A Trip for Chloe's Blessing and Three Weeks

So on Saturday we packed up and headed east to the house I grew up in.  Since we hadn't gone grocery shopping in a while your Gramma Compton took us out to breakfast.  We went to Denny's.  It was your first real outing!  You were pretty sleepy still so your mom thought we should get underway.  You slept pretty well to Denny's and even in Denny's with all the noise.  I was quite impressed.  You are such a good girl!  When it was time to leave our waitress said we couldn't because everyone in her section was leaving her.  I said she wouldn't want us to stay in a few minutes when you woke up (because you were starting to).  She said she would just pick you up.  Even strangers love you!

Once we got away from the restaurant you were in and out of sleep all the way back to Gramma's house.  After some time of settling in your mom and I actually left you alone with your grandparents so we could go shopping and enjoy some time together.  It was another first and you did wonderfully from what your Gramma Compton says.

Onto the important facts, though.  On Sunday morning we left early to go to your cousin Chloe's house in Ellensburg.  We had to leave early because despite packing up all of my church clothes, even my belt, I left them hanging by the door back home in Kent.  So I had to borrow some of your Uncle Jacob's clothes.  Once I got dressed we went to church and got to see your cousin get blessed by her dad.  It made me think of what a wonderful opportunity I have to bless you soon.  It made me think of what I would want to bless you with (the world!) and what it is you need to make it through this life.  There are so many challenges facing us here in this life.  So many dangers both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  And you need all the help you can get.  So just remember you can always rely on your mother and father, your family and your Heavenly Father.  With that strength with you, you can accomplish anything.

After the blessing we went back to Uncle Jacob's house and had a little get together.  My siblings and I decided it would be great fun to get all four of you cousins together and take a photo.  Here is the best one I got.

That is Chloe on the far left, Addison on top of the slide, Bryson in front and you on the far right.  Just look at how cute you all are!

We even got a side by side of you and your cousin Chloe.  Remember that she was born a whole month ahead of you.

Seeing you and your cousins makes me so happy that you are such a healthy happy baby.  Just like with our first little freak out (previous post) your mom and I will pretty much always worry about your health and happiness.  Health is something I can control right now.  And happiness somewhat, too.  And that is what dad's like to do.  We like to have control or the ability to manipulate and change things that need to be.  One of the worst things you can do to a dad is complain about something we have no power over.  Because if you tell us a problem we want to solve it.  Unsolvable problems are the mom department.  So as long as you are healthy and happy, your daddy is happy.  And I will do everything in my power to keep you that way.

We came home Sunday night and the next day you were three weeks old.  That is almost a month!  And later that day your professional photos came back from Sarah Miller.  And they were just SO cute.  I especially like the one where you are looking up to the right because that is just what you do ALL the time.  But since I don't have any of those photos in my gallery yet, I will use another photo that your mom took.

I never thought I would want to say Happy Birthday on anything other than a real birthday, but each week and each month I think I will just have to bite my tongue until you have a real birthday.  So I am not saying Happy Birthday.... but I may be thinking it.

Two Weeks and a Tour

You are two weeks old now.  I know, big deal.  And for the most part you are right.  Not a whole lot has changed.  You are still the world's greatest baby!  You eat well enough.  You still oddly enough like to push against your mom and move your head around just to make it difficult.  Difficult for you AND your mom.  We don't really know what that is all about.  You also sleep really well.  Based on week one we, or at least I, am amazed at how much you sleep.  When you sleep during the day I get worried that you are not going to sleep at night.  But you still only wake up once per night around 2:30-3:30AM.  That is after being put to sleep around 11PM.

The day after your two week "birthday" (for lack of a better word) you had an appointment with the pediatrician.  Unfortunately I had started work the day before so I couldn't be there for you.  This was the appointment where your heel was going to get poked again.  I was really worried for your mom.  Fortunately your Gramma Compton is here this week and she went with your mom to help you stay calm (as if that was possible).  Surprisingly, from what I am told, you slept pretty peacefully through it.  That impressed me and added to your status of being the best baby ever.  The good news about having an appointment is that you were nearby so you could stop by my office and visit!

While you did get to come see me at the office, you also got to visit all of my co-workers.  And not just the ones in my office.  You had met most of them before, and they all thought you were precious just like we do, so we took some time to go around the rest of the offices in City Hall and show you off to the ladies there.  Most of them were kind enough to buy you some clothes or other presents, so it was only fair that they got to see you.  Grown women and babies are so funny.  They could spend all day with a baby, regardless of whose it is.  And I am convinced that they think ALL babies are adorable.  So they all told us how perfect and beautiful you are.  It doesn't hurt that you actually are perfect and beautiful.

So after some serious fawning and adoration it was time for you to go, which is always sad.  I find myself missing you a lot while I am at work.  Almost like I want to be able to work from home just so I can take a break every couple hours and see you.  I just got SO used to holding you and seeing you and hearing you every day for the last two weeks.  All day, every day.  But absence makes the heart grow fonder.  So the saying goes.  I have my opinions about that, but that is a different story.  Besides, by the time you are old enough to read this you will be in school and spending most of your time away from me anyways.  Every day I love you more and more and being away from you just isn't fun, even if you cry half the time you are awake.  

First (little) Freak Out

I agree with your mother when she says it is amazing how fast you become a worrier as a parent.  Two weeks ago we didn't really have a care in the world.  Even though we knew you would be coming, we slept at night not knowing what dangers and possible problems lay in wait for our little precious child.

Last night was the first time I started to get a little concerned about your well being.  Of course when I am bouncing you there is always the thought in the back of my mind that I will hit your head or drop you, but I know most of that is irrational.  Last night was a serious cause for concern.

There was goop in your eye!

I know, I know it doesn't sound serious but there were other circumstances that added to the worry.  The eye had been filling up with more and more gunk even after we kept cleaning it.  You slept most of the day, which for you is VERY unusual at this point.  You didn't eat well, also highly irregular.  And even worse when your mom tried to feed you, you would eat for a minute or two and then come off crying.  You usually pass out eating!  Needless to say crying is quite a departure from quietly slinking into slumber.

So what did we do?  Well I had resolved to call the pediatrician in the morning if things had not cleared up or gotten better.  (Your mother and I had both taken naps so I felt we were well equipped to handle a long night if need be.)  But your mom decided why wait to call the pediatrician when we could do it now (10:30PM).  So we did.

I called the on call number and left a message for someone to call back and an RN (registered nurse) called back and walked through your "symptoms" with me.  She said the eye was a simple eye-infection that lots of babies are prone to.  Makes sense since your hands are ALWAYS up by it, often pulling your cheek down or even sticking your fingers in it.  She said the screaming was probably another battle with gas, like the first few nights we had you home.  She suggested the Mylicon again and possibly a hot pad for your tummy.  FYI - The hot pad idea didn't work as well as I had hoped.

With the nurse's assurance that all was well unless certain problems persisted, we continued trying to feed you and get you to sleep.  And sleep you did from 12:30AM until sometime after 3AM.  I wouldn't know your mom woke up and took care of you before you really started crying so I slept through it all.  The next time you and I were both awake you had a good breakfast and seemed to be on the mend.  Your eye is still a little red and swollen, but the goop is gone for the most part.  Now your eye is just a little extra moist.

To illustrate here is a before and after:

And for those who feel the need to ask stupid questions - No we did not hit you or cause physical harm to come upon you in any way.  It is/was an infection.

One Week

Your mom has a friend who is/was doing a week by week chronicling of her baby's growth and development with photos.  We both think it is a great idea.  And I think it goes great with the blog here.

No real updates to make on your development, etc.  The nights certainly have gotten better.  Even when you are not sleeping it is much easier to console you.  Let me tell you, a not screaming Brooklynn is much nicer than a screaming Brooklynn.  You are back up to 8 pounds and 1/4 ounce gaining 4 ounces in two days.

I suppose I could tell you about being awake.  You like to look over your right shoulder.  I don't know what you are looking at since you can only see 8-10 inches away from your face, and usually when you are looking that way I am 8-10 inches away in front of you but you would rather look over your shoulder.  It is rather adorable.

You still like bouncing, although you don't last long in your bouncer.  I still think you just want to get me into shape.  Since sitting on the exercise ball for long periods holding you makes my back sore I have taken a new position on the ball with my back against it legs out front so I can still bounce you.

You are a silly little girl but I sure do love you!

Sleeping

I can't help it.  I love to watch you sleep!  You are better than my favorite TV shows.  And it doesn't matter how you start out, you always end up in the same position.  Even if you are swaddled and wrapped up as tight as possible, you will end up in your sweet spot.

You love your hands by your face.  Your left hand is up by the top of your head and your right hand is cheek level or tucked under your chin.

What is really priceless is when you move a little in your sleep.  Usually you just stretch and make a high pitched whine kind of sound.  So CUTE!

Anyways... how do I know all of this?  Because for the first time at home you slept during the night!  Not through the night obviously.  You still have to eat ever couple hours.  But you slept in between feedings and were generally pleasant letting your mom and I get some sleep.

Hopefully you weren't just showing off for Gramma Perkins who stayed the night with us to let your mom get some sleep.  Because if you keep behaving this well we are ready to be on our own with you!  You know the saying "It takes a village to raise a child," well once you have a kid you learn why.  Even in this modern age with technology and gadgetry a little help is still nice.

So CUTE!!  Just like the shirt says.

Grandparent's Visit and Doctors Checkup

Last night your Gramma and Grandpa Compton came to visit.  Since you had been so fussy (despite improvements in getting you to eat) we were a little worried that you would be keeping them up late.  But they opted to stay here instead of your Aunt Nicole's anyways.  Aunt Nicole did come over to have dinner with us.  We had some tacos and you were a perfect angel like you always are during the day.  Once it got later Aunt Nicole took cousin Bryson home and Gramma and Grandpa Compton went to bed.  They said they only heard you a little bit before they fell asleep.  Lucky them.

You were up all night again last night.  The good news is that I am getting better at hearing you and helping your mom.  The best way for me to calm you down is to basically toss you up and down like you were pizza dough being stretched.  It seems to me that you just want to give me a work out and get me into better shape!

Even better news for me is that I was able to get you to fall asleep.  Even if it was for just a few moments it was very satisfying for me to have you go from screaming uncontrollably to sleeping peacefully.  It is almost like a show of trust or love or something.  It is pretty indescribable.

This morning, after a good breakfast, we took you to the pediatrician for your first post  hospital check up.  This was your third time in the car seat, and you seem to like it well.  How do I know?  Well you still don't like getting dressed so after getting you changed into a clean diaper and cute clothes for travelling, you were not happy.  Your mom thought we could soothe you then put you in the car seat.  I said we could put you into  the car seat and it would be easier to calm you down. Guess who was right?  Yup!  Daddy!  You got to swing back and forth and you calmed down quick.

Once we got there we had to undress you and change your diaper again, which of course you didn't like.  But we expected that since you were supposed to be getting checked out.  You got your head measured, weight taken and length measured.  You lost another 3 ounces and are down to 7 pounds 12 ounces.  This wasn't a big concern but the doctor wanted us to come back in a couple days for another weight check.  Hopefully we will have all this feeding stuff figured out and you will be gaining weight.

Fortunately for us we seem to have a handle on the feeding you now.  We actually got you to eat off of both sides of your mom for 10 minutes each!  All we have to do is change your diaper or outfit in between sides!  If only we could keep you awake during the day.  We are working on that one now, too.

The First Days

Being in the hospital was pretty boring and uncomfortable for daddy.  I had to sleep on a couch.  In my younger years I wouldn't have complained about it at all.  As is I was able to sleep just fine.  But with age comes some loss of physical flexibility (literally and figuratively) so the couch was a bummer.  And while I did have tons of on demand movies to watch, it was still not that exciting to be in a hospital for 78 hours.

But this is about you.  As mentioned you were born Monday morning after 24 hours in the hospital.  And as mentioned the cleaning and inspecting the nurses did wasn't exactly your favorite activity.  Oddly enough in my mind eating wasn't high on your to do list either.  You had issues latching on to your mom.  (I will let her explain the nitty gritty details if you like.)  So I was rather worried at first.  Not deathly worried.  It's just that since this is our first time raising a kid I want to know what is normal and what to expect.  The nurses assured me that you could go a day or so without food and everything would be fine.  They were also certain that you would figure out the whole eating thing and be right as rain.

Right they were, you figured it out with the assistance of a great night nurse and a lot of patience on the part of your mom.  So eating at the hospital wasn't a problem.  Sleeping wasn't an issue either. Although you were a night owl there, it wasn't a real serious issue.  Coming home however, proved to be something of an issue.

To start with your genius daddy put the car seat base in backwards.  Not only was it hard enough to get in, putting it in backwards made it twice as hard.  And then I had to do it again!  What fun.

We left the hospital and drove uneventfully home arriving at about 3PM.  You slept in your car seat for a while peacefully.  When we opened the door we found the house clean and a new rocker put together.  Thanks to Grandma and Grampa Perkins for cleaning and assembly, thanks to Grandma and Grampa Compton for buying the chair in time for it to be here.  Your Grandma and Grampa Perkins came for a visit later that afternoon, stayed for dinner and visited.  Then your Aunt Alissa and Uncle Jacob came to visit, too!  They brought your cousins Addison and Chloe.  You were already bigger than your cousin Chloe who was born a month earlier than you.  Even after you lost some of your initial weight, as all babies do the first couple weeks.

Sometime between coming home on Wednesday and midnight you forgot how to eat. Or lost all interest.  There is also a theory that you were having problems with gas which hurt and made you cry a lot.  And I mean a lot!  You were so fussy and inconsolable that your mom woke me up at midnight to go and get some medicine for the gas.  Thank goodness for all night pharmacy stores.  And thank goodness for yummy tasting medicine.  As you may know now most medicine tastes quite bad.  But you seemed to really like this stuff and took as much of it as we would give.  Unfortunately this did not help you start eating again.

We started finger feeding you because you just wouldn't latch to your mom again.  This habit continued all day Thursday and into the night.  I don't know what we would have done without your Grandma Perkins.  She came over basically all day Thursday to help out and let us rest.  I am glad we did because Thursday night we were up again with you every couple hours or more trying to soothe you and feed you.  Your mom tried holding you in bed (that lasted maybe an hour) and ended up staying in the new rocking chair holding you most of the night.  I felt bad because she is doing so much and I feel like I am doing so little, but a baby needs its momma and you were only happy on her chest.  Sure you would calm down for a minute or two for me, but it never lasted.  As much as I would love to help I want to do what is best for you more.

It really does hurt me that you won't sleep for me.  I know it isn't personal, and I agree with your mom that you probably are picking up on some of my frustrations, but I love you so much!  I want to hold you and have you peacefully rest in my arms.  Or be awake and look at me so lovingly like you have before.  The screaming and shaking you do when I am trying to soothe you really frustrate me.  I wish I knew another word for it, but frustrate is all I have.  Frustrated with love and concern.

All that brings us to this morning.  Your mom had the genius idea of putting some of that yummy medicine out as an enticement for you to feed.  Guess what?  It worked!  So you are back to eating like you should.  Your mom is so smart.  Let's hope you take after her.

Happy Birthday pt 2

Apologies in advance, this is going to be a long one.  On the other hand, if you don't like how long it is you should have been born quicker!

I think I forgot to mention in the last post that yesterday we went to the park for my cousin Nathan’s college graduation (he is a dentist) and we went there with your cousin Bryson and Aunt Nicole.  The reason this is important is because we told Bryson that since he still speaks baby he needed to tell you to come out.  We left Nicole’s place at 8PM.  Your mom’s water broke at 2:30AM so 6.5 hours later you were on your way out.  Remind me to thank Bryson.

Anyways, picking up where we left off at noon - The natural birth is out!  The nurse came back and said that the contractions were far too weak and your mom needed a little help.  So we got the drugs hooked up shortly after 12:30PM.  From that point on it was a long waiting game.

We watched a couple movies, visited with Aunt Nicole who came to bring me a sandwhich, visited with Aunt Ali and Charlotte as well as seeing Grandma and Grampa Perkins for several hours.  Not a whole lot happened until 8:30PM.  Between getting the drugs hooked up and 8:30 the contractions did get more and more strong.  Your poor mom went from barely recognizing or feeling them to the point of pretty good pain when they came.

Every time the nurses and especially when the doctor came they asked how hard the contractions were.  What their rating was on a scale of 1-10.  Your mom started out around a 5 and by 8:30 had worked up to an 8.5 or a 9.  So she thought.

At 8:30 the doctor checked your mom’s status and told us how far along we were.  She said we were about at the point where you normally hear of people going into the hospital.  She estimated another 14 hours of labor and said she would come back at 12:30 to check up on us.

This is when the pain really got bad.  To help ease it we tried soaking your mom in a hot bath, that wasn’t good because it was hard for her to breathe.  We tried just toughing it out but your mom had been up since 7 or so that morning and didn’t get the nap she wanted during the calm hours.  She was getting very tired and frustrated and it showed when the contractions got really hard.

Around 10 Grandma and Grampa Perkins came back to drop some more food off for me and tried helping calm and soothe your mom.  They weren’t able to do so.  Not because they weren’t good at it, but because your mom was getting irritable with fatigue and pain.  At 10:30 she decided to get the epidural and go pain free for a while so she could rest.

The epidural was interesting enough.  The anesthesiologist came in and numbed up part of her back basically gave her an IV in her spine full of pain killers.  She had to be very still and relaxed during the process which wasn’t easy considering the pain from contractions was the most severe to date and wasn’t going away in between contractions.  Your mom was such a trooper.  I don’t blame her for doing it at all.

After she got the epidural she was able to sleep and that is what we did.  She got checked every couple hours until we were almost ready to start pushing.  At 5:45AM on June 7th 2010 the doctor came and said we were ready to start pushing.

Pushing was pretty uneventful.  With the epidural your mom felt no pain except the exhaustion of having to push every couple minutes three times at for ten second intervals (30 seconds of pushing about 90 seconds of rest).  We were told that first time moms push for one to three hours.  We reached the three hour max and were asked if we wanted to keep going with the unlikely outcome of natural birth, or if we wanted to forgo the risks associated with continuing to push and go do a caesarean section (C-Section).  We opted for the C-Section much to your mom’s dismay.

Your mom was set on wanting to have you without the epidural naturally and now she did the epidural and had a C-Section.  The C-Section makes for longer harder recovery, but we didn’t really have much of a choice.  Your mom dealt with it amazingly well considering her hormones and expectations.
Off to the operating room we went.  The surgeons sliced your mom open, pushed you out completely negating the work your mom had done, and there you were screaming!

The doctors and nurses say that you had actually gotten really stuck inside your mom.  One of the doctors said that you definitely wouldn’t have been able to come out naturally.  I was able to be in the OR for the procedure and got to see the doctors and nurses cleaning you off and got to hold you while the surgeons finished the procedure.  Your mom and I both cried such tears of joy to finally get to see you.  It is one of the happiest days of my life.  Right up there with getting married and going to the temple for the first time.

And now here you are.  Born 9:32AM on the 7th of June 2010.  You weighed 8 pounds 7 ounces.  You were 20 inches long and had short dark hair all over your head.  The nurses said you were uncommonly good looking due to the C-Section.  You head was nice and round.  One said you had cute ears.

Now I have to say something about you getting cleaned.  I mentioned you didn’t like it and that isn’t uncommon.  You got suctioned and wiped down all just seconds after being born.  All babies cry for this and you were no exception.  What stood out to me is your lower lip quivering.  You continued to do this even after we left the OR and came back to the mother’s room.  It almost looked like you were shivering cold and then your mouth would open and you would wail!  It is rather cute and endearing.

Brooklynn I love you so much and I am so glad you are here!  I can’t wait to share all the forthcoming experiences of life with you and share the memories.  I hope that I can be an amazing dad so you can have an amazing life.

Happy Birthday!

The neat thing about your mom giving birth at Valley Medical Center is that I can do this from the birthing room.  Before you are even born!  The nurse tells us that we are here until you are out so here it is, the first part of the story of how you were born!

It started around 2:30AM.  Yes, AM!  Your mom got up to go to the bathroom and noticed that there was some leaking.  I know it sounds gross, but it is a good thing she noticed.  It happened again when she got up for the bathroom at 4:30.  That is when she woke me up to talk to me.  I suggested that we wait for a bit and call the doctor at a more reasonable hour.

Your mom woke up two more times with the same leak at 5:30 and 6:30.  After that the leak stopped. But being that we are paranoid people we decided to call the doctor anyways at 8AM and she said that we should come in to get checked out.  So off to the hospital we went.

When we got to the birthing center the receptionist had just gotten off the phone with the doctor telling her we were on the way.  So the nurses and staff were ready for us.  They put us in a triage room in the birthing center to get checked out.  We waited in that room for over an hour until the doctor finished with her other patients and came to see us.  When she did she verified that the placenta had fully ruptured and that we were ready to start labor.  Funny because usually labor starts pretty much on its own.  But without any real hard contractions to doctor said we were good to be induced.

We then got moved to a birthing room (current location) and got hooked up to some monitors, given an IV etc... Once the nurse was about to administer the drug to induce she saw that your mom was having little contractions on her own.  She called the doctor and the doctor said to go ahead and try to have you naturally.  Oh boy!  We then got sent off for an hour long walk where we met up with your Grandma Perkins and Aunt Ali.  They walked around with us until the walk was over.  Then they left to go to church (it is Sunday after all).

So here we are back in the room, waiting for the nurse to come back and hook your mom back up to the monitors and IV again.  Then we will here how the walk affected the labor process and what we need to do next. 

Kicking and screaming... but mostly kicking.

Let's start at the beginning of the day before we get to the kicking, which we will definitely get to.  I arrived at work today to the tune of everyone thinking that I would not be back to work the next week.  One of my co-workers who is also having his first kid seems surprised every day that I show up.  Everyone in the office seems to think that you are due to come out ANY DAY NOW!

So since daddy was not going back to work everything that he was working on today needed to be finished today!  So I had to work extra hard and pull some unusual strings, but everything eventually got finished.  It got finished 15 minutes after I was supposed to go home!  Which isn't completely outside my realm of work ethic, but the City (my employer at the time the City of Tukwila) doesn't take to kindly to working overtime even if you work that long for free.  But this seemed necessary so my boss kind of looked the other way.

After finishing everything I raced home to be with you and your mom.  And by raced I mean took a different route with more traffic and a higher speed limit.  In no way did I actually exceed the speed limit or endanger myself on that motorcycle.  When I got home we had a lovely dinner and we spent some time together on the couch.  The whole family.  That is when the fun started.

Your mom said you were moving pretty good.  Like more than normal, which could be a little since you didn't move that much anyways.  But tonight you were going crazy!  A lot of moms talk about how their kid moves their stomach around and you can see their tummy ripple and go up and down.  Your mom thinks she had seen this prior to today, but today you just went to town!  Not only did I see it, but where I did see it I also felt it on the opposite side of your mom's belly.  And you just kept going!

It was pretty nice to see that you can move around and be active.  And to see how strong you are!  All very encouraging signs.  And so exciting for your mom and I to see and feel.  Well mostly exciting for me.  Your mom feels that kind of stuff all the time and is probably getting tired of it all.  She just wants you to come out so she can love you.  I wouldn't mind that one bit either.