I'm Sorry...

First off, I'd like to apologize for my lack of posting lately. Perhaps my inability to make time for this is the reason I never started a personal blog in the first place. However, I can supply you with a quick update.

Kate has had a few monthly checkups since my last post. She has been consistently gaining weight three times faster than what the doctors hope for (she's at about 12.5 lbs at current). As a result, they say they won't need to do another checkup on her till she is about six months.

She holds up her own head and laughs and "talks" to us now. Of course, by talk I mean garble at us, but she really seems to like doing it. And on a funny note, she really really likes watching ceiling fans. At Brian & Janelle's wedding, she sat there almost the entire time watching the ones in the church. Oh! Speaking of that, on a very funny note, nearing the completion of the service, there was a final prayer and just at a lull in the words, Kate lets out a HUGE fart. To the point where people three down from us were looking at us and me and everyone immediately around us were all trying not to laugh... and failing. Fortunately we managed to contain ourselves and make it out of the church without further incident.

Who's my little tub?

Yeesh! She's now 1 month old and the little fatty is now over 8lbs! Not only does she gain weight fast, but she appears to age fast too. Seriously, what happened to the last month? Only the day before her 1-month birthday did it hit me that she had been around for that long. If the next 18 years of her living with us (give or take) are like this, the next time I wake up I'll be 44 and (hopefully) living life to the fullest.

We recently had another one of the cluster feed days. For about 24hrs she was feeding almost every hour and half. Normally, during the day while I'm at work, Kristal will grab some shut-eye when Kate does. Unfortunately for her, Katie was awake all day. From about 8:30am till about 9pm she was awake almost the entire time. I think Kris logged maybe 3 or 4 hours of uncontinous sleep. Luckily, the last two nights she's slept for about 5hr stretches during the night.

Hehe, and whether she knows it or not, Kate will be a Rider fan :p Now here are some more photos for your viewing pleasure.

Things babies do that make us laugh

Here is just a little list of things that I've noticed that babies will do that cause me to laugh:

1. Becoming "wooed" to sleep by motion. It seems that going for a walk or taking a car-ride will make Kate go from being fussy to sleepy... relatively quickly too. I had one incident yesterday where we had stopped to talk to one of my coworkers as we were leaving the Taste of Saskatchewan and it had been a few hours since Kate had been changed/fed. As a result, she was starting to get into her "I'm getting really hungry" mood. Continuing our walk to the car, she only fussed for another 20 seconds or so and half way across the Broadway bridge, she was asleep again. Kristal had a similar incident where she went for a walk with Sadie and the dogs, and despite her desire for food/change, she was again wooed to sleep by the motion of the stroller.
2. The "WTF?" scrunchy face. I noticed this one last night. I was hanging out with Jesse playing nerdy card games as we do every Thursday and Kristal handed me Kate as she was going to have a nap. She was suckling a little bit (which is generally a sign babies are hungry). Instead of waking Kristal, I took a baby toy and let her suck on it. The first time I did this, she was fine. I did it a second time a little bit later and I get this look of confusion and disgust as if she was pondering "HEY! Where's my milk?!?!"
3. Odd sleeping positions. I don't know if all babies do this or not, but I find Kate will often sleep in some fairly peculiar positions that you simply cannot help but laugh at.
   
   Example:
   
   

"IT'S GOOD!"




It's hard to see, but her arms are actually elevated off of the bassinet.


I'm sure you can think of others, and I probably can too... but that's all I can think of at this moment in time.

Baby Update and Michael Jackson

For anyone that has had a child recently will know, the health region sends out nurses to your homes a few times for a few weeks after you bring the baby home. We've had about four visits so far. As per normal, Kate lost some weight post birth (I believe she lost about 150 grams). The past few visits from the nurses, she's regained that weight and then some. The nurses like to see the babies gaining 15-30 grams per day - Kate has been gaining about 80! So they are very happy with her weight. Kristal was a bit worried about her as she was having a lot of eye matter in the one eye. The nurse said that she probably has a blocked tear duct (i think) and as a result we're supposed to gently rub her eyelid with a warm damp cloth to help clear things out.

Speaking of cleaning, Kate had a bath on Sunday and for the first time, she didn't wail like hyena during the bath. I think I've determined that she is like me - prefers water a bit warmer. Initially, Kristal filled the tub. As I was putting Kate in, my elbow touched the water as well as Kate's foot and I immediately pulled back and Kate was already looking fussy. I look at Kristal, "This water is WAY too cold". It wasn't even room temperature. Im guessing what happened though was a case of it was warmer under the tap but all the colder water that was already in the tub made its way to the back... where I was putting her in. So I made her do it again and I tested the water temp. Kristal thought it was too warm, i disagreed... and apparently so did Kate. The only time she got fussy was when we were taking her out. I don't blame her though, I hate getting out of a nice hot shower too.

On Wednesday, we took Kate down to Diefenbaker park along with my parents where we had another set of firsts. Baby's first fireworks experience... and baby's first pot experience. In our walk to the point where we sat down, I swear we passed through no less than six different clouds of it. Until that point, I really didn't care if people enjoyed a little reefer. But since we had our two-week old with us, my opinion seemed to change slightly. I still don't care if people do that, but we will have to be mindful of it when we bring Kate with us anywhere. Gah, so many new things dad's think about.

And finally, a comment on MJ's death. Personally, I'm kinda getting sick of all the attention its getting. However, during my browsing of the news, I came across this picture on the internet and I just have no words as to how incredibly dumb the idea is. I'll let you have your own opinion.











For the record, I swiped this image off the net from (http://9.media.tumblr.com/GZbqLZ3AXp9gdz5lp4T63RJpo1_500.jpg). I by no means lay claim to its ownership.

Some photos

Thought I'd add some photos for all to see.

How NOT to raise a baby 101

Unfortunately for Kristal and I, the Doctors at the hospital request that we stay in the hospital for 48hrs. Thanks to Kate's early arrival, Kristal had missed out on her Group B Strep swab (a routine test normally done at ~36 weeks into a pregnancy - its rare that women have it, and even more rare that it will be passed to the child during birth). As a result, it is policy to keep the patients for 48hrs to see if they develop it.

Anyways, our first night we were in this 3-bed room without any neighbors which was fine and well. Our second night we did have a neighbor. From what we could here/deduce, the woman had also given birth early, but we assume a bit earlier than us as her milk had not come in yet. This wasn't a big deal as the nurses had set up a machine that gave baby formula via a slow drip (it is important for newborns (or anyone) to eat after all).

During the course of the night, her child proceeded to cry all... night... long... On top of that, they proceeded to leave their fairly bright lights on the majority of the night as well (which didn't help us sleep either). In fact, there was a few times that Kate would start crying, we're pretty sure because she heard the other baby crying.

In the morning, after getting next to no sleep, the nurses began doing their morning rounds. If you or your significant other has given birth lately, you know they require you to record when you do feedings and diaper changes (as well as their contents). In the morning, we heard her asking the nurse why her child hadn't required a diaper change all day. The nurse took a look at her log and it appeared her last feeding was recorded at 12:30am (it was about 6:30am at this point). So she asks her, have you fed your baby since this 12:30 feeding? To which she replies "No". Kristal and I overhearing this both dropped our jaws both in shock (that someone would do that) and anger (cause of lack of sleep). It was at this point the nurse began to lean into the woman and "inform" her that babies need to eat every 2-3 hours and should have eaten at least twice in that 6 hour time period. The fact that they had set up a formula drip for her also seemed to aggravate her. We were also very surprised that her mother (who had been there the whole time), who said she was a mother of four, didn't seem to pick up on that either. During a late-night bathroom trip, Kristal had also noticed via a hole in her curtain that she was sleeping with a pillow over her head. So not only was she not feeding her baby, she was ignoring it.

The piece that surprised us the most was that she said she had gone to prenatal classes. How do you go to those and NOT know you have feed a baby? I'm not an expert by any means, but even before prenatal classes (which everyone having a baby should take by the way), I knew that you have to feed a baby often.

So please, care for, and feed your baby!

The Preamble

Lets rewind the tape to Sunday (June 21st) at ~8:30pm. Kristal, my mom and dad, my brother, and my aunt and myself are over at my parent's house for some dinner. At this point Kristal had just finished working all weekend and has been plagued with (what she thinks are) braxton-hicks all weekend. So after supper she's sprawled out on the couch a little bit in some discomfort, which my dad seemed to notice was not normal but we proceeded on with our evening.

We head back to our place and decide to chill and watch a couple episodes of CSI. During which time, Kristal is having the worst time sitting still for longer than a few minutes so she was up and about most of the two episodes we watched (read: I watched). Afterwards, it was about 12:30am Monday by this point and I was going to get ready for bed as I worked in the morning. Kristal by this point had managed to find some comfort reclined all the way in our arm chairs in the living room and was mentioning to me some of the symptoms she was having. I took a look at one of our books and it mentioned that a lot of what she was experiencing could be considered pre-labour. While she continued to deal with her body, that little voice that I get when I'm at the poker table that says if I should/should not bet was saying, this is NOT normal. So I decide to get up, and pre-emptively pack our hospital bags. Kristal figured that they were just nasty braxton-hicks and didn't really think anything of it as she was only in "mild to moderate discomfort". During this time, I sent my team lead Ryan a text message saying "Now I'm not saying 'things' are happening, but don't be surprised if I don't show up to work tomorrow (or am late)". At this point its about 1:45am and I hit the hay, but not before plugging in my cell phone, and both of our camera's batteries.

Early the next morning, Kristal wakes me up at about 6-6:15am and says, you know Steve, I've been up all night, and I kinda wanna just go and get checked out. You lay in bed and get some more rest for work** and then get you to take me to the hospital. ** It was at this point in her sentence in my head I was thinking "I am not going to lay here in bed and let you go to the hospital on your own, what are you crazy woman?". So I get up, say to her, "Ok, lets just take things easy, we'll put some more stuff in the bags (just in case), have a shower, have some breakfast, then we'll go. So we're doing just that, and while eating a semi-dry muffin, Kristal gags on it a little and dashes to the bathroom to throw up. In the middle of said vomit-session, I hear a yell from the bathroom "AH! STEVE! MY WATER JUST BROKE!!!". At this point I left a message with work saying I wouldn't be there. After changing Kristal's clothes, informing our parent's and loading the car, we headed down to RUH.

We park in the visitor area, and before heading in, I stop and grab my camera, cause I just have feeling I won't have time to come back and get it. So we get into the main admitting area in the hospital and have to stand in this 20min lineup to get in. I grab a pen from the receptionist and proceed to fill out our pre-admittance forms we received at the hospital tour a few weeks earlier (which I highly suggest for any parent-to-be by the way - the talk the Anesthesialogist gave was awesome!). During said wait Kristal had a large contraction but nothing yet. We finally get to the front of the line and the woman is like, "Are you in labor?" and we inform them of our water breaking, and we are wisked off to another girl for Kristal's information and then this old woman pushed Kristal in a wheelchair to the elevators - and man was she motoring, I damn near had to jog to catch up to her.

We arrive at the 4th floor (where women can do their pre-labor and delivery activities) and the same nurse who had admitted us on Tuesday for a check-up admitted us again. She puts us in a room asks Kristal to put on the gown and get into bed and heads back to the counter. Kristal gets out of her street clothes and into the hospital gown but cannot get into bed. She stops and looks at me and says, "Steve, I really feel like I gotta push". Moments later she has another contraction and strongly suggests I go get someone. Now you know how you see it a lot in movies where the man will run to the doctor/nurse and say, OMG OMG OMG, she's gotta push!!? I wander to the nurse's station with that in mind and say to the nurse, "Now I don't wanna sound dramatic, but she says she's gotta push!". So we head back to the room and she makes Kristal rather uncomfortably get into the bed. She puts on some gloves and gives Kristal the cervix check followed by a "Oh my gosh! Your nine and a half centimeters! And in the wrong room!!". So just as quickly as we were taken upstairs, were we taken to the delivery ward.

By chance, on route to the ward, our Ob/Gyn was just arriving for her morning rounds (we hadn't contacted her). So the nurses flag her down and let her know whats going on. We get to the delivery room that contains three nurses just getting set up (we didn't give em a lot of warning after all). Once set up in the room, we waited maybe 10 minutes before our Doctor gave Kristal the ok to push. Then, 14 minutes later, we have a baby girl. No IV, no Epidural, no pain meds, nothing. Just in out, bang boom, done! The nurses were all saying how wonderful it was to start off the day with such a quick, non-headachey delivery that was (not to mention a hint of jealousy at the delivery time ESPECIALLY considering it is our first!). I have a feeling the nurses, and our Ob/Gyn will be talking about that for awhile.

And voila, we were now parents! hehe, missed out on Father's day by 9 hours.

1st Post

Hey everyone. At no point do I consider myself a blogger, but I hope to start putting baby updates here for everyone to see (especially those family members that don't live in/around Saskatoon).

I'll start off with some key information that most people seem to ask:

Name: Kate Ashley Smith
Gender: Female
D.O.B.: June 22, 2009 at 8:45am
Height: 19 inches or 48.26 cm
Birth Weight: 5.5 lbs or 2.494758 kgs
Place of Birth: Royal University Hospital, Saskatoon, SK
Doctor (Ob/Gyn): Dr. L. Regush

The rest of the blog entries I'll try to make a bit more readable and photo filled, but I think this is a good start.