What am I thinking: August 2006

It's been a little while since we came home and long past time for me to update with some new pics. But, as you can imagine, (and if you can't imagine, just trust me) I've been quite busy being a new Dad. Before I get into specifics, I had some people ask me about the pics I previously posted. The first picture is obviously of Heidi before we went to the hospital. We needed a pic of her belly for the baby memories book we have. Thest rest of the pictures unfortunately are out of chronological order, but I was rushing to get back to the hospital when I posted them.

The 2nd is of us and our OB, Dr Soto. It was taken the day after Noah was born. the third (the 3 of us) was taken about 2 hours after Noah was born and was taken in the recovery room. The fourth and sixth are pictures of Noah right after he was born and the staff cleaned him up a bit. And the one of just Heidi and Noah was after he was a couple of days old and was taken in her regular hospital room. You can skip to the bottom of this post for more pics if you're impatient. :-)

So, being a new Dad is pretty much what I expected it to be, only more so. It's like I told another father at work: I'm amazed I can be so entertained to do nothing but sit aand hold/watch him for an hour. And also amazed at how much it upsets me when he's crying. Not upsets me in the "why won't he be quiet??!?!?" way, but the "OHMYGOD what's the matter? How can I help you out, little guy?" kind of way.

Lemme start with the hospital stay. In the hospital, everything was pretty good. The first day or so, he was awake a lot as most brand newborns are. He'd doze every now and then, but nothing like a hard slumber. He'd eat every now and then and poop/pee every now and then. Since Heidi was recuperating with a nice 8 inch gash in her abdomen, I changed most (all?) of the diapers in the hospital. Finally, the day before we were leaving she was watching me and asked me, "Have you been around a lot of newborns before?" "Well, honestly no. My older sister has 6 kids, but I didn't see them too much until they were a couple of weeks old. But I have been around a lot of newborn animals. Why? Am I being too rough?" I was thinking I was diapering him too tight, or jerking him around too much. "No. Quite the oppisite actually. You're doing quite well with him."

Noah has had some of the normal breathing issues with c-section babies. Since they aren't squished down the birth canal, their lungs don't get compressed and squeeze all of that gunk out of there. Add in the fact that he passed meconium while still in-utero before being born (this can be risky) and you can see why we were nervous. One thing he still does that really freaks me out is the "squeaky toy bark" as I call it. His Pediatrician explained it to us. His cartelidge isn't quite developed yet, so his trachea isn't as rigid as a full grown adult's is. (Which is also why newborns have really soft ears...) And just like when you squeeze a dog's squeaky toy, it makes a high pitched whistle when he breathes heavily. 4 nurses and 3 separate doctors have all assured me that his lungs sound clear and it's nothing to worry about, but I still do. :-
Leaving the hospital was a nerve-racking experience. Heidi was ready to be in her own house and sleep in her own bed, but was nervous since the doctors/nurses wouldn't be there to help us if we didn't know what to do. And even though she loves her own bed and was looking forward to sleeping in it again, she said she'd miss the "magic" hospital bed that lifted her up to a full upright position and made getting out of it much easier. But we finally left on Friday. I took a bunch of stuff out to the van (I recently joined a new club) and brought back the car seat. We loaded him up and walked down to the lobby. Heidi waited there with him and I pulled the van around so she wouldn't have that far to walk. Drive home was uneventful and everything was looking really great but we were still nervous there wasn't an exit exam to be sure we knew what we were doing. Heidi said "You gotta pass a written as well as a practical exam to get a driver's license, but just anyone can have a baby..."

That night, things got interesting. He started crying at 11:00pm and didn't stop all night. We cuddled him, walked with him, rocked him, sang to him (Heidi really enjoyed my baby-fied rendition of "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley. you know how it goes... "Don't worry. Bout a thing. Cuz every little thing gonna be all right..."), and even just sat hugging him. But we made it though the night. The next day was much like the previous day, only with a little more crying. Then we went to bed Sat night. And the crying started again.

We were dumbfounded. "What are we doing wrong? Nothing that worked in the hospital is working this time!! oh man oh man oh man What do we do?" Fortunately nature took its course. It turns out, he was constipated. We'd been keeping a record of diaper changes, feedings, pain pills for Heidi and realized he hadn't pooped in 1.5 days. Then at about 3:00 AM, he had the messiest diaper yet!! And you could see the relief in his face as he almost instantly fell asleep, and we weren't far behind him.

My mom came up that Sunday (after the constipation you'll notice ;-)) and has been a God send to us both. I took Mon->Wed off from work, then worked a 1/2 day Thur and a full day Fri. And I'm back full time this week. So having an extra set of hands to help Heidi as she heals from surgery has been a big help. She'll be going home Sunday/Monday/sometime soon. No big rush. Although as she says, if she stays gone much more, her dog will think the kennel is her new home...

So that's the chronological events of being a new dad. What about the emotional? Well, the first thing most people ask me is how I enjoy getting no sleep. Well, on one hand, he sleeps 3-5 hours at a stretch, so it's not been too bad. We feed/change him before bed, once overnight usually around 2 or 3 am, and again in the morning before I leave for work. And honestly, I got used to little/no sleep when I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail in 2000. So while it's still not a lot of fun to be constantly slightly tired, it's not 100% foreign to me.

He's not really interactive yet, so when he's awake he mostly just looks at you with HUGE dark blue eyes. But we talk. I've already explained the most powerful tool in the house to him: The TiVo remote. I explained how it's much more important than the tv or stereo remote. He gurgled.

So far, he's pretty cool. We took him and my mom out to dinner tonight to thank mom for coming up to help us and I was a little nervous about it. It really annoys me when people have their little kids/babies in places that aren't appropriate for them, and then ignore them when they're unhappy. So, all through dinner I was watching him for the first sign of a cry-fest. But one never happened. He woke up and I immediately stuck a bottle in his mouth since it was his feeding time anyway. Then, instead of burping him where everyone in the dining room could hear it, I walked him over to an empty section of the restaurant to burp him. I think the staff was nervous when they saw how new he was to have him in their restaurant, but by the time we were leaving, several waitresses and the hostess were all cooing over him.

I told Heidi, "You know what this means, don't you? He's a good baby, so he's gonna be hell on wheels as a teenager." "I was a good baby, and a good teenager." "yeah, well, I wasn't, and he's a boy just like me, so get ready for the mother's curse to come true."

OK OK OK Time for what you really came for. More pics!!

This first one is from the day we got home from the hospital. His little face still looks mostly like this.