the super long baby post

There is a lot to write, and I know I won't get all of it, but a summary of the events of the past few days follows. Golden will probably post her thoughts as well a little later. Also, I have not had time to process any pictures that I have taken, so that is why no one has received any yet.

Saturday, July 1

Golden and I were both pretty frustrated on Saturday. She had already gone to the hospital twice, and her contractions were not very frequent on that day. We did receive a DVD-RW camcorder that we had ordered earlier in the week, but it was looking like that might be the only special delivery we would see in a while when we went to bed Saturday night.

Sunday, July 2

I should point out that only Golden really went to sleep on Saturday night. I dozed off Sunday morning around 2. At 4AM Golden woke me up and told me that her water had broke and she was having serious contractions.

We arrived at the hospital at 4:50, and had to go through the emergency room entrance for the second time in three days. Annoyingly, we had to call security to get into the main part of the hospital because the doors don't unlock until 5AM. If Golden's water had only broken ten minutes later... but I digress.

When we got to delivery room one of the nurses checked Golden and assessed that she was already dilated to ten centimeters. They paged the doctor on call (coincidentally, Golden's doctor) and she arrived to determine that Golden was actually only at four centimeters. Oops. This actually worked to our advantage as it gave Golden the opportunity to get an epidural and she progressed real fast to ten centimeters. It took maybe two and a half hours to get to that point.

The pushing labor was a little more difficult. At first, Golden progressed very quickly, and we saw the baby's head within twenty minutes (I say we because I was very actively involved in this process). For more than an hour after this Golden fought to get the baby out, and it took just about all she had, and NJ was born at 9:09 AM. He was six pounds, three ounces, and he was eighteen inches long.

Throughout the day I was struck by how well behaved little NJ was. He would cry, but only if something was truly wrong like his diaper needed to be changed or he wasn't properly swaddled.

BB and Wah Wah visited us later in the day and some comparisons were drawn between NJ and Woogy and Nibbles.

Monday, July 3

I slept in until 9AM. This was an accomplishment because I slept through countless visits from the pediatrician, nurses, someone to collect blood, the person bringing Golden her breakfast, etc. Golden was amazed at the vast numbers of people who came through our room throughout the day, even as early as 6AM. Someone came in to take her blood at that time, which caused her to be suspicious, because who would come through for blood at six in the morning?

I am convinced now that just about anyone could randomly walk into a maternity ward and do just about anything and the patients would assume that person is associated somehow with the hospital. The wide variety of people we saw over two days to discuss personal information or run very personal tests was amazing.

Dash and T visited us in the afternoon. T recalled being in labor with N and Dash recalled the seventeen fish he caught over the weekend.

Golden's parents arrived in town to see the baby and visited for about an hour and a half until Golden had to have some more personal tests run on her.

Tuesday, July 4

We spent the bulk of the morning getting ready to leave and waiting for the doctor to arrive to give the OK for Golden to be discharged.

There were two things that I had to do to make sure that we would be allowed to leave the hospital. First, I had to pay a deposit toward any extraneous expenses that insurance may not cover. Second, I had to make sure the base for the baby carrier was installed in my car. I would really like to know what the hospital does in situations where people genuinely do not have the means to afford either of these requirements. It is not like they can hold the babies there indefinitely.

We celebrated the fourth with Golden's parents and they went out and got us a bassinet for little NJ. We hadn't thought through the fact that he may not sleep in a crib in a different room from us very well.

Wednesday, July 5

Last night through this morning was a real challenge. NJ was either hungry or gassy for most of the night and cried more than he ever has in spurts until around 5:30AM. I got much more sleep than Golden, so I am feeling better than her today.

We've got years to figure out how to get NJ on a good sleep schedule, but I hope it doesn't really take that long.