Finally home

We finally made it home today. Jenn is in some major pain if we don't stay on top of it with her meds, so we do our best. We knew to expect it when they took her epidural out on Saturday, but I think she underestimated how much it would hurt. We had a great nurse Saturday night who helped her through some major pain and taught her some coping techniques.

Kaleb is FANTASTIC and a very well-behaved little boy. The only time he cries is when he is hungry, and if we don't move fast enough to feed him, it takes a little bit to get him settled down, and until Jenn starts feeling a little better, it's going to take a little while to get situated. Even with my help, she can't move fast enough to get him feeding in time, and that's just the way it is. I keep telling myself that we are teaching Kaleb patience this way.

Otherwise, all is well.

Also included here is my take on the entire birth process beginning at when Jenn woke me up on Thursday morning. I wrote the following on Friday afternoon while the other two were sleeping:

Kaleb Robert Van Vorhis is here!!!

It was a long day, and I did pretty well, I think, until they pulled out the needles and things spiraled out of our control.

I was getting ready to wake up for work (you know the drill … already hit the snooze bar twice, and trying to tell yourself that it is a really good idea to go to work today instead of just playing hooky).

So I’m in my morning daze and Jenn drops the news that she has been having contractions every 4 minutes for more than an hour. So even though we have experienced several instances of “the boy who cried wolf” with contractions for the past month, I decide to play hooky anyway.

Triage at the hospital went slow, but they didn’t send us home, so that was a good sign. After 4 hours of drugs and contractions every minute or so, Jenn asked for an epidural, and that’s when things started to get out of our control and I noticed the tone and the looks on the nurses’ faces change.

The epidural guy had to stick Jen 3 times, and that’s when I lost it myself. I had been through the epidural thing before with Evan, so I knew where I needed to be to 1) keep Jenn’s mind occupied, and 2) avoid seeing anything that would make me pass out.

Except the epidural guy kept missing his mark or screwing something else up, so I sat there and watched Jenn get poked 3 times. He finished up and I had the nurse go get Jenn’s mom from the waiting room so I could step out and regain my composure. Jenn said I never gave anything away on my face until I told her the whole story around midnight.

So Elaine comes in and I step out and I’m hearing comments about Kaleb's heart rate dropping during the epidural and calling Jenn’s doctor in (never a good sign at 3 cm!!) and the tone is a lot more serious. So I allowed myself 5 minutes of controlled hysteria, a lil’ bit of a cry, and a pep talk to myself before I went back in the room…to find that Kaleb’s heart rate was continuing to drop. I knew then and there that the natural birth was out the door. But on the good side of that, I knew Kaleb would be there that much sooner, AND guaranteed on his due date, AND be our countdown baby. So it wasn’t all bad.

But I still didn’t feel like we were in control, and when the doctor showed up and started talking, I knew the C-section issue was already decided in his mind. I asked a purposeful question and left the decision to Jenn…that question being: do we let him do the C-section now or do we keep waiting, let the epidural do its work, and maybe still be stuck at 3 CM after another 2 hours of labor and be no further ahead? Not much of a choice. She decided to be done with it.

Turns out, that was the best option. Kaleb’s cord was wrapped around his neck AND he was laying on it. They got him out and I saw them working on him, and I pulled another straight-face, no-reaction deal with Jenn.

I went over to sneak a peak and ask a couple of questions. He was shockingly blue, they were shoving a tube down his throat, and rubbing him aggressively with the sole purpose to make him mad and make him scream to get him breathing, and he just wouldn’t do it. He would squawk, then be quiet, and his lung just wouldn’t clear out. They finally got him good to go and brought him over to visit mommy.

We had lots of visitors right away, but they were mad because we wouldn’t let them even see the Kaleb through the window until Jenn and I got a chance to spend a little time with him ourselves.

The nurses checked him out and the doctors put Jenn back together again, and I watched them take care of Kaleb. Once Jenn was situated, Kaleb ate and we each held him for about 5 minutes each before we brought in the crowd. Our room was way too small for that many people, but no harm, no foul. But it won’t happen again like that. The key is to do it in shifts.

Evan even came up from Findlay to meet his little brother. His two comments were “wow, he has hair,” and “does he have any teeth?” and that was about it. He wouldn’t hold Kaleb, or give him a kiss or a hug or talk to him, or anything. As the daddy of both, that kind of hurt, knowing how hard Jenn and I have worked to build up that moment, but what the heck…he’s only 5.

There is plenty of time for love and kisses. (Note from after the fact: Evan's mom told me he was stand-offish because he was afraid that we were going to make him take care of him. Guess those jokes about making him change the dirty diapers weren't seen as jokes!! That sure backfired.)

My mom and dad skipped a free river cruise due to the C-section, and I really feel bad about that. But they were able to go on the rest of their vacation and should be back Tuesday to give Kaleb more lovin’.

Kaleb was up almost all night that first night. He literally ate from 8 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. Then we had the nurses take him down to the nursery so we could sleep. I had been up since 6:30 a.m., and Jenn since 4:30 a.m., plus labor, plus major surgery.

The nurse brought him back around 1 a.m. when Jenn got her scheduled check. He then fed from about 1:15 until 6 a.m., with only occasional breaks while I took him to get him calmed down.

Kaleb then slept from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., ate for 2 hours, and pretty much has been sleeping since 10 a.m. It’s now 2:15 p.m. Friday and he’s still sawing logs. No, wait…that’s Jenn. Crap. The snoring didn’t stop!!! Grrrr.

Jenn is doing fantastic with the surgery. She is up and about and walking by herself, and is in great spirits.

Kaleb is a great baby, and only cries out occasionally. He’ll squawk once, then settle. But when he gets his scream on, he turns bright red all over. Looking at him now, his feet are bright red all of the time. He loves to suck his thumb, and will settle down by laying on Jenn’s chest, or when I hold him, talk to him, and run my fingers though his beautiful brown velvety-soft hair.

We should be stuck here until about Sunday because of the surgery. But we love the extra help.

We are already finding tricks to calm him down and wake him up and make him happy.

Since it was mostly dark after he was born, and the lights in the room were kept really, really low last night, we didn’t get a good chance to really, really check him out. We noticed this morning that he looks a lot like Evan when he was born. I printed out a photo of Evan the day he was born and compared it to a picture of Kaleb at just a couple of hours old. The similarity is uncanny.

Jenn noticed that he has the same fold in his ear that I have.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go spoil my new boy with lovin’.