First "close call"

Yeah, so it's 2:21am now and I just got done feeding Autumn. Well right at the end of this wonderful bonding experience (me trying to stay awake) Autumn starts to "blow it out" while I'm burping her.

Now being the good husband & father that I am, I resist the natural urge to let her just sleep in it and have the next spousal unit handle that bit of fun. Nope, I figure I'll go ahead and change her out since I'm (mostly) awake.

So down she goes onto the changing table and she's continuing to unload! I'm thinking she's dumping the whole stupid bottle I just gave her and no way am I going to stay up and hand her more. Finally a pause in her creation of gut chutney occurs and I leap into action. I get the little sticky tabs undone and start to lower the front part down in order to being wiping operations. And that's when it happened...

As I'm lowering that front part, I see her face get all scrunched up and her legs retract up to her sides as she's about to apparently eject all the contents of everything she's ever eaten. It was pretty darn quick, but I was quicker. I snap that diaper back up around her front and hold it up against what felt like a firehose of poo shooting out her behind. In a second or two it was all over.

I looked around to see if I had missed something or if things had been deflected onto the walls or carpet, but everything was cool. I stared at her to see if there were any further death star explosions on their way, but she was laying there as if she had just stepped down from heaven and all was right with the world.

And so now my little girl is (fussily) sleeping in a (temporarily) clean diaper. Ahhhh, it's such a beautiful experience this raising of children...

It's a bit short but still cute

Getting to the new normal

Well, we finally made it home this past weekend. That was a long long week, but it paid off in the end. :) Both Sharaze & Autumn are doing fine. We took Autumn in for her first pediatrician appointment today and that went pretty well. We've got to go tomorrow to have some bloodwork done on her (I will not stay in the office for that fun) but other than that things are moving right along. In fact, her umbilical cord fell off today which was kind of weird.

Sharaze is also doing better, although it's going to take a little while for her to get back to where she was. But she really is doing quite well and is already taking less of her pain medicine as her body mends up.

Life here at the house is slowly starting to slip into a new routine as we figure out how to all live (and sleep!) together. And that's the biggest thing right there. It's no joke what they say about the newborns keeping you up in the beginning. We feel great if she sleeps about 2 or 3 hours straight during the night. :| Hopefully this will be turned around within a couple of weeks...

And of course I have some new pictures uploaded for you guys to check out. Just click here to see the latest ones.

And for the final bit of fun, I present to you a video of Sharaze changing the first diaper in her entire life. How someone can make it 26 years without changing a single diaper astounds me but I guess it's fitting that her first one is on her own daughter. :)

Crazy times and finally some pictures!

Man, has it been a loooong and tiring week so far. Well here's a quick rundown on how things went.

We went in on Sunday to have a final test done to check on Autumn but while we were there the doctor decided that since we were there that we should go ahead and stay there so they could start the inducement process that night. Autumn was doing very well and they wanted to move ahead while she was in good shape.

So after over a period of a few hours they gave Sharaze the stuff she needed to start the labor process which she entered sometime early Monday morning. Over the course of they day, they kept watching her to see how things were progressing. Sharaze did a great job through all this (the epidural certainly helped!)Much later Monday night, after 15 hours of being in labor, the doctors found that Sharaze was dilated but just not nearly enough so the decision was made to go with a C-section.

I gotta say this was kind of a rough experience. Sharaze really didn't want a C-section but she knew it was the best and right decision. So we gowned up and went on in. I will say this about the procedure; they had Autumn out of that womb in no time at all. I had barely gotten in the door and maybe 2 or 3 minutes later they had her out and she started her crying. It was pretty awesome to hear that sound. Sharaze was doing good herself but then a very bad thing happened. Her pain medicine wore off in the middle of her still being opened up. She was in a LOT of pain and it was so hard to watch her. I actually only got to see Autumn very briefly because I just didn't want to leave Sharaze's side as she was so pitiful and in pain. But the anesthesiologist moved really fast in getting her back under. He actually just knocked her out so quickly that she started snoring a little bit on the table. :) Finally, they got her closed up and I got to hold Autumn for a few seconds to show Sharaze, but she was so drugged up she barely remembers it. She did give her a brief kiss though. And then they took Autumn off for testing.

Eventually they took Autumn to the NICE (the place for preemie babies) to be monitored more closely since she was breathing too fast and her blood sugar was a bit low. It was really hard having this done because that meant Sharaze couldn't go see her since she couldn't leave her room either.

But as of today, both of them are doing much better. Sharaze is moving around slowly but surely and had her epidural removed. She's doing really well I think. Autumn is also doing pretty good. Her breathing has gotten much better and her blood sugar is back in line. They're still keeping her in the NICU to watch her and make sure she stays healthy on a consistent basis but we can go see her now and even feed her at certain times.

As of now, we're going to have to stay in the hospital until Friday night. We're not sure how long Autumn is going to stay, but obviously we're really praying that she'll get to come home with us when we leave. But if not, that's ok. Whatever is best for her is alright with us. All the staff have been super great so that's really helped too.

Ok, enough rambling for now, I know you just want to see the pictures!

(Apologies for some of the darker pictures but I couldn't risk the flash waking her up sometimes.)

Autumn's Birth

I forgot her stats! 5lbs and 19 inches. She was born on May 14th at 9:09pm.

It all starts tonight

I'm here at home picking up the hospital bags since they decided to start things a day early. So hopefully sometime tomorrow there will be a new birthday to celebrate! We'll keep everyone posted! Please say some prayers for Sharaze and Autumn tonight guys!

Show time folks!!

Ok, here's the scoop. We are going in for some tests at the hospital on Sunday evening. We go back to the hospital Monday night as they are going to start the inducement process that evening.

The reason for this is that Autumn has basically stopped growing. There's nothing wrong with her (all her physical stuff is in good shape) it's just that she's no longer growing. And the doctors said that at this time, she'll do better outside than inside.

So please start praying for us as this is a little bit sooner than we expected but it's still all cool. As I get more info, I'll post it up.

The showers are done! Long live baby loot!!

Yup, so we had our final baby shower yesterday and how acquired a copious amount of baby items. It's crazy the amount of teeny tiny baby clothes littering this place now and all the crazy colored toys and chewable books...

But it was lots of fun and we are super grateful to everyone that helped us out by getting little Autumn these great and wonderful gifts. Thanks to everyone that contributed, it's really gonna help us out!

Below you'll see a couple of pictures I took of the nursery jammed with all kinds of crap beautiful little items. Baby Autumn is well on her way to spoildom...


And here's a commemorative moment caught on film...

The first load in a never ever ending line of baby laundry. From this day forward till about 18 years from now, we will always have a load of childrens laundry running. And Sharaze seems so happy about it right now. I wonder how long that's gonna last? My guess is till load number 2...