The Little Hobbit

Today we had Abe's first pediatrician visit. He's lost about 1 pound, and now weighs 8#s (50-75th percentile). His height is in the 75-90th percentile (21 inches); and head circumference is 36 cm (25-50th percentile--perhaps it will be higher by the time the cone dies down).

Little Abe has been doing well. The first night we got home from the hospital didn't really sleep much (or let his parents sleep for that matter). Then the next day he made up for his sleepless night by sleeping for over 12 hours. We were pretty worried, because we couldn't even rouse him to eat, but now he's eating much better and last night he woke up twice to eat, but he did a much better job eating.

We've been calling Abe the little hobbit, because he has inherited my deformed ear, except his have some dark baby hair growing on them, making him look like Frodo.

More pictures

After Little Abe arrived and some pictures were taken, the grandparents went back to get some sleep. Emily got a little rest while I held Abe. Around 8am Emily got up to go pee with the nurse- this was the first time she had been on her feet since she had her epidural around 9:30 the night before. She did OK, but ended up losing some blood and passed out. The nurse that was helping Emily told me to put the baby down and yell down the hallway for some help, which I quickly did. You'd be relieved to know how fast and how many people come running into your room when you yell "Help" in a hospital. Everyone helped Emily up and got her back to feeling better.

A little while later they wheeled Emily over to the Mother/Baby Unit. It is a pretty nice room. There is room for the 6 of us (Emily, Abe, me, my parents and Ruth) to hang out comfortably. And the nurses rolled in a bed that I've been sleeping on.

We haven't been doing too much these last few days. Mainly feeding Abe whenever he's hungry, or changing his poopy diapers (which there haven't been too many of). We've mainly been letting Emily rest up and recover her strength. If all goes well, she'll be discharged tonight.

Me and Abe not long after his birth.
Abe looking at Emily in the glider.
Neil changing Abe's second dirty diaper.
Emily holding Abe right after birth.

Abram SaanZai Hoff

Little Abe was born at 4:49 AM on August 26th, 2009. He weighed in at a whopping 9 pounds 0.4 oz. Can you believe little Emily was carrying around a 9 pound baby! That's almost 1/3 off the weight she gained during the pregnancy. After Emily got the epidural inserted around 10 PM, she was able to rest for a bit. She even fell asleep at one point. Finally around 2:30 AM she was 'complete' and started to push Abe out into this world. Almost 2.5 hours later we got to see and hold Abram for the first time.
Here are the proud parents with their little guy.
Emily holding her son.
Hello world!
Abe after a few minutes in the outside world.
I told you he weighed in at 9 pounds, 0.4 ounces!

No baby...yet

So a little update on how things have gone today:
Things went pretty slowly from about 7am until 5:30 pm. Emily finally began feeling the contractions around 3pm, but they didn't start to really hurt until 5:30. Emily sat on the birthing ball or would stand up from time to time. The contractions became more and more intense, and were about a minute apart.
But after all of those contractions, Emily was still only at 4 cm at 7:30. She was a little degregitated. The doctor wanted in insert a cathetor probe inside Emily to more accurately record Emily's contractions. Then he wanted to increase the pitosin levels. Since Emily could stand about all she could at the current pitosin level, she opted for a some IV pain management. But the Strazol (or whatever it was) they gave her made her a little sleepy and disorientated. Then she just decided to go all out with the epidural, since she was already pretty confined to her bed.
The nice epidural lady came, but she had some problems inserting it into Emily's back. She thought that Emily had Scoliosis since she leaned to one one side. Apparantly Emily had very little space to insert the needle - it was mostly bone. But on the second try the lady was able to insert it. That was a little before 10pm.
During this time the knocked down Emily's pitosin level from 10 to 5, and then all the way off. But she was still have good contractions on her own, and by the time they inserted her second cathetor (for pee), she was 6cm dilated. So that was good news. Now they're slowing uping her pitosin levels back up (6 mL/hour now). The nurse thought that little Nutley would be born around 2am. Too bad he had to mess up the 5's birthdays - Hannah born on the 10th, Jacob the 15th, and Emily the 20th. Nutley could have been the 25th. well, I guess he does have 31 more minutes to make it so.

The Big Day!

Emily had an appointment with her baby doctor on Monday. There weren't any new developments. But we did set a date to induce - Thursday August 27th. But then when I was getting up and ready for work this morning, Emily said that she thought her Bag of Waters was leaking again (it happened last Thursday and Friday too). Since the doctor told us that we should have gone to the hospital on Thursday, we decided that we should go in this morning.

So we got into the hospital around 7am. They put us in one of the labor and delivery rooms. The nurse did a test to see if the gush of fluid on Emily's leg really was amniotic fluid or not. The test came back negative, but Little Nutley's heart rate had some dips while we were waiting. Then the nurse told our doctor about what was happening. Next thing we knew, the doctor was over here popping Emily's Bag of Waters. Presto chango labor officially begins at 9:30am!

After that not a lot has happened. Emily and I walked around the hospital for about a half hour around 12:30 - 1. Emily did a few sets of stairs - her friend Sophie told her it helped in her labor. Things still weren't really progressing, so they gave Emily a little (and I mean a little - only 2 units) of Petosin at 1:30. The contractions have kicked up a little since then, but they still don't hurt at all (because Emily is so strong).

Right now my Mom and Dad and Ruth are having some lunch in the cafeteria. A nurse should be by in less than a half an hour to check on Emily's progress and measure her cervix. Fun times lie ahead!

Emily and I played some two-handed Pinocle to kill the time. Can you believe she came from behind and beat me?
Here is Emily going for a stoll around the hospital.
Emily doesn't like to lie around in bed. Here she is sitting on her birthing ball eating some ice chips.
The top graph shows Nutley's heart rate. The bottom shows Emily's contractions.
Here is the paper read-out of the computer monitor.

Berry Picking

Here are a few pictures from everyone's stay in Anchorage. On Tuesday before everyone (excluding Ruth) went home we went up to flattop to go for a little hike and to pick some blueberries. We were successful on both accounts. We got around 6 cups of berries (a significant accomplishment considering how small the berries are), and Hannah, Jacob, Jenilyn and Banjo hiked to the top of flattop. Clave, Ruth and I just hiked to the berry picking spot (aptly named blueberry loop).

With the berries my mom and I made a batch of spiced blueberry jam. However, it is more like spiced blueberry syrup. The sugar got added at the wrong time so it didn't properly thicken. Oh well. It still taste really good. I'll bring some of the cans down when we come in September for all the pickers to have. We also made lemon blueberry scones. Yummy--especially with the "jam" on them.

No news yet

Well today is the big supposed big day, but so far little Nutley hasn't made any indication that he's planning on complying. Yesterday we bought a rainbow chip cake mix at the store to make up a little birthday cake for him. Now he just needs to come out to blow out the candles.

The Hoff's are here now. They're staying at a bed and breakfast for this first week. Then they'll join us at our place. Hopefully the guest of honor will arrive soon.

Sewards Folley

If you were looking for news on the baby, you won't find it here. If you are interested, we'll tell you about our trip to Alaska. According to Hannah, the trip has been a failure so far, since we haven't seen the baby.

Although we caught a lot of fish, most of them were sea bass, the limit was four per person & we got our limit. Actually I like sea bass, but we were really after halibut and salmon. We only got four salmon & no halibut. The weather was a little rough & we could not leave Resurrection Bay where the fishing is a little better. We left at about 8:00 am & did not get back in until 9:00 pm. It was a long day, so it wasn't for a lack of trying that we didn't get the salmon & halibut. My arms are still sore. I caught a pretty large ling cod & skate, which we threw back because they are not good to eat. I also accidently snagged a starfish. We had two cabins called the Misty C. They were pretty basic, but they had a kitchen, barbecue, and a TV, which was all we needed. We were only 8 miles from Exit Glacier, which you could walk right up to after about a mile hike. The reason it is called Exit Glacier is because it is one of the locations where the Harding Icefields escapes down the mountain. Another interesting tidbit is that a definition of a glacier is a block of snow and ice that gains size more than it loses. The last picture is at a dog park near Emily's.

We head back home tomorrow, except for mom & the Hoff's arrive.

Hopefully the next blog entry will have some more exciting news.

4 cm and counting

So far I've been enjoying my time off of work.  Yesterday I was able to run a lot of errands in the morning before my doctor's appointment.  The appointment ended up taking a lot longer than expected, because she had to leave right before seeing me to go deliver another baby.  But, they told me to just wait there and that she would be back shortly.  So, I just hung out in the waiting room, catching up on HGTV.  Good stuff.  

I asked the doctor if it would be okay to go to Seward with the rest of the gang this weekend, but she seemed to think, that since I went from 2 to 4 cm dilated over the past week that it would be a better idea to just sit tight (since Seward is about a 3 hour drive away).  Hopefully little peanut will soon decide that life on the outside is more fun than his current arrangement.

After the doctor's appointment I rushed off to swimming.  After practice Paula, my coach has arranged a very nice baby shower for me (make that #4, not to mention Diane's grandma party and the baby party).  It was fun to hang out with my fellow swimmers.  She said that anyone who swims all 9 months of pregnancy deserves a shower.  

After the shower I went straight to the airport to pick up Ruth.  She made it here alright, and got a chance to sit next to a new mom on the plane with her 5-day-old baby girl.  

Send little Peanut subliminal messages that life is more fun on the outside!  

A New Chapter in the Alaskan Adventure

Well today was my last day at work (almost--I didn't quite finish cleaning out my desk so I have to go back and do that and bring home some of my stuff).  It was a pretty good one.  Some of my co-worker friends took me out to the Moose's Tooth for lunch.  I had the slice and salad special.  Today was the chicken ranch slice and I had a sesame soy salad (or something like that).  Yummy stuff.  Then in the afternoon my unit had a cake.  It was key lime and really tasty too.  (All this eating is why I didn't have time to finish tying up my work stuff).  

I had to leave work a little early today, because I had my doctor's appointment.  I'm now a "good" 2 cm dilated.  So, it looks like things are progressing along.  

Clothes, cleaning, and fishing

On Sunday Emily and I cleaned out the Explorer. It had gotten pretty dirty on the inside from the 2500 mile drive up and 2 years of living in Alaska. We vacuumed every nook and cranky we could find. After that installed the car seat. Now we are ready (well, at least in far as bringing the baby home) for little Nutley to arrive. It was a gorgeous (and hot) day as well.
Banjo looking for some shade while we clean the car.
Not even a 25 pound belly can stop Emily from doing chores.

A little while ago my Mom sent us up a package with a lot of my old baby clothes, and some of her old maternity clothes. Some of the stuff was even handmade.


Here's Emily modeling off a vintage maternity shirt.Our family friend KayAnne made this for my Mom years ago.


On Monday morning Jared took Emily and myself out to go fishing. And when I say morning, I mean morning. Like rollin' up at our house at 4am early to pick us up. We went to this place called Eklutna Tailrace, which is about 30 miles outside of town. There were a good number of people there when we arrived, and even more showed up as the morning progressed. We used pixies and vibrax as lures. We would stand on the shore (or a little in the water) of the river and cast our line out. The current would take it downstream as we reeled it back it. Repeat. Emily and didn't have much luck (we didn't catch a thing) but Jared caught a Silver. Us Northwesterners would call it a Coho (Alaskans seem to have different names for Salmon up here - like Sockeye's are called Red's). He was nice enough to give it to us, and we had it for dinner that night. Most of the fishermen would just cast a line out and let it sit there, but they had roe for bait. We saw a lot of those guys catch some fish. But we had a great time, and the weather was awesome. Emily fishing for some dinner.
It's actually a little dark in Alaska these days at 5 in the morning.Emily and I both took little naps on Monday, but that couldn't stop Emily from falling asleep on the couch after watching "More to Love" on FOX. Aren't she and the Nut cute?

300th post & 1st post in our new house!

Yes, we are officially out of our old house and into our new one. We drove over to our old place this morning to pick up our friends rug doctor and our vacuum (Matt did his cleaning last night). Then we dropped off our keys to Monique, who did live below us and now is moving upstairs. There are some parts of the old place that we will miss (lots of space, big giant windows, nice kitchen) and things we won't miss so much (cold shower/hot toilet water, broken fireplace, loud dryer, no cold water in the sink, having a roommate). Matt still has a lot of his (if not all) stuff in our old garage. Who knows when he'll pick it up.
On Thursday we went to Sophie and Todd's house. The were giving us some of Solette's old baby clothes. They gave us two 92 quart bins. You see what the resulting aftermath looks like. I liken it to Ruth's house exploding in our living room.
What ever will we do with all of these clothes?Banjo making himself at home in the yard.