My Two Children

You may think that I only have one child, but in truth, right now I have two of them. I call them Morning K and Evening K. Or, I could call them Happy K and Cranky K. Two distinct personalities all in one tiny little body.

Morning K might let out the occasional cry when he's hungry or his diaper is dirty. Evening K doesn't need a reason to wail. Morning K coos and makes sweet little noises when he's happy. Evening K grunts or wimpers at a lower volume at his happiest.

Thank goodness Evening K only visits us for a relatively short period of time. Yesterday, Evening K was around from about 7:30pm until midnight-ish.

It's amazing how different my two little babies are from one another. I don't really enjoy Evening K all that much. He's not as cute as Morning K is.

5 Weeks

I wasn't planning to write only about K, but as our lives are revolving around the little guy at the moment, it's hard to find other items of relevance...

K is 5 weeks old as of yesterday. He now makes noises other than wimpering and crying. He grunts (a lot lately) and makes cute little sighing sounds, and a few others that I'm not sure how to describe.

The grunting, although cute during the day, is annoying at night. It is the sound of constipation. It can go on for more than an hour. This morning at around 2:30am I noticed the grunting noise coming through the moniter. As K usually wakes around this time (give or take) to eat, I remained mostly awake, waiting for the wimpering to start - signalling that it was time to go get him up to eat. The grunting continued until about 4am when I decided to just go wake him up anyways. He finally sleeps extra long at night but still manages to keep me awake!

Sleep, Eat, and Poop, Sleep, Eat, and Poop

This is the remarkable routine of a newborn that becomes the centre of a new parents world. It is amazing how exhausting this routine can be. Especially when the sleep part of the routine turns into the crying part of the routine from about 11pm until 4am.

I have concluded that God is extremely wise to make babies so damn cute because otherwise they would drive us crazy in the wee hours of the night with their inexplicable wailing. They've been fed, their diapers are clean, they've been burped, we've tried holding, rocking, swaddline, putting them down, and picking them up again... in dark rooms, light rooms, quiet rooms and loud rooms, and still they cry. Sigh... At least it's only for a few hours at a time.

Thank goodness K doesn't do this every night. But the first few weeks at home were a bit of a trial, and rather alarming. We weren't sure if there was something wrong with him. But by the time morning rolled around he was usually sleeping peacefully, and would generally sleep peacefully (as his routine cycled) until evening. Which is why E & I never managed to get out of be for the day until at least 11am, usually noon. And why I often just stayed in my pj's all day long.

A Baby Story

Welcome Kian Erick Dirks Pay, born on June 21 at 11:45pm, 8pounds 5 ounces, 22 inches long.

At 5:00pm on Saturday the 21st, we finally recived the call from the hospital saying that we could come in at 6:30 to be induced. This was supposed to be a 1 hour appointment and then we would return home and wait for labour to get going.

Instead, we got to the hospital to find out that I was already in labour and that my water had already broken (which I hadn't noticed at all). I got all hooked up to some moniters and an IV and they began to moniter my contractions and Kian's heartbeat.

After about an hour of being monitered, our nurses and my docter were concerned that Kian's heartbeat would go down after every contraction. No cause for alarm yet, but in 4 or more hours this could become a real problem. Especially since my labour wasn't really progressing, at least not quickly enough.

Our doctors wanted to make sure Kian was doing okay, and to do so needed to take some blood samples from Kian's head. Which meant I needed to get an epidural. And since I was planning to get one at some point anyways, plus on the off chance they needed to do a C-Section, I figured why not.

So, after they did the blood tests, both of the attending doctors recommended that I go in for a C-Section. They gave E& I a few minutes to talk it over, but we both agreed that we didn't want to risk anything happening to Kian by waiting for a natural delivery.

By 11pm I was wheeled into the operating room for prep. The actual surgery took less than half an hour, and Kian joined us at 11:45pm. Apparently the umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck, and there was some concern about his oxygen levels and blood sugar levels. So all I got was a quick peek before he was whisked off to the neonatal ICU for monitering.

I was wheeled over to the recovery room for a few hours and then moved to a regular room. I didn't get to hold my Kian until the next morning when I got a wheelchair ride down to ICU to try and feed him.

But all is well, and after a few days in the hospital we were able to take him home.

So far, the hardest part is the few hours of 'cluster feeding' (crankiness and lots of wanting to eat, without the usual sleeps in between) that happens sometime between midnight and 3am every night. The rest of the time I mostly sleep when baby sleeps, which means I'm taking 2 hour naps every couple of hours, all day & all night.

But I love the little guy like crazy, he is sooo beautiful, and I'm getting to know what his different facial expressions mean, and can sort of predict when he'll wake up next for another feeding.

I'm sure I'll have lots more to write about K as we figure out this parenting thing.