Time flies when your baby cries...

Hello to all of you out there in blogland. Wow! It seems like just a few hours ago Deanna and I got home from the hospital with little Judah, but it has been four days! Here is a recap of what has happened.

D-Day: Deanna and I went to the hospital a bit early just to make sure we were there on time. We were supposed to show up at 10pm but we got there at 9:30. And it was a good thing too, apparently every pregnant woman in our county was attempting to give birth at the same time. Well about 10:30 we finally found a way into a room but the nurse did not come in until 3:30am to check on us. We knew Deanna would be induced and we also knew inducing makes labor harder and faster. What we didn't know was HOW hard or HOW fast.

D-Day +1: Deanna started having hard contractions about 8am. and when I say hard I mean HARD! But she was really a trooper, she never once gave me that I'm gonna kill you look, or the DON'T YOU EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN scream. She took it all in stride... er ... lying down... not sure you can stride whilst lying down...any way.

For those of you who know me, you know I am a slight techo-nerd. Okay, a HUGE techno-nerd. For those of you who don't know me ... well I guess you know now that I am a techno-nerd thus rendering this sentence superfluous ... HEY! Don't get sassy with me mister! I'll turn your access to my blog right off! (Sorry, testing out my parenting skills. How'd I do?).

Well suffice it to say in a modern labor and delivery room there is a wealth of buttons and knobs attached to some pretty cool machinery. And wouldn't you know it, but apparently your not supposed to play with them? Neat little graphs scrolling by on the screen but Jake cant see what kind of OS they are running, NO! Apparently it could kill someone, or at least seriously mess with your hospital bill.

Back to Deanna: at about 10am her contractions were coming hard and fast. If you recall the neat little graphs I referred to earlier, the one on top showed the baby's heart beat and the other showed the length and severity of the mom's contractions. Deanna's contractions were peaking out the scale and lasting for a minute to a minute and a half AND coming every thirty seconds, she couldn't catch her breath before another contraction came.

At about 11:30am the Dr. came in and told us she was seeing a problem with the baby's heart rate. It was dropping badly when Deanna had a contraction, the Dr. thought that the umbilical cord was probably being crushed against the wall of her uterus during the contractions. Low heart rate = bad for baby! The decision was made to go ahead and have a C-Section.

Now, as the dad I was left in the room ALONE for about 20 minutes before a nurse came to escort me to the operating room where Deanna was already. That was a LONG 20 minutes. But, I did have some chores to keep me occupied while I was waiting. Before I could go into the O.R., I had to put on what can only be described as a bunny suit. This thing was HUGE, it made me look like some kind of crazed easter bunny! But seeing as the nurse probably would NOT think it amusing that I hopped down the halls giving out candy on the way, I simply walked behind her trying hard to resist the urge to skip a little.

When I entered the room Deanna was already on the table (which I expected), the blue privacy curtains were up (which I expected), and cut open (which I DID NOT expect!). For those of you who have not seen a C-Section... You need to! Oh my goodness! They had all of Deanna's organs that are situated in front of her uterus ... pulled out and lying on her belly! Kinda freaked me out a bit. Most oddly, they were white with blue and red vessels running through them. In the movies any time you see an organ it is bright red or green or yellow but never white! I guess you can't believe everything you see in movies, darn you Hollywood! I love to tell Deanna that now I have seen more of her than she has!!

I took my seat at Deanna's head but still had a pretty good view of what was going on behind the blue screen. I know medical technology has improved but it still looks like kids playing with daddy's tools to me. But, at 11:52am out popped little Judah. My fist thought ... My son is here, wow. My first words ... "Looks like an old man dipped in 40 weight." Probably not the most appropriate word selection, but what I said none the less.

The rest is half etched into my mind and half a blur, the nurses took him and did their thing. And while the Dr.s were sewing Deanna up, I followed Judah to the recovery room. Next came a cavalcade of visitors, all welcome of course. Then it was off to post-partum.

This whole time, it was really weird. This didn't feel like it was happening to me, it felt like I was watching some really slow moving movie. Whats even more strange is that I was enjoying it, and nothing was exploding or getting shot or anything! It hadn't really sunk in yet that MY child was here, and I am still unable to fully wrap my mind around the idea, even now.

D-Day +1 to Present: Time has flown by! In 12 hours Judah will be a week old! I have learned a few things though:

1) Little boys turn into sprinklers NOT as soon as you open their diaper, no then it would be easy to just flip it back shut again. They also don't wait until you have the new diaper almost on. Oh no, they wait until you are grabbing the new diaper and both of your hands are full. Then they let loose. Fortunately I have always had a wipe or something handy to stem the flow but he got his mommy pretty good : ).

2) Babies cry, its what they do. And while yes, it can be at all of the wrong times. And yes, it can really irritate you at 3am when he hasn't stopped crying for 5 straight hours. But you know the little one can't help it, and you don't forgive him because there is nothing to forgive. Because its your child and by golly if all they want from you is your sleep then they can have it. Just remember to keep me well caffeinated!

3) My life is totally and irrevocably changed. I cannot go back to who I was before him, and I don't want to. This is my next great adventure, every day a new challenge. Deanna and I will go through this together with Judah, our own little family. And we hope you all can share in it with us.

I am new to this whole father thing, I don't know what I am doing 99.99999% of the time. I am going on a wing and a prayer, mostly the latter. Don't be afraid to offer up advice, but on the same token please don't be insulted if we don't take it. This is after all our baby, we are the ones who have to deal with any repercussions so if we don't act on your advice there was probably a good reason, and don't tell us "I told you so!" if you turn out to be right and we turn out to be wrong, that will just get you kicked in the naughty bits.

We will post pictures when I find a better way than the provided method blogspot gives us. More to come...