Evan has been getting into somewhat of a schedule the last few days. Usually feeding every 3 hours during the day and night pretty regularly now. Still waiting for him to make that jump where the night feedings start getting further apart, but I hear that is a couple weeks or more away still. Sometimes he will sleep for 4 to 4.5 hours at a time, so he's on his way there already.
Most nights though we're getting more than enough sleep. Only real issue is being a little stir crazy staying in the house so much. But it's too hot most days to really go for walks right now. Plus, he has about a 10 minute tolerance for being in his car seat (which locks into our stroller frame thing) before he gets upset. That is unless it's a car ride, which he does pretty well.
Had his 2 week checkup this past Tuesday and everything looks good. Mild reflux but nothing to be too concerned over. Pediatrician had great advice again and gave us some more of those "disposable" nipples like the hospital nursery uses for feedings. Evan loves those and doesn't suck in nearly as much air using them - and he finishes the bottle much quicker too which is great. He also said they're not disposable either - that he and his wife used them for a couple months each before tossing them. Wish I would have known that before we tore through the 20 or so the hospital sent us home with when we went left. Evan was 7lbs, 5.5 oz and 21" long. So, he's just about back to his birth weight which he liked seeing.
Also took a few photos of him in after a feeding and also getting some "tummy time" as they say on his boppy:
Bought a new softbox light set with some birthday money and got a chance tonight to finally play around with it a little with Evan and the black backdrop paper - which isn't wide enough as you can tell in the second shot:
Also grabbed a video of him dreaming/chirping as he slept the other night:
Video compliation from Evan's first week of life. You can click the title of the video and it should take you to Vimeo's site where the full sized copy will play instead of the small one embeded on my blog:
Things are getting somewhat easier with Evan. He loves to snooze in his Boppy papazzan chair that Brian and Tasha got for him and his sage green version he has upstairs from Nicki:
Having him sleep at least a little in a repeatable pattern (clean diaper, fed, falls asleep in something other than our arms) has been really great.
He took it fairly well, just halfway down our street and back. Started fussing a little at the end so I took the carrier off and rocked it and he stopped. Hope he likes walks as he gets older - getting out and walking is good for us too.
Took Evan to his first doctor's appointment this morning:
All's well, he's barely jaundice anymore so they didn't even do the test this time. 50th percentile on growth, 15th percentile on weight but the doctor said he wasn't concerned about these charts this early on. He weighed 6lbs, 11.5 ounces today, so yay parents, he's not losing weight at least. LOL.
Evan came home yesterday afternoon, so as you can probably imagine, there wasn't much time to sit and write a blog post.
I did update the gallery linked below one last time. I figure he's been born and brought home, so the "Evan's Birth" gallery is done. Not to say there won't be a photo or two during the rest of his life.
The ride home went well, he slept just about the entire way. It would have been the entire way if we didn't have to turn around in downtown to go back and get Christina's purse. We were so focused on Evan and Christina that we (and the nurse pushing) forgot it was on the bottom rack of the wheelchair.
The wheelchair ride is funny too - they tell you that you can't walk enough while you're there and how great it is for healing and then they push you out in a wheelchair. That's either lawyers talking or it's all done for show. Either way, it's funny.
The first night here last night went okay. We're trying to trade off shifts so the other can sleep and it's working out well enough. Everyone keeps saying it gets easier and easier, so that's pretty reassuring.
Evan has his first doctor's visit today - no appointment, they said we could just bring him in sometime today. He hasn't been seen yet by his main pediatrition because of the holiday weekend - there was someone filling in for his rounds at the hospital. We also never got Evan's photo taken for the hospital's website - again, 4th of July weekend so everyone was out. We even caught the woman who does the social security and birth certificate stuff the very next morning after he was born because she was taking a half day that Friday and off until Monday so we would have missed her.
He is awesome though. Beyond cute and it's great when he falls asleep on my chest or when I get to feed him. There's a lot that isn't that great obviously, but we get a couple weeks under our belt and he learns a few things and I'm told it gets a lot easier. We'll see how this week treats us first though.
Happy 4th of July! Usually known as Independence Day, but like Christina just pointed out it's funny because we're no longer independent.
Anyway, no fireworks here, everything's still pretty calm. Christina's healing up pretty well and we're figuring out Evan's schedule so feeding, burping, etc is all getting easier. He's been an absolutely great baby.
We go home tomorrow afternoon. So my first post after that should be about how everything peaceful ended the minute we pulled into the driveway... haha! Looking forward to going home where there isn't a nurse checking up on you and waking you up every 15 minutes it seems. Of course there's also no nursery to send Evan to once we're home, so we'll miss those breaks. That's where he is now and Christina's trying to get some rest. Everyone's told us to try to let him stay there our last night here so we can get rest, so hopefully that'll work out well.
Like before, I've added more photos to the gallery link below. After we get him home though I'll stop updating the "Evan's Birth" gallery and move on to other ones.
Evan and Mama are doing great. He's a very peaceful and quiet baby - we've only heard him cry a couple of times and only for a few seconds. Even when he pissed himself after his circumcision which the nurse said was a surprise. She said they usually scream then.
We couldn't be happier, he's a beautiful baby and we're really enjoying this time with him here. Looking forward to bringing him home!
Evan was born at 10:51pm on July 2nd, 2009 via C-Section. He was 7 lbs, 7.4 ounces and 19.25 inches long.
He was trying to come out brow first and has a bit of a puffy forehead. Basically he wasn't going to make it out that way and Christina never dialated past 5cm, so it was C-Section time.
Christina had a rough time catching up to the pain in the recovery room, but we're settled in our regular room for the next few days and she's doing much better now. Just called down to have them bring Evan here to feed him for the first time. Hope that goes well!
Had a spell there that is hard to explain. The two times she pressed the button hours ago to get a little more epidural meds she got sick and her blood pressure dropped. However, the blood pressure drop was because of other reasons basically and the blood pressure drop is what made her sick.
So... long and short is that she didn't want to press the button. Granted, she still gets 10mL/hour normally with the auto-pump, but not the extra instant 2mL from pressing the button. Well, the doctor put it this way - she got behind on the pain which is why the contractions started hurting as bad as pre-epidural.
So he had her press the button and he watched the blood pressure and watched for nausea and neither happened. So, she can press every 15 minutes if needed to stay ahead of the pain and the contractions are now tolerable again.
Unlike the ones being experienced by the woman in the room next to us who just came into labor and delivery screaming she needed to push in the hallway. 10 minutes later, I think she just had her baby. Wild.
So she's now 4cm dialated and the baby is at -1 on dropping. This is the stage where the doctor expects 1cm an hour and she'll be back at 8pm to check again. We could end up with a July 3rd baby, the estimate now is around 10-11pm.
Updated the gallery again with 9 more photos. Also added captions to the photos when you view the larger sized versions.
All's going well... they came and broke her water and the contractions came on good and strong then so she asked for her epidural. The epidural went perfectly!
She's snoozing now. Nurses are guessing around 5pm and it should be about that time.
The day is finally here. Been a long 9 months, but Christina will be induced here in a few minutes. We've been at the hospital since yesterday afternoon and the Cervidil she had to have went well. Just waiting on the doctor and pitocin.
Forecast for Evan's first day in this world is 97 degrees. In fact, this past June saw 25 of 30 days have above normal temperatures. We laughed and said when we found out she was pregnant that it was great she didn't have to go through the brutal South Carolina summer. Turns out a summer's worth of heat was crammed into June.
Anyway, as we go I'll add pictures to facebook and upload them to my Pbase site too:
