The Simple Life

Adam sleeps. Adam eats. Adam gets his picture taken. Repeat.

Deliver Us From Evil

So, I promised more about the labor and delivery, so here you (Bill and Janine, read that as "all y'all") go.

Wednesday evening - Wednesday night, really - I had a soccer game that started at 10:10 p.m., and I had to play. We'd lost several one goal games this season, and we were playing the worst team in the league. I wanted to be in on a win, doggone it.

I had my phone, and first babies take their time anyway, right? And, besides, Adam wasn't due until the 28th. Well, for the most part, everything went according to plan. We won easily, and the phone didn't ring. So far, so good. When I got home, Jean was in bed because that's what people do when they don't have soccer games scheduled to start after 10 p.m., but what she didn't tell me was that she had been having widely spaced contractions since about 11 p.m. (right about when our game ended). So I crawled into bed and tried to sleep, eventually succeeding around 12:50 or so.

1:10 a.m.
Jean: "My water broke."
Me: "Hhmmph?"
Jean: "I think I'll take a shower."
Me: "Hhmmph."
Jean: "Should I call the doctor yet?"
Me: "Hhmmph."

I gradually roused from my stupor and started timing the contractions. They were all over the place - anywhere from 2-10 minutes apart and of varying intensities. Jean called the hospital, and they told her to come in but not to rush. I showered and grabbed my bag. We packed me some snacks, loaded the car, and headed out at 3 a.m. We checked in. Jean was at 2 cm.

Five hours later (8:30), Jean was at 3 cm. We decided to wait a couple of hours before deciding whether or not to give Adam a little help. Jean had wanted to give birth as naturally as possible, but when the water breaks early, your options become more limited. After about 12 hours, infection becomes a serious concern, for instance. Anyhoo, not much was happening (light to moderate contractions every 5-7 minutes), so we decided to accept Pitocin at 11 a.m.

Pitocin tends to make the contractions more intense and more frequent. It worked as advertised. The problem then was the freaking pain. Jean's body was doing in two hours what it should have done over 5-6 hours. She handled it amazingly well, but it was just too much, and we requested an epidural, which was administered between 1:15 and 1:30 p.m. At that point, they checked Jean, and she was at 7 cm.

The last couple of hours of labor flew by. After the epidural was administered, we welcomed Jean back to sanity, and she was able to speak in complete sentences devoid of any profanity at all.

The nurse recommended that I get a bite to eat at the cafeteria so I went downstairs and quickly wolfed down the worst cheeseburger and fries in the history of Western civilization and got back to the room for showtime.

Around 3:30, the doctor arrived to evaluate the situation. With only a couple of pushes, Adam thought he was ready, but the doctor knew better. He was rotated the wrong way (he should have been facing the floor, but he facing the ceiling). As the room quickly filled with hospital staff, the doctor was able to get Adam oriented better, but they still needed the forceps to guide him out. Also, he had managed to get his cord tangled around his neck, so the time was now. They had Jean give a few more pushes, and, before you knew it, he was out and announcing his presence with authority.

After the initial cleaning and testing and weighing and measuring, they had to take him to the nursery for a couple of hours because he had breathed some of the fluid. That gave Jean a little recovery time. Forceps are great for guiding babies, but they're hell on moms. She needed lots of stitches. That's going to slow her down some over the next few weeks, but she's already feeling much better. All I know is she's moving around a heck of a lot better than I think she should.

In the two hours Adam was being monitored, I was able to visit him in the nursery, and I got to experience what for me was the neatest thing in the history of things. The first time I spoke to him, he seemed to recognize my voice, immediately making eye contact and proving in the process that his ears and eyes were in good working order. For the first time in a while, I was speechless. Almost. After getting that reaction, I wasn't going to stop for anything.

They brought him back to the room at 6 p.m., and we all got to know each other a little better, which is pretty much what we've been doing ever since.

Jean, middle of the night, before epidural

Jean, mid-afternoon, after epidural

Yeah, Jean's pretty much my hero.

Settling In

Yeah, I know it looks like we're having him sleep in a drawer. But that's only because we're having him sleep in a drawer. But he's willing to sleep other places too.
Grandma Beth's entertaining, but Adam's standards are pretty high.
The first sponge bath. He wasn't pleased...
but he seems to have survived, here showing off his prison jumper. Prisoner 012408 is getting a little time in the sun.

The Latest

I'll write a little about the labor and delivery later, but here are a few pictures from the last two days. We're home, and Jean's parents Ray and Beth arrived in town last night. Things are going well. Thank you all for the comments and e-mails; we'll respond as soon as we can. Until then, on to the pictures!

At the hospital:

Heading home:

What about me? Don't forget about me.

By Popular Demand

Well, if we consider Colin "popular."

Gotta get back to the hospital. We'll post more soon (probably Sunday).

And thanks for the comments and calls; we appreciate them.

Adam Robert Jones

Born at 3:58 p.m. January 24. He was 19.5 inches, 8 pounds 3.4 ounces.

Mom is proud, as she should be. She was fantastic:

More details later.

Well, Well, Well...

The doctor's appointment this morning went well. She said Jean and Nuke are both looking great and that they're making progress. This was a little bit of a concern on our part because Jean hadn't had any contractions at all, and her colleague who is due three weeks after her has been having them off and on for weeks now. We were starting to wonder what we had done wrong and if we should call the Help Desk and walk through the script:

"Have you checked the power cord? Are you sure she's connected to the power strip?"

"Okay, is the power button in the 'on' position?"

"Excellent. Is the power strip turned on too?"

"Terrific. Is the power strip plugged in to the wall?..."

But the doctor said there's a little bit of dilation and noticable effacement (if you don't know what those terms mean, you don't want to know until you have to know - just know they're signs Jean's body's getting ready to evict Nuke). So we went to lunch and the library before I took Jean to work.

Then she e-mailed to say she had her first no-doubt-about-it contraction.

Evidently, this may actually happen.

But What Will the Neighbors Think?

Poor Sliver. The temperature this morning has been hovering around 0 degrees F, so Jean pulled out the dog booties. Normally, we only put them on her when we want a little entertainment; she doesn't like them and tries to step out of them, then tries to pull them off, and, if neither of those work, she becomes the Saddest Dog in the World.

This morning, evidently Sliver realized we weren't doing this simply for our amusement, so she didn't try to pull them off, and we skipped straight to the end.

The Saddest Dog in the World:

This is not an action shot; she's just holding that back paw up, maybe hoping it will just go away if she waits long enough

Also not an action shot. Just trying to not move so we don't laugh too hard.

Break on Through

I'm guessing this is a bid to dispel the notion that smoking pot takes away your motivation. After all, getting busted twice in one night for smoking marijuana takes some persistence:

PULLMAN, Wash. - Pullman police said a WSU student was arrested twice the same night for smoking marijuana. The 20-year-old was arrested Tuesday night with two other men for smoking in a parking lot, police said. They were cited, fingerprinted and released shortly after midnight.

Less than two hours later, an officer saw three men passing around a pipe in a pickup truck and arrested the student again and the two others for possessing marijuana.

Police Commander Chris Tennant said he hopes the student isn't kicked out of WSU because it seems he needs a bit more education.

I'm also wondering who comes out of this looking worse, pot smokers or WSU students.

I think the gamblers would say this is a push; there are no winners here.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

We're all waiting.

Sliver's approach is a little more pro-active than ours; she's our little sentinel, ever alert for signs that the baby's on the way*:
Jean's swimming, working, and reading, but she's also pushing maximum density:

And I'm just trying to keep busy:

* Note: I suppose it's possible Sliver's just looking for bunnies, but who knows with her?

A New Addition to the Family

Nope, no baby. (Don't blame me. Jean wanted me to use that title.)

Well, anyhoo, the Civic Hatchback doesn't serve a family quite as well as it does a couple with a dog. We had to upgrade. It came down to a choice between another Prius or a Subaru Outback. We really liked the Outback, and we could have gone either way. Ultimately, it came down to a) we really like the Prius we have had for the last few years and b) it's hard to argue with a 20-25 mpg difference.

So, introducing the newest addition to our family: Silver 2008 Prius

Flotsam and Jetsam

A little of this, a little of that:

* Thirty-seven weeks, and still riding pretty high:

* The most recent doctor visit confirms that Nuke's head-down and still a boy.

(ADDED: There's something else about Nuke's head that's worth noting. The size of the head is one of the ways they get a rough estimate of the baby's size while in the womb. The problem is, there are three head sizes in our families. Byrd heads tend to by small; Jones heads tend to be pretty average; Claus heads tend to be HUGE. So, when the doctor estimated Nuke at 7 pounds last week, we both had the same thought, "Claus head.")

* Should I worry about a doctor who labels the sonogram image of Nuke's area as "Jones Jewels"?

* No contractions yet. He seems to like it in there.

* Hockey is to indoor soccer what American football is to rugby.

* Until recently, I was not aware of this fact, but it IS possible to eat too much barbeque. Who knew?

* Molly Ivors is approaching Digby's level. What Molly said.

* Yes, we have a name picked out for Nuke. You'll learn it right after he does. Pppfftttppfffttt!!!

Wisdom from the Swami

No, not Chris Berman, with whom the word "wisdom" is never appropriately associated. In this case, Colin, who successfully guided Caroleigh through her pregnancy and delivery (I'm pretty sure Caroleigh thinks of it that way too). The following appeared in my e-mail in-box yesterday:

Dear Ebby Calvin, c/o your prospective parents:

As I've been doing this for almost 3 weeks now, I am what Fox "News" would deem an "expert". So now that they're done sneaking across state lines and caucusing for Mike Gravel, allow me to offer your parents some advice:

-Receiving blankets rock. You can never have too many of them. Have them put them under you where you sleep and where you get changed. It's a hell of a lot easier to wash a little blanket than a crib sheet or a changing pad after one of your many and varied bodily fluids ends up on it. They're also great for swaddling your little limbs that will flail about independently and keep you awake.

-You're a boy. You have no control over your bladder. I urge your parents to cover your little unit with a cloth or something (hell, they can even buy a pee-pee teepee at Babies R Us if they really want). If not, you will lull them into a false sense of security, and then... this happens.

-The human finger is a wonderful tool for shutting up a crying baby...temporarily.

-Tell them to buy lots and lots of laundry detergent. How can someone so small create such a mountain of dirty laundry?

-Everyone is entitled to their own parenting philosophy, and I respect that. But after catching up with Hammerin' Hank, I see that they bought you a crib, and even successfully assembled it. Make them use it! The family bed is the tool of the devil, and we know way too many couples who still can't kick their 2 and 3 year old kids out of their beds. Do not let them succumb to the weakness that is, "oh, just this once, and then we'll put him in the crib tomorrow".

-Always make them put the new diaper under your ass BEFORE removing the old diaper. Sometimes you're not quite done your business, and things can get ugly.

-And finally, I urge them to sleep. It is a truly beautiful thing. Lack of sleep can lead you to roll over in the middle of the night and feel your son beside you, about to fall off the bed. You pat his head, rub his belly, feel his little fingers. Yep, that's the kid. You leap up in a panic and catch hold of him...only to realize it's the cat.

Yours respectfully, Dr. Colin

Janet Claus

Last weekend, Jean's Grandma Janet passed away. She had a quick wit, an easy smile, and a gentle, generous heart. She left the world a better place than she found it.

I don't have many pictures of Janet (and only a few of Bob). If anyone would like to send me any you have that you particularly like, I'll gladly put them up.