Just hanging out

Here's Art with his baby mohawk. He looks too proper if you comb his hair down!

Birthday

Art helped Dad celebrate his birthday a second time this week!

Family Visit

Art's Great Grandma, Uncle Anthony, and Grandma visit for a long weekend and to love on the little guy. We miss the company already!

Thumb Sucking

We've been trying to give him pacifiers to avoid this, but he found his thumb the other night! Better save money for the braces!

Just Because

We've been doing pretty well in our first several weeks. He is becoming more alert and is sleeping alright. I look forward to the day that we can go into public and visit daddy for lunch! He's been eating like a champ. Sometimes we have to wake him up during the day, but it looks like those days may be coming to an end. We're excited to see his eyes more!

The posts have been eratic since I can only do so when he lets me. Keep following and we'll keep the pictures coming.

Doctor Visits

We've visited the doctor 3 times now within two weeks. Art's first doctor visit was the day after we left the hospital and went very well. He gained a few more pounds so he was back up to 7 lbs 2 oz. Almost to his original birth weight! He's still a little jaundiced but his prescription was only to sunbathe a little bit! He's been lying around the house in a diaper ever since. Glad we didn't splurge on newborn clothes...

He's still gaining weight. By the 3rd visit the doctor said we are feeding him well because he is up to 8 lbs. We can let him sleep through the night now (or as long as he'll let us sleep!). The kid doesn't have any problems waking us up at night. It wears on you a little, but we are getting accustomed to the schedule. I don't like it and look forward to gettign REM sleep again, but we are doing ok. We've had 2 rough nights and hope those are over (probably not!).

We've learned that he'll have dimples like his dad!

First Bath

Art got his first bath on Sunday! He enjoyed sitting in the water and didn't fuss too much. I think we have a laid back kid (he got his dad's personality). It has been fun to put him in the bath although it takes two of us to make sure he gets cleaned up and doesn't get soap in his eyes. I spared him the embarrasment of posting his nudie pictures on the web! The last picture is him all clean with his poofy hair. We have figured out how to spike it again. It looks much cuter that way.

More Grandparents Visit

His grandparents visited for a weekend and loved to hang out with him. He's been a little sleepy so I don't think they saw his eyes much!

Art's Room

Here's his first taste of his new bed. (He promptly peed on it so we had to change the sheets!) We are home now and ready to begin a new part of our lives!

Finally discharged!

They decided Art was healthy enough to move to a less serious nursery so he was moved to Pod K7 in the morning. They still monitored him, but he no longer had to sleep under the bili-light. We had to take a baby CPR class before leaving just in case he had any more episodes. Luckily, we got through that pretty quickly so we were able to head out around 4 PM.

Here's Art advertising for the hospital. We had a great experience at Northside and loved all of the nurses that took care of us! Here's a fun fact about Northside Hospital. They deliver more than 18,000 babies a year, more than any other hospital in the country! It shows as well!

Here's us getting carted out of the hospital. I look a little tired, but we are super excited to finally bring him home!

Here's Art the first time in his car seat. He did pretty well on the car ride. Hopefully he'll be a good navigator for me!

Visiting Pod A4

We got through the night finally getting some sleep. We headed to the hospital early Sunday morning because we missed the little guy. He didn't have any more episodes, but they continued to check him out. After all of their tests, they only determined that he was a little jaundiced. He managed to give us a "smile" and show off his good looks with his new shades. The bottom picture is him undergoing his phototherapy. We thought we would take him home on Sunday, but that wasn't a possibility either. His jaundice was a little too high so they needed to continue to treat it. Leaving that night was just as difficult as the night before.

Saturday - Ready to Head Home

On Saturday, August 8, we were so excited to receive our discharge papers so we could go home and get back to our new life as a family. We waited patiently on the pediatrician to check him out and were ready to head out. We fed him one last time and noticed that he turned blue around his mouth. We had to stick around to see if it would happen again. It happened a second time so we had to leave him at the hospital to visit the special care nursery. It was VERY difficult to leave him at the hospital. That was not a good day especially having the lack of sleep! We had to head home with an empty car seat.

Grandparents Visit

Papa Jim and GiGi were so excited about his arrival! They loved visiting and holding their first grandson.

Transition Nursery

The doctors decided that he didn't have a strong enough cry (they called it grunting) so they had to take him away to the transition nursery. I held him for a moment before they took him. We were exhausted so the 2 hours in the nursery weren't too bad. We were able to get a few minutes of sleep! The nurse brought him back to us around 4 AM. It was tough to sleep next to him because every little sound woke us up.

Art's First Few Breaths

After about 2 hours of pushing, we finally have our little guy. He was worth it! Here are the first few moments of Art's life when they were cleaning him up. He arrived at 12:03 AM on August 6th, 2009. He weighed 7 lbs 3 oz and was 20 inches long.

Epidural

Look away now if you are any bit squeamish. My contractions got harder so I opted for the epidural. I felt it go in, but couldn't see it so I had Brian take a photo for me. You can't actually see where it goes into my spine, but there is the tube that feeds the wonderful medicine to help with the pain. Good for those mothers that can bear it! I didn't feel like having painful contractions every minute for a minute.

Labor begins

Here are the joys of labor. My contractions hadn't started hurting yet so we had a chance to play on the laptop. I'm all hooked up to the pitocin and they visited every 15 minutes to up my doses. Good times...

Heading out for the hospital

Sooo, we fast forward several weeks here. We had just gone to the doctor on August 4th for a regular appointment and he told us that we still had some time. My body hadn't changed any so it wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

I woke up that morning at 1 AM and noticed that my water had broken. I hadn't had any contractions yet so I was slightly panicked and called the doctor. The one on call told me to wait and come to the hospital around 6-6:30 AM unless my contractions got harder. We got ready to go around 6AM and arrived around 6:45. The trip to the hospital was not how I expected it. It was completely calm; no craziness where I couldn't wait much longer. We parked and walked in rather than Brian dropping me off.

It was so calm that we were able to take a few family pictures before leaving. This is us just before heading to the hospital.

This is when the baby was about 19 weeks along. We were so excited to find out that we were having a boy!