question: His name isn't John because we liked this name better. :) Not to mention that having grown up "III", I think saddling a kid with a "IV" at the end of his name would just be cruel, unless perhaps his family summers in a yacht moored off St. Tropez.
And now that I've bored you all half to death, YES, there are photos. And if a proud papa can brag for a moment -- After his recovery from a bad case of conehead at birth, we have one seriously cute kid.
First is a slideshow of our hospital pics from the first few days. 2nd is the same pictures on Shutterfly (in case you can't view the slideshow, or wanted to order prints of a 5-minute old cheese-covered conehead). Link three and link four are pics my Dad has taken since he's arrived. I already have 50 more pictures on the camera to download...just something else to fall behind on during these early weeks.
Thanks to everyone for all your good wishes and love.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Theodore Payton
It was a rough Saturday night in Newport, but it all worked out in the end and Ruth and I have a wonderful baby boy.
Theodore Payton was born via Cesarean at 4:41 AM, 5/13/2007. He weighed 5 lbs, 14.5 oz and was 19 inches long. He has short dark hair and thank goodness for him, more than one person has already said he takes after his mother.
Little guy has had a busy day of sleeping, diaper changes and visits from all the nurses in the center. He seems very healthy and so far, easygoing. He's rooming in with us in the hospital and we love having him.
I'll shorten the story somewhat -- Tuesday at an OB appointment they found Ruth had elevated blood pressure; after a couple days of labwork and tests and two days of bedrest, they decided last Thursday that she had pre-eclampsia, and after initially admitting her for observation they decided that with the baby at 37 weeks and Ruth already dilated 2 cm, they would try to induce on Friday.
Friday's induction got nowhere, so they let her sleep and tried again Saturday. They ended up breaking Ruth's water in midafternoon Saturday. By 8:30 she was ready for the epidural (which she highly recommends), then she started pushing at about 12:15am or so. After close to 3.5 hours of heroic pushing, the OB advised us that the kid just wasn't going to be delivered except by Cesarean.
Ruth lost a lot of blood during the surgery but has avoided a transfusion so far. They finally took her off all the medications for the pre-eclampsia this morning, then got her back on her feet and hopefully they have us home this Thursday.
Daddy (for those who are interested) spent a good hour with Theo that first morning while they finished the surgery and returned Ruth to our hospital room. I finally collapsed at 7something in the AM, then spent the day learning more about him and helping out my morphine-happy wife, finding enough time to buy her first Mothers Day card. I even found time for a 2nd nap.
Today is a lot of learning about feeding and getting diapers to fit and not getting peed on when changing them. Ruth feels bad that I have to do it all but given everything we went through, she's very happy with how it has all turned out.
Theodore Payton was born via Cesarean at 4:41 AM, 5/13/2007. He weighed 5 lbs, 14.5 oz and was 19 inches long. He has short dark hair and thank goodness for him, more than one person has already said he takes after his mother.
Little guy has had a busy day of sleeping, diaper changes and visits from all the nurses in the center. He seems very healthy and so far, easygoing. He's rooming in with us in the hospital and we love having him.
I'll shorten the story somewhat -- Tuesday at an OB appointment they found Ruth had elevated blood pressure; after a couple days of labwork and tests and two days of bedrest, they decided last Thursday that she had pre-eclampsia, and after initially admitting her for observation they decided that with the baby at 37 weeks and Ruth already dilated 2 cm, they would try to induce on Friday.
Friday's induction got nowhere, so they let her sleep and tried again Saturday. They ended up breaking Ruth's water in midafternoon Saturday. By 8:30 she was ready for the epidural (which she highly recommends), then she started pushing at about 12:15am or so. After close to 3.5 hours of heroic pushing, the OB advised us that the kid just wasn't going to be delivered except by Cesarean.
Ruth lost a lot of blood during the surgery but has avoided a transfusion so far. They finally took her off all the medications for the pre-eclampsia this morning, then got her back on her feet and hopefully they have us home this Thursday.
Daddy (for those who are interested) spent a good hour with Theo that first morning while they finished the surgery and returned Ruth to our hospital room. I finally collapsed at 7something in the AM, then spent the day learning more about him and helping out my morphine-happy wife, finding enough time to buy her first Mothers Day card. I even found time for a 2nd nap.
Today is a lot of learning about feeding and getting diapers to fit and not getting peed on when changing them. Ruth feels bad that I have to do it all but given everything we went through, she's very happy with how it has all turned out.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
And suddenly...
Ignore the blog for a few days, and suddenly "expectant father" takes on a whole new meaning.
Tuesday morning we dropped off my sis at the airport to fly home, and went to the OB for a regular checkup. It was a madhouse -- the usually tiny waiting room was double-packed, to where I went out and sat on the porch of the OB's office and read a 2 week old Sports Illustrated. When we finally got in, the nurse (not the usual awesome-cool nurse, but the other one) took Ruth's blood pressure, didn't tell us what it was, but asked Ruth for a urine sample.
Uh-Oh, said the worrier in my head. Our OB hasn't asked for urine since we first got there. If she's not telling us the blood pressure, and asking for urine, that sounds to me like a warning sign for Pre-eclamsia. But I'm no doctor.
The OB was in the room before Ruth could go to the bathroom. He told Ruth to relax, no biggie, he's just going to take her blood pressure again. After the reading, he said, "OK, you're done here. Go over to the hospital. The birthing center will be expecting you, they'll run some tests. Go ahead and make an appointment for here next week before you leave...but that might change."
So we go to the hospital, in a mental state of "Oh crap we so do not have it all together for this baby yet." Luckily the nurses talked me down. We did a non-stress test -- they hooked Ruth up to a fetal monitor, which watches the baby's heart rate, watches for contractions, and watches Ruth's blood pressure and heart rate also. They took blood and urine to the lab for tests.
After a couple hours, it was pretty clear that things weren't great, but not so bad that we would be staying at the hospital. They sent us home with orders for Ruth to stay off her feet (which went over not at all well) and to come back Thursday. They also set up a 24-hour urine sample, which means she saved all her urine from 8am Wednesday to 8am Thursday, which we brought back to the lab today.
So Tuesday I spent my time trying to keep Ruth sitting, if not laying down. It's not easy. She seemed to think bedrest was a synonym for "Homework, appointments, long walks...whatever you normally do, superwoman."
Wednesday I went to Providence and finally passed the hated Cisco exam, then did a bunch of baby shopping "just in case." Ruth spent the morning in bed with as stomach complaint, which was bizarre because normally her stomach only goes off when she overeats, which she definitely didn't do on Tuesday. A quick look at What to Expect... says that unexplained stomach pain is a secondary sign for...pre-eclamsia.
So this morning we got up and I had a funny feeling I should start packing a bag, which I did.
We went to the hospital, where the lab monkey forced us to "register" before we would be allowed to hand them two jugs of Ruth's urine, even though said HAD THE FUCKING ORDER TO PROCESS THE URINE IN HIS HAND, and the urine jugs clearly had the same name on them as the order, so God forbid you're missing a piece of fucking paper. I had my usual "you fucking paper pushers will all be sorry if we get single-payer healthcare and you're out of a job" outburst and we went to registration, where the bureaucrat quite unhelpfully told us we were just here on Tuesday. Really? FASCINATING.
We went to the hospital's birthing center, which is a haven of actual attentive, service-oriented people in the vast healthcare wasteland. Our OB, who gave birth to dry wit long before he delivered any babies, happened to be in the center -- "Good Morning. Do I want to know why you're here? Probably not." After a replay of Tuesday -- non-stress test, blood tests, urine tests -- the staff decided Ruth's blood pressure and lab results were worse than Tuesday and Ruth needed to stay the night for more testing. I went home to finish packing the bag while they set up Ruth in a room.
When I got back, another blood pressure test was worse than the one before; there was now clearly a pattern of her blood pressure rising, rather than falling, despite bedrest. Ruth also felt like crap, more so than the last couple days.
At about 5pm, the doctor came by to say, "Well, you have pre-eclamsia. You're 37 weeks along, so the baby is full-term. Since the only cure for pre-eclamsia is delivering the baby, we're going to do some labwork in the morning and then talk about delivery."
Then he felt up my wife (in a very medical way), stated she was 2cm dilated and effaced enough that we could go ahead tomorrow with induction and vaginal birth.
So...72 hours ago I was thinking in terms of multiple weeks of just the two of us...now, as Ruth is finally sleeping in the most uncomfortable bed in the world, I'm looking at just a few more hours before this all gets started.
After everything we've been through, it's still a shock to finally be staring parenthood in the face. I know I should be sleeping to prepare myself for tomorrow, but I can't sleep. Even after all the time we've spent thinking and preparing and talking about it, this is still too much to put my head around.
Kid, I can't wait to meet you in person instead of playing morse-code through Mommy's belly. And you're almost here.
Wish us luck...
Tuesday morning we dropped off my sis at the airport to fly home, and went to the OB for a regular checkup. It was a madhouse -- the usually tiny waiting room was double-packed, to where I went out and sat on the porch of the OB's office and read a 2 week old Sports Illustrated. When we finally got in, the nurse (not the usual awesome-cool nurse, but the other one) took Ruth's blood pressure, didn't tell us what it was, but asked Ruth for a urine sample.
Uh-Oh, said the worrier in my head. Our OB hasn't asked for urine since we first got there. If she's not telling us the blood pressure, and asking for urine, that sounds to me like a warning sign for Pre-eclamsia. But I'm no doctor.
The OB was in the room before Ruth could go to the bathroom. He told Ruth to relax, no biggie, he's just going to take her blood pressure again. After the reading, he said, "OK, you're done here. Go over to the hospital. The birthing center will be expecting you, they'll run some tests. Go ahead and make an appointment for here next week before you leave...but that might change."
So we go to the hospital, in a mental state of "Oh crap we so do not have it all together for this baby yet." Luckily the nurses talked me down. We did a non-stress test -- they hooked Ruth up to a fetal monitor, which watches the baby's heart rate, watches for contractions, and watches Ruth's blood pressure and heart rate also. They took blood and urine to the lab for tests.
After a couple hours, it was pretty clear that things weren't great, but not so bad that we would be staying at the hospital. They sent us home with orders for Ruth to stay off her feet (which went over not at all well) and to come back Thursday. They also set up a 24-hour urine sample, which means she saved all her urine from 8am Wednesday to 8am Thursday, which we brought back to the lab today.
So Tuesday I spent my time trying to keep Ruth sitting, if not laying down. It's not easy. She seemed to think bedrest was a synonym for "Homework, appointments, long walks...whatever you normally do, superwoman."
Wednesday I went to Providence and finally passed the hated Cisco exam, then did a bunch of baby shopping "just in case." Ruth spent the morning in bed with as stomach complaint, which was bizarre because normally her stomach only goes off when she overeats, which she definitely didn't do on Tuesday. A quick look at What to Expect... says that unexplained stomach pain is a secondary sign for...pre-eclamsia.
So this morning we got up and I had a funny feeling I should start packing a bag, which I did.
We went to the hospital, where the lab monkey forced us to "register" before we would be allowed to hand them two jugs of Ruth's urine, even though said HAD THE FUCKING ORDER TO PROCESS THE URINE IN HIS HAND, and the urine jugs clearly had the same name on them as the order, so God forbid you're missing a piece of fucking paper. I had my usual "you fucking paper pushers will all be sorry if we get single-payer healthcare and you're out of a job" outburst and we went to registration, where the bureaucrat quite unhelpfully told us we were just here on Tuesday. Really? FASCINATING.
We went to the hospital's birthing center, which is a haven of actual attentive, service-oriented people in the vast healthcare wasteland. Our OB, who gave birth to dry wit long before he delivered any babies, happened to be in the center -- "Good Morning. Do I want to know why you're here? Probably not." After a replay of Tuesday -- non-stress test, blood tests, urine tests -- the staff decided Ruth's blood pressure and lab results were worse than Tuesday and Ruth needed to stay the night for more testing. I went home to finish packing the bag while they set up Ruth in a room.
When I got back, another blood pressure test was worse than the one before; there was now clearly a pattern of her blood pressure rising, rather than falling, despite bedrest. Ruth also felt like crap, more so than the last couple days.
At about 5pm, the doctor came by to say, "Well, you have pre-eclamsia. You're 37 weeks along, so the baby is full-term. Since the only cure for pre-eclamsia is delivering the baby, we're going to do some labwork in the morning and then talk about delivery."
Then he felt up my wife (in a very medical way), stated she was 2cm dilated and effaced enough that we could go ahead tomorrow with induction and vaginal birth.
So...72 hours ago I was thinking in terms of multiple weeks of just the two of us...now, as Ruth is finally sleeping in the most uncomfortable bed in the world, I'm looking at just a few more hours before this all gets started.
After everything we've been through, it's still a shock to finally be staring parenthood in the face. I know I should be sleeping to prepare myself for tomorrow, but I can't sleep. Even after all the time we've spent thinking and preparing and talking about it, this is still too much to put my head around.
Kid, I can't wait to meet you in person instead of playing morse-code through Mommy's belly. And you're almost here.
Wish us luck...
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Where I've been
I am terrible at forming new habits, especially good ones. And I'm pretty much limited to one or two new habits at a time. So I should probably be happy posting weekly for the time being, and once I'm done creating the other good habits I've been working on since I was in my teens (house cleaning, brushing my teeth, daily exercise, etc) maybe I can worry about the infrequency of my posts.
Anyway, in the past week I've attended the last (and most fun) of my three cooking classes at J&W; failed the Cisco test, again, this time just barely; and I spent four days at a male bonding event at a buddy's house in southern NH. Basically, three days/nights with some college friends, dedicated to playing cards, grilling food, abusing alcohol and enjoying the outdoors as much as the fickle New England spring would allow.
Of course, enjoying the outdoors in New England while being too inebriated to think of basic precautions means that two of the four of us ended up with ticks -- FIVE TICKS between the two of us. Because my wife is a Professional, she was able to take the one off my back fairly easily. The other one was positioned to give me a free vasectomy and had already made some progress in that direction, so I took care of him myself. Nothing like having the back end of a sesame seed with legs sticking out of your nethers.
[We'll pause for a moment so all my male readers can yell "EWWWWWW!" and jump up and down around the room.....done? Cool.]
Now I spend the next month looking for symptoms of Lyme disease and hoping that I caught the little bastards early enough for that not to be a problem. Hopefully the bacteria will die of boredom as I will probably spend most of that time reading the Cisco website.
Also, while I was gone, the fine US-based crib company sent me free replacement parts for the ones I hosed up. So with any luck we will have a changing table in the next couple days...and no hard feelings, OK?
Anyway, in the past week I've attended the last (and most fun) of my three cooking classes at J&W; failed the Cisco test, again, this time just barely; and I spent four days at a male bonding event at a buddy's house in southern NH. Basically, three days/nights with some college friends, dedicated to playing cards, grilling food, abusing alcohol and enjoying the outdoors as much as the fickle New England spring would allow.
Of course, enjoying the outdoors in New England while being too inebriated to think of basic precautions means that two of the four of us ended up with ticks -- FIVE TICKS between the two of us. Because my wife is a Professional, she was able to take the one off my back fairly easily. The other one was positioned to give me a free vasectomy and had already made some progress in that direction, so I took care of him myself. Nothing like having the back end of a sesame seed with legs sticking out of your nethers.
[We'll pause for a moment so all my male readers can yell "EWWWWWW!" and jump up and down around the room.....done? Cool.]
Now I spend the next month looking for symptoms of Lyme disease and hoping that I caught the little bastards early enough for that not to be a problem. Hopefully the bacteria will die of boredom as I will probably spend most of that time reading the Cisco website.
Also, while I was gone, the fine US-based crib company sent me free replacement parts for the ones I hosed up. So with any luck we will have a changing table in the next couple days...and no hard feelings, OK?
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