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So. We had a birthday party for Emilia today, and it definitely lived up to the promise of being mental… Lots of kids, not enough food, and a giant caterpillar (no pics of that, but take our word for it). Thanks to everyone who came out to wish Emilia a happy birthday, in particular the Mingo family (coming from Truro for two hours? hardcore.), Charlie and Angie (who bravely faced a kid-filled world without kids of their own), and Wendy and Vinnie (for being gracious enough to let us know that Tristan was a little sick before coming over). Big thanks to Aunt Jackie for taking most of the party pictures, and Mommy for making the cake (4 hours of frosting)!

Now, sleep. Well, first UFC, THEN sleep.

(PS: pictures are behind the “Read the rest” link)

Read the rest…

Yes, it’s been exactly one year (well, 366 days), and Emilia is still around, causing us grief and not going to bed. Today was her first birthday! We started the day off by getting up REAL EARLY (so Mommy could take Emilia to Nanny’s, as usual)… You can see the evidence of the “early” in the first few pictures. After a long, hard day of doing baby toddler things, we came home to a dinner of somethingorother, followed by dessert, consisting of orange cake that Daddy made! Of course, a few nibbles of cake went a long way towards fuelling this child (thankfully, she didn’t care for Mommy’s ultra-rich icing, otherwise I’d still be chasing her around), leading me to only really be able to get her down at around 9:30pm, which is not long after her actual birth time (9:10pm).

In any event, it was a good day in Emilialand. I can only imagine what her little “birthday party” will be like. I figure it will be something on the side of “mental”.

Clearly. One of these days, I’ll write about something interesting I’m doing at work in codingland (I’m on the fringe of a GP project right now, we’ll see if it turns into one). Or maybe I’ll go on about how awesome it is that KISS is coming to Halifax (granted, most of their songs are pretty bad, but I’ll probably end up going because I’ve invested a lot of time in Gene Simmons through his reality show that I figure he owes me a good time; that, and KISS is awesome live, with the fire and blood and the loud, loud music). Or I could talk politics, but everybody does that.

Oh well. Another time. For this post, some Emilia pictures. FYI, not quite walking yet, but she has three “offices” in the house where she does all her work (pantry, lazy-Susan cupboard under the sink, and linen closet); she has either 10 or 11 teeth now (depending on who you ask), and eats entire bananas in a single gulp. She’s also turning 1 next week. Shit.

Yes, Christmas has come and gone, and we now have a pile of more stuff to pick up. Emilia gave us a few gifts too: she cut her 7th tooth today, and she learned to climb stairs. This last bit goes very nicely with her crawling all over the place, pulling herself up to a standing position on everything she can get her hands on, and wanting to walk whenever she gets a chance. It looks very likely that she’ll be walking before her 1st birthday. Ugh.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the past few months!

I do believe that August of 2008 was the first month that I didn’t write anything here. No, I’m not apologizing, I’m only making an observation. For anyone interested in Emilia-related updates, I think she’s sleeping with Mommy right now (because I don’t hear her). She’s cut two teeth so far, and she stays sitting up for extended periods of time (only falling over sporadically), and she also likes standing (with Mommy and Daddy’s help, of course). She made another trip to PEI last month (she drove half-way), and next week she starts junior high! She was laid off from her job last week, but they said they’d give her a good reference for further on down the line.

Some of this stuff is true. In the meantime, here’s some Emili-media, courtesy of our new camera (woohoo Airmiles!). These pictures are 8MP, so they’ll be slow loading until I go and ImageMagick them to a smaller size. There is also video of Emilia and her cousin Kaylee, uploaded manually (and not through Wordpress) because of some filesize limitation that I didn’t feel like working around.

Melissa’s mom turned the big 6-0 this weekend, and we had the family (and Jonathan, by phone) over to celebrate! HERE ARE PICTURES, courtesy of Ashley. (happy now?) Most pictures are of Emilia, because, well, she’s the cutest thing around!!

Emilia cut her first tooth yesterday! Apparently. It’s very difficult to see (it’s one of her lower incisors), but you can see a thin white line if she keeps her tongue out of the way long enough, and you can definitely feel it. Toast soon!!

She is also sitting up without falling over, for a couple of seconds, anyway. She has some new foam playmats in the living room, and a new (to her) mirror-friend to play with during the day.

Pictures are forthcoming, as usual.

Is it odd to think that when I’m at a party with lots of people I don’t know very well (and some that I do) that I don’t want to talk about Emilia? Many of my friends don’t have kids, and I feel as though if I start in on such sundry topics as “sleepless nights”, “shitty diapers”, or “being puked on”, that I’m just going to alienate them or turn them off from potentially having children of their own. Most of them can’t relate, and the impression I get from many is that frankly, they just don’t care about those little details.

This isn’t it: I feel guilty if I *don’t* talk about Emilia! She’s pretty much my entire life now (except for at work, of course, where I manage to keep the Emilia talk to a dull roar, and try to focus on actually getting stuff done.)

That’s it, now… I’ve become that parent who can only truly relate to other parents, despite the fact that my daughter is only 4 1/2 months old. Such is life, I guess.

Oh yeah, she’s getting big. Here are pictures!

Last weekend, we bundled up Emilia and ALL of her stuff, and took off for PEI. It was a fun-filled vacation wherein we got a LOT of sleep, for some reason. All of Mom’s siblings finally got to see Emilia. On the way home, we stopped by David & Jackie’s place in Moncton (we hadn’t been there yet), and scooted over to see my aunt and uncle in Dieppe (who graciously fed us and entertained us for a few hours). As usual, we have pictures documenting most of the weekend’s events.

(after the break)

Read the rest…

This site has pretty much become exclusively about Emilia. Which isn’t bad, if for no other reason than before it was about nothing in particular. You might say that Emilia gave this thing purpose… I say that it’s just given us a way to show her off even more.

Oh yeah. Melissa had a great Mother’s Day… She says I did “really good”, which is saying lots given how I usually bung up special occasions. “Movie, food and jewelry: what more could a girl want?”

(Pictures after the break)

Read the rest…

So I got some new Wii games, Guitar Hero III and Mario Kart Wii (my Kart friend code is 1676 4091 9980, set me up and give me yours). They are awesome, and take up just about all my free, non-Emilia time (which only partly explains the lack of posts; the other reason is that life with a newborn is usually quite boring, unless you’re one of the parents). Oh yeah, speaking of Emilia, did you know that she’s growing? Here’s an update:

• She can lift her head!
• She rolled over the other day, but we think it was coincidence
• She occasionally sleeps through the night, but that means she’s not eating
• She went on her first road trip yesterday, to her first birthday party!
• She’s getting really long. She’s probably still at around 9lbs, but she’s close to 25 inches
• She can’t talk yet, but she will soon. (soon is a relative term)

After the break are some pictures taken over the last few months. She’s much more awesome in person, though.

Read the rest…

Short form: apparently, back in 2007, studies revealed that bottles made of hard plastics containing the compound Bisphenol-A (or BPA) were bad for infants, in that the heating of formula in said bottles caused unhealthy amounts of this apparent carcinogen to leak into the baby’s food supply. A few weeks ago, the government issued a recall on BPA-laden bottles - you can’t find them in stores anymore. But do you know where you CAN find them?

In our cupboard. Know where else?

In our fridge.

Oh well. These pictures were taken a few weeks ago; we’ve since returned all the small Avent bottles (Emilia outgrew them anyway, so the damage was already done), and invested in some new “Born Free” bottles, which kick ass, aside from the fact that they are quite expensive ($17 for one!) and difficult/annoying to clean. The things we do to ensure our daughter gets fed! (and not dead)

Emilia’s baptism took place last weekend at our church. Our regular priest was sick, so Deacon Eric Duggan performed the baptism. It was a nice, busy ceremony (there were 4 babies being baptized), and Emilia was very well behaved, despite being called “Lillian” and various other things. We had a good assortment of support as well, including many of Melissa’s extended family, and of course Mom, David and Jackie. Emilia thanks you all for coming out to be with her on her special day (and thanks to Jolene for taking most of the pictures)!

(Note: just as Emilia was brought home in the little orange outfit that I was brought home in, she was baptized in Melissa and Jonathan’s baptism dress, which is why it may appear a little “old”)

(Another note: this is the last new post using the “Exhibit” picture system that I’ve been using since I started the site. Future posts will use WordPress 2.5’s built-in gallery feature, which I must say is quite slick)

I know Emilia has a few fans out there who anxiously await updates on her (FYI, she’s fine, albeit awake RIGHT NOW, and she’s getting big), so allow me to take this opportunity to post a few more pictures of her recent adventures (around the house), and some of her new friends.

Even though there’s a little more to write in Emilia’s Story, now’s a good time to show the world our little girl over the past few weeks. She’s one month old today (4 weeks and 1 day), and sleeping at the moment, I think (I’m hiding in the basement), but don’t get me wrong, we wouldn’t trade in any of it. OK, well some of it. The giant poops, yeah those can go, but at least we know she’s healthy. Anyway, on with the pictures!

It’s a little before 8PM, we’re ushered into the OR. Tamara, our birth unit nurse from the night before, is in attendance, as well as Dr. Lee, so it’s not all unfamiliar people. As I mentioned before, it’s still important to remember that Melissa doesn’t like needles.

Melissa is moved onto the operating table, which is somewhat narrow, and has boards on either side at shoulder height for the arms. They have her stretched out there, in JC-pose, hooked up to all sorts of machines, suggesting that she’s suffering for someone’s sins, although whose they are has yet to be determined. They try to refresh her IV, but it has apparently clotted and needs to be replaced. Great, more needles. The anaesthesiologist, a resident at the hospital, who has absolutely THE WORST bedside manner in all of creation, takes no care in ripping off the tape on her arm and removing the needle in her hand. “That’s just some fluid,” says a nurse, commenting on “some fluid” escaping Melissa’s hand. Red fluid. A lot of it. Hm. Anaesthesiologist goes to put in the IV again, a little higher up in her arm. These guys are pros, right? No. He misses. He tries again - none too gently, mind - and succeeds, but it’s now in the crook of her arm. Think about this: how’s she supposed to cradle a baby with a needle in her arm?

Fast forward a few minutes to freezy time. Melissa still has the epidural line in her back, so they’ll just feed the drugs right through there, which they do.

The anaesthesiologist rubs a little alcohol swab on her forehead.

“How’s that feel?”

Melissa replies, “Cold and wet.” He then rubs the swab on her belly.

“How’s THAT feel?”

“Cold and wet.”

Hmmm..

“Shouldn’t feel like anything, if the epidural’s working.”

“Maybe the epidural fell out?” This is getting kind of scary.

“No, that’s not possible,” he replies. “Once it’s in, it’s in.” They try to stick ANOTHER dose of drugs into her back, but nothing.

“I feel something wet on my back.”

Shit. They roll her over, and what do you know, the epidural which is supposed to be several centimetres into her back, is only around .5 cm in, and no drugs have been getting into her system.

The anaesthesiologiest then has the gall to say, “We’re going to have to give you another epidural.”

As I mentioned before, it’s still important to remember that Melissa doesn’t like needles. Especially big ones that go in your back. Imagine how she felt right about now. Now imagine how *I* felt, unable to do anything to help her. But as they say, the show must go on. Melissa implores this guy to be gentle with her, but his whole attitude is “yeah yeah yeah.” According to the monitors, Melissa’s heart rate is roughly the same as the baby’s (around 140bpm). After much more grief (thanks again to Tamara for consoling Melissa at this point), the second epidural is in. Rewind to that little conversation that Melissa had with the freezer guy a minute ago:

“How’s that feel?”

“Cold and wet.”

“How’s THAT feel?”

“Cold and wet.”

“Shouldn’t feel like anything, if the epidural’s working.”

But it was in, this time, they were sure of it. It just wasn’t working.

Time to call in the big guns. Namely, the anaesthesiologist’s boss, because this other joker couldn’t do ANYTHING that night. He gave Melissa a spinal. Yep, another needle. For those keeping count, well, it’s one more, because I’m not keeping count (the epidurals involved two or three needes each). He started testing her to see if she could feel anything. “Wiggle your toes for me.” She wiggles them, and they move. “Now can you feel this?” He touches her belly. “Nope.” “OK”, and the blind goes up.

A minute or so later, Tamara comes around the screen to reassure Melissa that everything is moving forward. Melissa asks, “How will they know that I’m frozen enough?”, to which Tamara replies, “Oh, they’ve already started cutting.” Well, now.

I stayed behind the curtain as they cut Melissa open. “Do you want to see the baby being born?” they ask me. Me being me, I say “sure” or some variation of that, and I poke my head up just in time to see the doctor rip our baby from Melissa’s womb.

“It’s a girl,” I said.

Today has been a long stream of hurry-up-and-wait. Is she dilating? Is the baby coming? Is the pain ever going to end? Something interesting was happening with the monitoring equipment. The baby’s heart rate was very tricky to find at times. Turns out the baby is facing the wrong way, and the standard heart rate monitor isn’t always picking it up (especially when the baby moves). They decide to stick an electronic heart monitor into the baby’s head. Great, more things sticking out of Melissa. The other monitoring problem was that they weren’t able to measure contractions properly, probably a side-effect of the baby being upside down (the other side-effect of which being that Melissa experienced wicked back labour for the better part of the day).

Another interesting thing… With every contraction, the baby’s heart rate would dip from 150 (normal) to around 90 or even 80, and as the contraction ended, it would slowly climb back up to normal. The nurses thought the Pitocin was having an effect, so they decided to turn off the drip. “If things don’t improve, you’ll have to have a section.” With the drip off, the contractions are fewer and farther between (not to mention less effective), but nevertheless the baby’s heart rate would barely change, and if it did, it would bounce back as soon as the contraction subsided. The nurses decided, “OK, the baby’s fine, but Melissa’s going nowhere, so let’s try the drip again for a few minutes.” They try the drip, but we get the same results: real strong contractions that cause the baby’s heart rate to plummet. It’s getting late, there’s not much we can do, and the labour really hasn’t gone anywhere. We don’t have any other choice: it’s going to have to be a caesarian section. After a bunch of waiting, Melissa is prepped and sent off to the OR, with me in tow.

And this is where the story gets interesting.

It’s now Monday morning. David’s working from his company’s Dartmouth office, but Jackie has remained. She sat in the waiting room for the entire night, reading, listening to music, generally waiting. I went to visit her from time to time to make sure that she wasn’t going completely crazy, that we hadn’t forgotten about her, but she was very committed to being there the entire time, and I commend her for it.

7AM brought the shift change, and with that our new nurse, Angelique. Both of our birth unit nurses were nothing short of fantastic; had it been any different, the hospital stay would have been much more difficult.

As the morning wore along, the pain was getting very intense, but Melissa was adamant against taking any drugs of any type. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t last forever, as the pain of the contractions was becoming quite unbearable. She was administered a blast of IV Fentanyl at around noonish, which took the edge off the contractions for a little while, but only lasted a half hour or so. She would take another a little later on, but again, not much in the way of effect. Another “measurement” revealed that she was at around 2.5cm dilation, but that the cervix hadn’t “come forward” yet, that it wasn’t effacing as well as it should have been at this point. There was talk about a section if there wasn’t much progress made, but we didn’t want to go that way.

More time passes, more guests. Melissa’s mom spent a lot of time with us, and my mom arrived at around 4PM. We also invited Jackie into the birth unit with us, both to involve her in the process and to ensure she wouldn’t be too bored waiting. The pain was still very bad, though… The Fentanyl had long worn off, and the nurses were pushing for an epidural. Of course, Melissa’s fear of needles made this a VERY difficult decision, but after much deliberation and a few tears, we decided that she would get the epidural. Angelique did her best to comfort Melissa while a nice doctor inserted the epidural into her back. Almost immediately after the drip was set up, the pain subsided, replaced by “pressure” to indicate contractions. Nevertheless, she was still measuring around 3cm or so; we weren’t out of the woods yet.

When we realized we weren’t going anywhere until there were 3 of us, we figured it’d be a good time to rally the troops. Melissa’s parents got the first call, I believe, followed closely thereafter by David & Jackie, and a futile attempt at finding Mom (she was out at a cabin in the woods with her cellphone turned off. Who needs cellphones anyway?) David and Jackie would pile into their car soon afterwards and be in Melissa’s room by 1AM (they live in Moncton); Mom would be down by 4PM the next day. We’re lucky that we have family that’s quick to come around when there’s something going on.

So where was I? Ah yes, in the birth unit. In order to get things moving, Melissa was hooked up to a Pitosin drip (a brand of oxytosin, a drug whose name comes from the Greek for “quick birth”. Thanks, Wikipedia!) We were only there for two hours, and already our “no drugs” plan was down the drain. Our nurse, Tamara, said she’d be back every half hour to check on her progress; she got me a little cot so I could lie down (although I think I only got around an hour’s sleep the entire night). The drug started to kick in, and Melissa’s contractions started coming harder and more frequently. Tamara increased Melissa’s Pitocin dosage every half-hour until 4AM or so, at which point she was on the maximum allowable dosage. Wonderful.

It’s at this point that I should mention Melissa’s fear of needles. Melissa HATES needles. Every time she has to give a blood sample is an ordeal for her, but she’s made it through. When Tamara tried to put in the IV for her Pitocin drip, she missed the first time, and had to bring in an anaesthetist to do it right (”because they’re better at finding the veins”). This was hard for Melissa, and it would only get worse.

Melissa’s contractions were getting stronger and stronger. Surely, she must be making *some* progress… At around 4:30AM (or maybe it was 5:00AM), Tamara said that she would measure Melissa, to see how far she’d dilated. I can only imagine how this felt, because over the course of our time in the Birth Unit, this appeared to be the most painful, uncomfortable procedure Melissa had to go through. And to think that she went through it at least 4 or 5 times! So she measures (details omitted; this is a family blog), and tells her “4 cm!”. Melissa was elated: all this work was going somewhere! Tamara also mentions that there seems to be another amniotic sac bubble in there that needs bursting, so she calls up the on-call doctor, who comes down, measures Melissa again, only to say “there’s no other sac, and I’d say she’s actually only 1 cm”. Talk about bursting a bubble! All that work, for all those hours, all that pain, and only 1 cm!

At 7AM, Tamara’s shift ended. She said to Melissa, “I hope I don’t see you again tonight.” We hoped she was right, but we were convinced that one way or another, our baby was being born that day.

While it originally started one Sunday afternoon in May of last year, Emilia’s story really picked up on February 16th, 2008, at 1:30am. Melissa woke me up to say that she’d had some “bleeding”, and that she wasn’t sure as to what it was. After a bit of Internet research (ahh, the Internet), we came to the conclusion that it was her mucous plus coming out, and that we shouldn’t be too concerned. Over the course of the next day, there was some more dischargy stuff, but we didn’t worry much. We didn’t worry when Sheena and Rebecca came by, and we didn’t worry when we went to the MicMac Bar & Grill for supper. Come Sunday, though, we started to wonder, what if? What if Melissa’s water had broken, and our baby was at risk? So we decided to throw a few things together and head off to the hospital. We’d be back in time to have some wings for supper, so no worries, right?

We were admitted at around 6:20pm, and proceeded to wait in the Early Labour Assessment ward. Of course, we got there just before shift change, so we ended up waiting for 40 minutes with nothing to do before anyone even looked at her. Finally, a nurse came in and put a heart monitor on Melissa, so we could listen to the baby (cow-cow-cow) for the next hour or so. It’s now about 7:30pm, and we’re really hungry, and getting more and more anxious by the minute. It turns out that Dr. Lee would be at the hospital for a section that night, so Melissa would get seen by her actual physician. The doctor finally gets to see her, takes one look inside her, and figures that yes, her water had broken, and that chances are she wouldn’t be going home for supper. One fluid test later confirmed the fact, and next thing we know, it’s 9:00pm and we’re down in the Birth Unit, room 12, getting ready for Melissa to be induced to give birth to our child, and that neither of us would get much sleep (or food) for the next 24 hours.