For all who are concerned (and I know many are concerned, because I get requests/demands frequently), some new pictures of Emma have been put up on this very website.  I also created an album of photos of Emma’s nursery.  Be sure that you see the time-lapse animation of Stephanie painting the Noah’s Ark mural!

I’d like to start this post out by wishing all you mommies out there a belated Happy Mother’s Day!  I just celebrated my very first Mother’s Day two days ago, and I’d have to say it went really well.  It has been a real blessing having Emma in our lives, and we both love her very much.  She made me a very special Mother’s Day gift (with Kip’s and my help of course).  She made a really good hand print, and had her daddy frame it so we could keep it forever.  And then Kip gave me a new Honda CR-V to replace the Ford that I had been driving since college.  True, we bought it a couple of weeks ago, but it was for Mother’s Day.  Kip also got up early and brought back breakfast from Bojangles’ this morning.

At church on Mother’s Day they always have three really pretty flower bouquets to honor the moms that regularly attend the church.  They draw three names from a bowl, and each lady got to pick her bouquet.  Each year they leave out the names of the moms who were picked the year before.  I think that is a very fair way to make sure the same ladies don’t get flowers each year.  Well, it was exciting because my name got pulled second, and you can see the pretty floral bouquet in the picture below.  So, all in all, I’ve had a really good first Mother’s Day!

PS: You can see just how much Emma has grown in the picture.  She is getting so big, and beautiful!

This is a quick update to say two things-

1. Two new sets of baby pictures are up.  They are both under the “Emma Leigh arrives” photo set.  I have to say that photos from Wal-Mart turned out much better than I had anticipated.  We even got full-resolution unaltered digital images on CD, along with full rights to reproduce and redistribute, something I really wish we had with our wedding photos.

2. You’ve probably noticed the site looks a little different.  If it looks broken, try to refresh (browsers tend to cache CSS files very liberally).  I finally implemented a tag cloud, and I’ve made one pass through all my blog posts to add tags to them.  Let me know what you think about it.

For those of you who aren’t regular visitors to this site, feel free to read what I wrote on the day Emma was born, and my much longer post that I wrote the following evening.

I have finally gotten around to putting the pictures of Emma up on this site.  The pictures are divided into two sets: pictures from our arrival at the hospital up until the day Emma was born, and pictures from her first week.  The first set covers most of the pictures that were on the Flickr page, as well as a few new ones.  The other set covers pictures since the day she was born.  There are a few pictures in here that were on Flickr before, but most of them are brand new to most of you.  You’ll see in the pictures that her eye has improved quite a bit, which really shows in the latest pictures.  (Like this one, taken yesterday.)

Stephanie was released from the hospital last Tuesday, and her mother stayed with us all week to help out.  Because she was here to help out, I went back to work on Wednesday, and I’m using vacation days most of this week.  I’m telling you this to set up a little anecdote.

On Wednesday (which was also the third anniversary of our wedding, by the way) Stephanie and her mom took Emma to the doctor’s office for her first checkup.  After hearing from the doctor that all is well, she decided to surprise me at my office with a “picnic” lunch.  When she got there she asked the security guard to call me and tell me I had a package at the front desk.  Well he called and told me, and I started to head down there.  Then I started thinking—why in the world would he call me?  Normally they just send an e-mail when a package arrives.  So in the minute it takes me to walk to the front desk, the main thought that went through my head was this: “Is this what they do when they fire someone??”  Like I would get down there to find security guards who would escort me out of the building, then they’d send someone else up to get my stuff.  My other thought was that the police were taking me into custody for some kind of violent crime for which I was being falsely accused (something kind of like this story).  Fortunately, when I got there and asked for my package, he said “it’s right there” and then Stephanie came out from around the corner.  Well, I was happy to know that I wasn’t being fired or arrested, so we went and had our picnic in the break room near my desk (a picture of said picnic is up on the second photo set).

I guess that’s all the news I’ve got to share today.  Emma gets to meet her Aunt Mandy later this week, and I’m sure she is excited.

Note: You can find the latest photos of Emma on our photos page.  I’ll warn you there are a few photos in there from the operating room.  Nothing graphic, but if you’re grossed out by blood, try not to focus on the BigGulp-sized clear plastic jug of blood that was pumped from Stephanie’s abdomen.

As I type this, Emma is about to turn thirty-six hours old, so I thought those of you out there in internet land were due for an update.  My last post was a little light on details, so I will make up for that here.

We went into the hospital Thursday afternoon in order for Stephanie to be induced, as she was eight days past her due date and they estimated the baby to be about 8.5 pounds.  So Stephanie was given a chemical via IV that caused her body to start having contractions.  Well, for some people induction does not cause the baby to come naturally.  Stephanie is one of those people.  On Friday evening, they decided to try induction again, leading to a long night of contractions, but still no baby delivery.

On Saturday morning Stephanie’s doctor came in and said “we can go take this baby out now by C-section, or we can try induction all day and then take her by C-section this afternoon at five, but she’s not going to come on her own.”  So, naturally, we decided to go ahead and have the C-section immediately.

Well at this point they rolled Stephanie back to the OR and handed me a set of scrubs and led me to an area outside of the OR (but closed off from the main hallway).  After prepping Stephanie for twenty minutes that seemed like an hour, a nurse told me I could come into the OR.

I started to describe the C-section, but then I remembered Gabe doing a much better job of describing the process on Penny-Arcade a while back.  So at this point I’ll just quote him:

They wheeled Kara into the operating room and I followed behind scared to death. I knew what a c section was, or at least I thought I did. I imagined the doctor cutting a little hole in my wife’s belly and then gently removing the baby as though she was taking a quarter out of a coin purse. What I did not expect to see was a doctor pulling with all his might on what looked like a crow bar in an effort to widen the incision enough for a second doctor to wrestle the baby out. It was like some kind of WWE event with doctors up on chairs and blood everywhere. I looked up at one point to see a doctor up to his elbows in my wife’s stomach and I just about lost it. Kara was still cool though and I figured if she could handle I sure as hell better.

That’s pretty much what my experience was, except I didn’t actually look over the curtain at any point.  Apparently Emma has quite a large head, they even had trouble getting her out through the incision they made.  Apparently in a C-section they use some kind of vacuum pump to hold onto the head and pull her out, and she moved her head just as they were putting it on her.  This is what caused the black eye, which is more like a large, really bad hickie.

Eventually they got her out, and we got to see her for the first time.  I am amazed that something that size could fit inside a human being!  They weighed her, cut the umbilical cord (by the way, the cord is not flesh-colored as I had imagined, it’s more like a translucent mucus filled eel-like thing).  They asked if I wanted to do the second cut of the cord, which was a little weird but I guess it’s the tradition.  Then I got to hold our bundle of joy for the first time, and bring her over for Stephanie to see.  She weighed in at 8 pounds, 9.4 ounces, and she was 20.5 inches long.  Which isn’t that much larger than average, but apparently Stephanie wasn’t made for natural childbirth; the doctor said any subsequent children would need to be delivered with a scheduled C-section.  But I guess she is very fortunate to have been born in modern times: two hundred years ago it would not have been likely for either Stephanie or Emma to have survived delivery.

Back to my narrative: next I went to the OR recovery area with Emma, while they finished cleaning off Stephanie.  At this point, there was a bit of a kerfuffle.  The doctor went out and told the grandparents they could come see the baby, but then a nurse told them they couldn’t but failed to explain why very clearly.  The reason was mainly that Stephanie wasn’t out of the OR yet, so she hadn’t even held her baby yet.  And mom gets to hold the baby before any grandparents do; that’s just fair.

But after Stephanie came out and recovered from the surgery for about an hour, we got to roll her and Emma back to the room and everyone got a chance to see her, but very briefly.  They paged an pediatric ophthalmologist to take a look at her eye and make sure there was no serious damage related to the bruises.  Fortunately, she determined that they were only superficial damages that will heal soon.  And I am happy to report now that her face looks much much better than when she was delivered a mere 36 hours ago.

In those last 36 hours, I have suffered from a level of sleep deprivation I don’t think I have experienced since high school, and Stephanie has been even more deprived as she is required to feed Emma every 2-3 hours.  I’ve also learned how to change a diaper and how to swaddle a baby.  Thus far Emma has met both sets of grandparents, her great-aunt Cindy, her uncle Scott and soon-to-be-aunt Sarah.  She also met our pastor and his wife, who came to visit us yesterday evening.

You have probably noticed that her name, when spoken naturally, is virtually indistinguishable from “Emily.”  This isn’t a coincidence, and until recently I adamantly said that I would refer to her as “Emily.”  This wouldn’t be that uncommon, lots of people go by nicknames that are slight variations of their real names (it makes much more sense than “Billy” being short for “William”).  But since she was been born I have found “Emma” to be much easier to say, and there is no long explanation needed when someone asks “and what’s her middle name?”

Well right now Emma has just gone to sleep I’m going to try to catch a little sleep too, before she wakes up again.  We will be in the hospital until sometime Tuesday, but I’m already sick and tired of being stuck in this place.  I haven’t seen too many hospital rooms in my life, but I don’t have fond memories associated with the ones I have seen.  These rooms are the least cold and lifeless of any I can remember seeing, but they still don’t feel comfortable.  But I guess I don’t have that much room to complain.  As far as reasons to be in a hospital go, having a baby isn’t so bad.

As I mentioned above, I have put up pictures of Emma.  For the time being they are on a Flickr account, for various reasons (mainly because I’m on an unsecured wifi network here). Update: the pictures are now hosted on this site.

This is a quick note to let everyone know that Stephanie has successfully given birth.  Emma Leigh and her mommy are healthy and resting right now.  She seems to have gotten in a fight on her way out, so she has a black eye.  But the doctors say this is superficial and she will be okay soon.

Whenever someone at my office has a baby, usually they will send a photo around of the newborn.  And everytime I think “wow, that is gross, why would you share such a gross picture.”  I had always wondered if I would feel differently when it was my own child.  I can now tell you with confidence that I do.  So I hope you’ll forgive me for sharing a picture of our beautiful bruised 93-minute-old baby girl.  More pictures will be up later.

We’re having a baby GIRL!

Kip and I went to the doctor’s office on Tuesday and we learned that our baby is a girl.  It was exciting until they got started and we found out that Emma (that will be her name by the way) had decided to be camera shy.  It took about thirty minutes to get a decent shot of her face in the “4D” view.  I actually thought that the 2D view looked better than the 4D view.  (You can judge for yourself, but we think it looks weird.  In fact, Kip thinks the fourth dimension they are referring to must be creepiness.  Sorry, he made me put that in here.)  The technician kept shaking and poking my belly to try to get her to roll over, but somehow it gave her the hiccups.  It was actually really cute to see her with the hiccups because her whole body would spasm, but I still can’t feel it.  It is amazing just how much I love her already, just from seeing her on the monitor.  We think she is going to have my nose, chin, and (sadly) my feet.  You can see for yourself in the picture of her feet.  I had fun today getting out all of the baby girl’s clothes that we already have (from numerous yard sales over the last few months) and washing them so they will be ready for Emma’s auspicious arrival next March.

Other exciting news on the baby front
I actually felt the baby move Friday night.  She decided to finally let me know she was down there.  It feels a lot like somebody is thumping you, but from the inside out.  She is especially active in the last hour or so before I go to bed in the evenings.  She also will roll around if I wake up in the middle of the night.

And in case you haven’t noticed, the pictures link to larger versions of the sonograms.

I meant to say more in my last post but I got distracted because I couldn’t upload the picture (I have an admin page I use to upload pictures to go along with blog posts, so that I can do it on a machine with no FTP client, or where port 20 is blocked, but it wasn’t working yesterday).  By the time I walked Stephanie through doing it on the phone, I didn’t feel like writing much post to go along with it.

Some additional thoughts/comments:

• They can’t determine the baby’s gender yet; it will be about two months before we know that.

• The baby is about 2 cm long right now.  That’s less than an inch!

• We could see the heart beating on the screen, at around 170 beats per minute.  That sounds like the baby’s about to have a heart attack, but they said that is a normal rate at this stage.

• It may have been hard to tell from the picture, but the baby’s head is on the bottom-left, and is almost the same size as the rest of the baby.

• Although we didn’t want to tell everyone at the time, this was the main reason Stephanie quit her job working as a pharmaceutical tester.  Not exactly the safest environment to be pregnant in.

• “Morning sickness” is a misnomer, it can occur at any time of the day; Stephanie gets it mostly at night, and it seems like every time we mention this to someone they say that they had worse morning sickness at night too.

I guess that’s all the additional information I have to share.  So, umm.. peace out y’all.

What you are reading right now is the official announcement that the shrimp-shaped person pictured below is looking forward to meeting all of you, sometime around March 19th.

That is all.

Update: Additional information can be found on my follow-up post.