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.