Good Hair Day

 

I have another round of Emma photos to post but I'm too tired from playing in the sand to post them right now. I thought I would leave all you grandparents and relatives something to oooh and ahhh at until I get the next round up tomorrow. We love you all. 

Scary Daddy Stuff

First of all Emma is OK so don’t worry about how this ends.



This past week I had my first really scary daddy moment. Since Emma was a cesarean baby she didn’t get pushed through the birth canal. When a baby is pushed through the canal not only do they get a bullet head they also squeeze all the gunk that has been building up in them for the past nine months. Some of thing gunk made it’s way to the back of her throat while we were changing her. She doesn’t like being changed in the first place so initially this didn’t catch my eye. She started flailing her arms and opening her mouth like she was about to scream. She was getting really worked up about it as well. The problem was she never started to scream and all of a sudden I got flash backs to High School health class CPR training. My teacher told me that if somebody is screaming they can breath. It’s when they are silent you need to be worried. Kara knew what to do and she flipped Emma over and popped her back a couple of times. Some mucus came out and shaken I walked next door to our midwife neighbor to ask her to take a look at her. She explained the whole mucus scenario and showed us a different was to rub the baby’s back to get things moving. Emma let out a couple of large farts and we all felt a little better. About 10 minutes after she left I went to Amazon.com and got 3 DVDs on baby first aid, CPR and general what to expect. I also picked up Ron White’s “You can’t fix stupid” because I needed a laugh.



Looking back Kara and I were able to nervously laugh about the situation. I’ve been a bit of a camera nut with Emma (See Emma’s photo albums 1 – 5) and I’ve wanted to get a video of Emma’s changing routine because I found her faces so amusing. So when I first saw Emma flailing my initial thought was get the camera, she is really worked up this time. It was when she turned beet red my panic mode kicked in. I’m still going to attempt to video tape one of her burping sessions. Mainly that is when she does the most interesting stuff. Kara and I got a little Sony HandyCam and I intend to put some clips on my website once I figure out how to do it.



Nipples and Poop



On the lighter side of having a baby I’ve learned that once you become a parent your conversation topics change almost immediately. It has gone from political and economic views to discussing Emma’s latest bowel movement.



Yeah shs’s been really gassy but last night she had a real diaper filler. I mean it was everywhere. We were really happy.



I also found it appropriate to now talk about my wife’s nipples to most anybody. It’s all in context of course but since they are a vital part of breast feeding the topic comes up a lot. Thankfully it’s among women and Julie (my mother-in-law) or Kara fields those questions. It’s all asked in very civilized ways, mainly by asking if she is nursing OK or does she have to express a lot. What they are really asking is if Emma has latched on. If not has Kara tugged, pulled, squeezed, brushed (scrub with a tooth brush) or tortured one of the most sensitive areas of her body enough so it will be palatable for Emma. If that hasn’t worked they ask about expressing. This is the process of sticking a mini hoover vacuum cleaner to her breast to pump the milk into a bottle for later use. This is done if the baby doesn’t latch on or if we want to have some milk on reserve in case mom’s not around at feeding time. Then there it goes into leaking but I believe I’ve used up all my good will in typing about tasteless (no pun intended) topics.



I am proud of Kara for all the effort she has put into this, especially because it’s so draining :) Get it draining, it never gets old.

Happy Easter

عيد فصح مجيد


Happy Easter



Emma celebrated her first Easter today. Yeah, I guess we’re going to be those type of parents.

Welcome to Fatherhood

It has now been 5 days since Emma (who has now just woken up) was born. I knew that I was entering an unknown like no other unknown I’ve experienced before. Billions of people have done it before and now it was my turn. I feel like last night was my first real taste of the not so pleasant side.



Since Kara had a cesarean she has had to stay for a few extra days in the hospital. Emma has been kept under observation in the nursery because Kara had a fever and infection while in labor. It has only been as a precautionary measure and Emma has a clean bill of health. This has meant that she has not been sleeping in the same room as Kara at night. Since it was our last night we asked to have her in the same room with us so that we could feed and take care of her. It was seen more of a test run with safety net. Well it got real pretty quick.



Emma is already on 4 hour interval feedings which is something that we both wanted. My first lesson learned is that a 15 minute feeding does not last 15 minutes. A 15 minute feeding includes 15 minutes of feeding, 15 – 30 minutes of burping and adjusting to get as much gas out, changing the diaper and promising her a pony if she would go back to sleep. Then we will sleep for two to three hours and do it again.



I also learned that all those jodies (things the group yells when running in a military formation) that I learned in the Corps still have a use. Since I have no musical talent I have used these to calm her down instead of the Rock-A-Bye Baby variety. Of course I replaced all the references of guns and killing with baby friendly ones about diapers and bottles (well that reference only changed in meaning). The one working best for me right now is "Hi Ho Diddley Bop Bop".



Now Emma and the family are back home and as I was told by my neighbor, the real work now begins. Our first couple of hours were a bit humorous because it was coming up on feeding time when we got home so Kara sat down and started the breast pump Julie and I started finding all the little bits and pieces that are needed for this process which the hospital had been providing. We discovered that we had most everything but we needed to organize a little better. Emma finished off with a poop that challenged the diapers weight limit which caused Kara start laughing. She was laughing so hard that she ran to the bathroom so she wouldn’t pee in her pants. I believe we officially entered our new season in our lives.

Emma is here!

Born: 11:36PM GMT+6 (Doha, Qatar)

Weight: 3.48 Kg = 7ib 10 oz

Length: 53 cm = 21 inches



Kara’s water broke at about 3:00 pm this afternoon and an hour later we were at the hospital. This was amusing in the respect that I had just taken all of our stuff out of the car about 3 hours earlier because we were told to come back on Thursday. Kara called me at work and since it wasn’t a text message I knew it was something big. She told me that either her water broke or she just peed on herself. My first thought was I don’t want to tell anybody her water broke because what if it turns out she really did just pee on herself.



So we show up at the hospital and they started the inducement drip pretty soon after. There is a little monitor that measures the baby’s heartbeat and something else. When the something else is between 0 and 19 nothing is really happening but between 20 and 90 she is having a contraction. Kara was going between 40 and 60 a couple of times but didn’t feel any pain. I don’t know if this is normal or if she is just super woman. During this time we had moved from our room to a labor room and we had no less then 3 doctors coming in and out to see how Kara was doing. I always heard the stories of nurses doing all the hard work and the doctors coming in to catch but not here. They are running at 20% capacity so everybody has low stress and wants to help. Even though there were three it wasn’t overwhelming at all. I don’t know how they have done it but everybody in this hospital is smiling and has a calm positive disposition.



After about 5 hours Kara told me to take a nap because we both thought it was going to be a long night. I crashed on the couch in our room and two hours later a nurse got me and I went back to the labor room. Kara greeted me and said they were going to do a cesarean. It turns out Emma wanted to come now but the cervix hadn’t dilated enough to let her through. The doctor said we needed to do a cesarean ASAP. Dr. Risvy had said the whole time that she never did a cesarean unless absolutely necessary so I knew this wasn’t some time saving measure. So in ten minutes I went from being asleep to watching my wife go into surgery. Talk about feeling really really alone. I sent out text messages to friends asking for them to pray for their safety and a good friend came up to see me. By the time he made it there the procedure was over and I was in the nursery with my new girl.



I had seen him with his new boy a few months prior so this was pretty cool. We didn’t talk much but it was nice to have a friend there. After looking in awe at my daughter for a while it was time to feed her. The nurse was about to feed her when Josh suggested it was OK if I did. I’m really glad he did because I got to give her her first bottle and spend even more time with her. After this Kara came out of surgery and I walked with her as they pushed her bed back to our room. She was in some pain but as usual was toughing it out. She got to see the little blessing for a couple of minutes before conking out. So that’s the new news. Thanks for everybody’s thoughts and prayers. I’ll be sure to keep the site up to date with pictures as they come.



Emma’s first pics

No new news

Well the news is no new news. Kara has taken two inducement “treatments” and things are progressing at their own pace. We have set up a laptop and DVD player to keep in ADD tendencies in check. Kara is in great spirits and we’re taking embarrassing home movies to show Emma’s first date.



I’ll keep everybody posted but right now I’m back off to the hospital.

Getting ready for labor day

Kara and I got the news that Tomorrow (Saturday April 8) is the big day. She is now 2 centimeters dilated and we are going to get ‘er done starting at 8:00. Not sure exactly what to expect but I am in a little bit of panic / nervous / last minute detail mode. I think we got everything and if we didn’t oh well.



I feel a little bit like the night before Kara and I got married. I had a dream that I forgot to plan the honeymoon and I had to get one of my groomsmen to make some calls during the reception. I was driving to the airport hoping we would figure it out when we get there. Hmmm, dreams tonight should be interesting.



My eye actually started twitching for about two hours when I found out it was going to be this Saturday. Not noticeably but I could feel it. I’m excited but feeling a bit overwhelmed. So I thought the easiest way to deal with that would be to let the whole world know. When I think about it, we’re OK. Kara’s strong, we’re prepared and if I forget to wear pants, I’m sure they’ll have a couple of extra ones there.