Time Since Sophie’s Birth: 2 weeks
Missed Days of Work: 6½
How Behind I Am: Unquantifiable, but very high number.
Stress Level: "The needle’s freaking out!!!"
Husband’s Health Status: Poor, but improving.
Wife’s Health Status: Poor, but stable.
ER Trips: 1
Hours I Slept Last Night: 10½
Time to Sophie’s Coming Home: Less than 5 hours
Happiness Quotient: High and still rising.
My white blood cells have thought that this would be an opportune time to attempt to renegotiate their contract with my body, seeing as how I clearly have nothing better to do with my time than to rest. So, my lymphatic system is on the picket line. I’m even imagining their catchy chants, like “Get on the bus! Let’s have less pus!” or “Don’t give up the fight! Support your local leukocyte!”
Okay, clearly I’m delirious. One tablet of echinacea, two of ibuprofen (for the headache) and a full glass of that awful-tasting Emergen-C down. I’m gonna lie down for a while.
Don’t you want to see more adowable pictures of my pwecious widdle bundle of joy? Of course you do! Click the image below to see more pictures.
(I promise I’ll let up soon. If for no other reason than I can’t find the bleeding camera charger and the battery’s almost dead.)
We finally found our camera after going through the entire first two days of this child’s life without it.
This image still makes my heart skip a beat when I see it.
(Click on the image to see all the images we uploaded so far.)
After several days of poking and prodding, the doctors and nurses seem to have decided that Kelly is steady enough to go home. And while being discharged from the hospital would typically be a cause for celebration, only 2/3 of the family actually gets to go home for now.
The good news is that Sophie is well. Surrounded by dozens of preemies on ventilators and in incubators who are in far more dangerous waters than our little girl serves as a reminder as to just how blessed we truly are. The only trouble now is that Sophie just doesn’t quite have this whole eating thing down just yet. She’s got the rooting and sucking motions down and she can swallow a little bit for short periods of time, she just doesn’t quite have the whole process pieced together just yet. She’ll feed for a little while and then tire out and fall asleep. She’s learning, but it will just take a little time—maybe a few days, maybe a week or two, we just don’t know.
As you might imagine, this is difficult for both of us, but more so for Kelly. As a father, I can only understand the mother-child bond on a superficial or perhaps an intellectual level. Of course, this is to say that I’ll never really understand that bond at all. So, the best I can do is to be the calm voice of reason in her torrent of emotions right now. Guys, this is a free tip here: when your wife freaks out after giving birth (and it will happen sooner or later—I don’t care how strong your wife is, she’s not stronger than Oxytocin), that’s the absolute best thing you can do. If she doesn’t want to eat, make her eat. If she wants to eat awful foods just because she’s hungry, watch her diet for her. If she cries because she can’t produce milk or because she can produce milk or because she can’t fit in her shoes or her old pants or can’t sleep or it’s too hot or cold or when she freaks out because THE BABY ISN’T IN MY STOMACH ANYMORE even though just days before she was begging PLEASE GET THIS CHILD OUT OF ME AND I WILL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP FOR DOING THIS TO ME—the best thing you can do is take it like a man and help her no matter what. It will pass, I promise.
(Also, for the record, these are general examples, I’m not implying that any of these things were necessarily said or done by my wife. Your mileage may vary.)
But that’s where we are right now. Kelly is so tired, she’s snoring sleeping angelically through the very loud housekeeper cleaning the bathroom. (She also slept through a phone call from her grandmother.) We’ll get to go home today, and while the whole family doesn’t get to go home just yet, we know it’s going to be fine. The next time we’ll come back here will be to visit a very special patient, not to be one.
Sophia Sakura Dyer was born this morning at 6:37 A.M. She weighed five pounds, two ounces and measured 18¾ inches in length.
Even though she is several weeks early, developmentally, Sophie is fine. She is currently in the NICU because her blood-sugar is a little low and since she doesn’t quite understand the whole “we eat through our mouth” concept yet and wouldn’t take the high-sugar Similac we tried to give her. So, she’s getting her nutrition intravenously at the moment, but other than that, she’s a perfectly healthy baby girl.
Kelly is also doing well. The actual labor went very quickly (two pushes and that was it!) and so she’s already able to move about again, albeit a little slowly. I’m sure she’ll talk more about everything from her perspective soon.
As for my own thoughts on everything: they’re still a little jumbled right now. Right now, I’m just trying to enjoy the moment. I’m at home gathering a few more things (our cell phones are almost dead because we forgot the chargers) and reminding the cat that humans do, in fact, still live here. But I hope to have coherent thoughts that are more thoughtful than just HOLY CRAP, I’M A FATHER NOW, a sentence which is the only thing that sums up my thoughts adequately right now.
Certain to be more here soon. Also the wife blog is likely to have developments soon too. (Speaking of which, how badly did she jinx us with that last post of hers?)
Kelly’s water broke this morning just after midnight.
For those of you not quick with the math for where we are in this pregnancy, today is the beginning of the 34th week (of 40).
So, we’re a little concerned. Not as much as if this had been the twenty-fourth week, mind you, but a little concerned nonetheless. Generally speaking, Sophie has already finished developing by now (more or less) and is mostly just growing at this point.
Now, Kelly’s body isn’t quite ready to deliver this child just yet, so she’s in observation right now. (I’m writing this from home as I gather things to take back to the hospital.) The doctors say they may go ahead and induce within a week if the birth doesn’t happen naturally to reduce the risk of infection to the baby, but we’re not sure on that yet.
Kelly is fine other than being in some pain from the contractions (which, of course, are much worse now that her water broke) and she will be blogging about her side of things once I take this laptop back to the hospital.
All in all, I’m kinda frazzled right now and I’m not operating on much sleep.
We’re also amazed at how ornery this kid is, too. She just hears our wishes and plans and cackles, “Ha ha! Now I will do everything in my power to thwart your plans.” I mean, I know it’s not like she can help it or anything, of course, but good grief: we would’ve at least liked to have painted the baby’s room and gotten the baby furniture first!
My family horrifies my wife.
Not like that, my family and my wife get along great. What horrifies my wife is our general lack of communication with each other. Kelly’s family lives in a neighboring suburb and yet they communicate with each other regularly about pretty much everything imaginable and have to relay every granular piece of information to everybody in the family or OH MY GOD, ARE YOU OKAY? WELL, HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT IF YOU DIDN’T CALL? YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN HIT BY A CAR!
In my family on the other hand, someone might actually get hit by a car…in China…and I don’t find out until I read it on their blog.
In another fun coincidence, this continues the trend of the Dyer kids walking away from potentially-horrifying accidents in foreign countries not known for their health care providers. Once, when I was younger, I was on a trip to Israel and Jordan and while in Jerash, I fell four feet from the precipice of a Roman ampitheatre to the very solid floor below and walked away with nothing more than a startled look and a pounding headache.
That’s seems to sum up my family in a nutshell: bizarre accidents in foreign countries exacerbated by a lack of general communication between family members. Welcome to the family, baby.
