Sunday, May 25, 2008

The many faces of...


Okay, the expressions are starting to ramp up, as is my willingness to pick the camera back up... here's a sample!

Monday, May 19, 2008

Pooperama



3 diapers in the space of 1.5 minutes just now... We believe this to be a new record. Thankfully Mom is adept at dodging face shots now...

Relentless


Well, the little girl continues to eat us out of house and home. Every two hours, BANG. Almost literally like clockwork - I sweat it's every two hours, plus or minus two minutes. Well, this post was really just an excuse to post a recent photo of Abby I took today that I'm kind of fond of. Hope you like it too!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Fecal Facial


Yesterday Abigail struck back, in spades, for any injustice she might have perceived to have been imposed on her by us. While her Mom was changing her in a restaurant restroom, she unleashed two fecal volleys in short succession that covered her Mom's face and chest, and permeated her hair as well. When they returned to the table our orders had just arrived. We validated our rank of "experienced parents" by finishing our food before leaving. I'll attach a recent photo of the culprit.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Owee


Gee, it's great to be home from work for several weeks, but I have to say - I've never picked up and put down another human being so many times in my life as I  have recently.  In to the car seat. Out of the car seat. Into the high chair. Out of the high chair.  On to the bed.  Off of the bed.  Now, multiply that by two and throw in the car seat for good measure.

So today, at the mall food court, my back drew it's line in the sand.  In that awkward posture one is forced to assume when depositing a child in a high chair, a tiny cry was heard from the base of my back.  It became progressively worse over the course of the afternoon, and by the time we wanted to leave Barnes & Noble, my wife and I were both lumbering paper lions trying in vain to heard the two year old out of the store.  I, because of my back, and she, because she was so still incredibly sore from the explosive natural childbirth.

Ever try to reason  a two year old out of a place where they want to stay?  Without the threat of overpowering them in a public, humiliating way through brute physical force, attempts at verbal persuasion amount to nothing more  than silly white noise.  The best I could do was to pursue her the best I could and make pendulous, totally benign arm motions in her direction.  Bending over and scooping her up would have landed me in the ER.

Eventually we limped home, we with our hat in our hand and our daughter's pockets bulging with bribe booty.  I'm considering abandoning everyone for the movies tonight if I don't go under entirely via self pity beforehand.

Pictured is Abigail's older sister Ava - the diabolic little tyke that so mercilessly manipulated me today.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Eating, sleeping, crying, pooping...


Not necessarily in that order.  Actually Abby's doing very well - doing her best to extract herself from her teeny tiny status.  We fantasized about actually being able to enjoy the doctor recommended feeding schedule of every 3 hours with one 4 hour vacation... but you can almost see Abby laughing as she drags me out of bed at 2:31 am after eating nearly her body weight at about 1:15 am.  

She's got miniscule, but normal nostrils - so we found it necessary to tilt her bassinet a little to free up  her breathing a bit.  She seems to enjoy evacuating her bladder and bowels spontaneously upon diaper removal - and let me tell you brother, she's packing some velocity.

That's it for now - I'll throw in a recent photo for good measure.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Here's Abby...


My wife took a somewhat dim view of the umbilical cord knot being the first thing people saw when they came to this site... so here's a quick photo designed to push that umbilical photo a little bit further down the page :-).

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Model Baby


Abigail is going to be a 'model' baby for a sibling class here in the hospital. If I can graph a photo, I'll post it eventually. Breast feeding has been a brutal challenge, more or less forcing us to go with the bottle in the early stages... but she's gobbling up the bottles, which is a very good thing. Tomorrow morning we'll see how she's doing with weight.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Gory Details


Well, it's the next morning so I feel that if I'm going to tell the story, it better be now - while the baby is sleeping and the visitors haven't arrived yet.  

We arrived at 9am with the idea of undergoing a version procedure to get the baby head down, followed immediately by an induction. Abby's history has been one of a little womb swimmer, with the position of her body (predominantly transverse) changing literally minute by minute.  So we were very pleased to find that she happened to be head down, so we happily proceeded with the induction, which consisted of a pertosin drip increasing every 20 minutes.  

Soon contractions began - 5 minutes apart, then getting more intense and more frequent.  The thing about the pertosin is that it is essentially a time compression drug, so everything about the labor process is exaggerated and accelerated - particularly the discomfort.   Being wary of this, we ordered the epidural so as to stay ahead of the increasingly uncomfortable contractions.  In this timeframe Abby turned transverse again, so the epidural was particularly important because the new plan was to force the baby head down, then break Angela's water to make the baby less mobile.  The anesthesiology guys arrived and did there thing, with the knowledge that it took two attempts to 'take' with our previous baby - and then it only kicked in during the final crucial minutes.

Although it began to look as if the epidural worked initially, it was obvious is short order that it failed completely.  Unfortunately the contractions were becoming monstrous, and in the process of them trying to effect another epidural, Angela thought she felt the baby's head drop, and shortly thereafter her water broke.  Hello, natural childbirth - with the dubious benefit of petosin induced monster contractions.

The good news was that Abby's head had indeed dropped, and after chasing away anesthesiology, 12 minutes of very intense but conventional pushing was all it took.

It turns out inducing was a very, very good thing.  I.e., Abby was so mobile that she actually formed what they call a "true knot" in her umbilical cord.  If, during the duration of a normal gestation, any tension would have been placed on her cord, that knot could have killed her.  I apologize to the squeamish among you in advance, but you can see what it looked like in the image above. 

While Angela soaks in the tub I think I'll try to change back into my street clothes without getting caught by one of the nurses :-).

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Born at 5:22 PM


She's here!  She and Mom are doing fine!

Head down!

Here's our first entry - we arrived in our labor room just a couple of hours ago.  We were expecting a version to get the baby head down, but thankfully, she was already there!  The just started the petosin, and the convention wisdom is that we'll have a baby by 5 pm...