Back to School

Alyssa is going back to school now. I watch Odin and feed him with a bottle if I need to. He behaves really well. Odin and I are going to campus with her every day this week. Starting next week, we'll only go on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Shower

We went to Emily's baby shower today at noon and had a great time. Everybody thought Odin was cute. It's interesting that Brandy had her daughter, June, we now have Odin, and soon Emily will have Ryder. I'm sure they'll cause lots of trouble as they hang out together.

Doctor Visit

We went to see Dr. Dzubay again because of the ER trip. She agreed that everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about. Apparently Odin has a heart murmur. She said it is very common and we'll get it checked in to. We aren't worried, he seems fine.

After that we went to my old office because I promised everybody there that I would bring him by once he was on the outside. Odin is quite the ladies'-man. They all liked him and he liked them.

We went for a walk up the road to visit Grandma at work. She had to emergency-change an explosive diaper while I was in the men's room, and she didn't do so well. I guess it's not like riding a bike. Funny though.

First (of many) ER trip

Odin had been up for 10 hours crying non-stop, not pooping much, and eating abnormal amounts, so at about 3am today we took him to the ER. We had called the pediatrician's office and they said it was probably nothing to worry about, but better take him just to be sure.

After we had been put in a room, a nurse poked his head in and asked how many bowel movements he'd had, which was only 1, but as soon as he left, Odin took a huge one and seemed to get better.

When the doctor came in and examined Odin, he said that it was probably a little colic or even just constipation, and his circumcision was probably hurting since we hadn't given him anything for it. We got some tylenol to help with the soreness and we're putting vaseline on it now. He's a lot better.

Circumcision

We took Odin for his Circumcision today. Dr. Bradshaw did it, she's pretty good. Odin hated the whole thing, obviously, but when it was over he seemed to calm down a bit.

Odin has been having some trouble eating, and we suspected it was Thrush which Dr. Bradshaw confirmed. She gave us this herbal stuff to pain on his tongue, it seems to help him.

Pictures

Odin behaved so well today. He slept through the night, almost all night, and was awake and alert all day. He was quite fun to be around.

However, he seems to be going through a growth-spurt right now because he's been eating for hour and now I've been up taking care of him. So, since it's so late at night, I decided to finally get around to putting all his pictures online.

I added a pictures section to the right so anybody can look at all the pictures that were taken. If you have any more that you haven't already sent me, please let me know so I can add them.

Relatives

My grandmother and great-aunt came to visit today. They brought lunch and we ate with my Dad. They wanted to see Odin and meet Alyssa since they had only seen pictures so far. It was rather pleasant, and I had a good time.

We took Odin to his appointment at 2:50 and all was well. His head is now 14.5 inches, he measures 21 inches in length, 8lbs 8oz, and they said he is 50th percentile in all categories. Good news.

First Bath

Well, it looks like his umbilical cord fell off some time during the night because I found it on the floor. Pretty funny actually. So we just gave him his first bath. He was really well behaved; didn't fuss too much, and seemed to like the warm water.

Numbers

Alyssa pointed out something really cool to me ealier;

My birthday is 8/6/86
Odin's is 4/3/07

Each number is a half, 4 is half of 8 for the month and 3 is half of six for the day. For the year, 7 isn't half of 86, but it is half of 14 which is 8+6. Also, his month and day add up to his year; 4+3=7, pretty cool.

Growing

Odin went through his 7th day grown spurt last night. He was awake all night, and he wouldn't stop eating. It was actually kinda funny. It's day time now and he still doesn't seem to want to sleep. Alyssa and I are taking turns watching him and resting/doing homework and we're just gonna lie around all day, which is what we wanted to do for the first several weeks anyway so it works out.

I'm really glad I took only online classes this term. It's allowing me to be home with my family and it has taken a great burden off of all of us to be able to stay home and just be together. Alyssa will go back to school in a few weeks (the middle of the term) but by then he'll be old enough that Odin and I can go sit in the sun on campus somewhere and just wait for her to get out of class. In the summer we'll both be online and following that we have to go to campus for classes, but never for more than 2 hours and our good friend Ann will just sit on campus and take care of him so we really did make out good for ourselves.

First Appointment

We just got back from our first Pediatrician appointment with Dr. Dzubay for Odin. She said he's one of the best/healthiest babies she's seen in a long time. He is gaining weight perfectly, his jaundice is going away nicely, he is very well behaved, and his eating/sleeping/bathroom patterns are near perfect.

The Story Thus Far....

We woke up at noon on 4/2/07 and Alyssa was already in labor. Not that painful yet, but definitely started. By 3am on the 3rd she couldn't take it so we called our friend Kellie and went over to her place. Kellie is a mother-baby nurse at a different hospital than the one we were going to deliver at, but we decided to use her as a coach for the whole thing since she knows so much about it. We took a dip in her hot-tub to help with the labor pains, which it did, but we weren't able to get to sleep at all. At 10am we decided to go to the hospital.

Alyssa's labor wasn't progressing that well, and we had been up for nearly 26 hours without sleep so we all decided that an epidural was a good idea. We don't see it as weakness or failure; she didn't give up and succumb, the exhaustion was actually causing complications and she was handling the pain just fine, she just needed to sleep. Once the epidural was in, the doctor broke her water for her. This got things going; Alyssa had been stuck dilated at 1 or 2cm for weeks, and in an hour she was up to 5, but it never got beyond that. Odin's heart rate was too low, so we decided to do a c-section now while it could be done safely rather than wait it out and see and have it be necessary to do one in an emergency situation.

Odin was officially born at 4:47pm weighing 8lbs 1oz at 20.5 inches.

That night, Alyssa was able to sleep because of the pain medications but I had gone 38 hours without sleeping so I called Dad to the room to watch Odin while I got some rest for an hour. We eventually sent him to the nursery so we could both get some rest. Alyssa was able to watch him a little after that, and I apparently used the time to sleep through every doctor and nurse visit we had for a while. I still only ended up with about 4 hours sleep since noon on the second, but it's worth it.

Dad had the day off on the 4th so he came over for about 5 or 6 hours to hang out. He took care of Odin while I slept and then Odin fell asleep with Alyssa so Dad and I watched them and played some card games. Our friends came back to visit some more, everybody is so happy for us. The whole hospital floor keeps talking about how cute he is.

Alyssa was feeling a little down that day because she can't do much with Odin. Because of the surgery, it's hard for her to hold him or burp him or walk around with him, so she feels like he doesn't like her very much. She also feels a bit like a failure because she couldn't give birth to him naturally. I talked to her for a while and she felt better about it. She keeps taking naps with him and they're so cute.

We were told on the 5th that it's okay for him to sleep in the same bed and since then he's been sleeping non-stop. He is so content when he sleeps with Mommy. I managed to get a lot more sleep -- off and on -- but not a lot. According to Alyssa, I slept so hard that she kicks me and throws stuff at me and I don't wake up. I know it's true because I would find heavy objects in my "bed" whenever she finally got me up. It makes me sad because I don't want to sleep through Odin crying, and I certainly want to be able to help Alyssa whenever she needs it, but I think I wont sleep as heavy once I'm caught up a bit on the last few days.

We wrapped Odin in the blanket that Emily gave us -- it's really soft, much better than the hospital blankets -- and he really liked it. He's so well behaved; doesn't cry often, is easily wooed, and sleeps a lot.

They said we could leave the next day.

We eventually were sent home, and some family visited, but everyone seemed to remember that we'd wanted to be left alone for the first few weeks. Odin is an extremely good baby; he sleeps until we get him up (unless we wait a really long time) but never so long that it might be cause for concern, he doesn't cry when I change him, and he is really easy to take care of.

I'll be setting up some online photo albums of all the pictures we got, so look for those.