Coming Home

I'm a little too tired to post a long one today. Alice and Vivienne came home from the hospital and they're both doing great. Vivienne is learning to breastfeed like a champ and she's also really great at drooling, pooping, crying, and puking on my shoulder. I'll try to give some more details tomorrow if I get some more sleep, she had a very, very fussy night last night.

Arrived

After 40 hours of labor, Vivienne Hall Jarand was born at 5:18 p.m., Tuesday August 29th. She was 5 lb 14 oz and 18.5 inches long. It was both the happiest, and the longest and scariest day of my life.

We brought Alice into the hospital around 10:00 yesterday and even though her contractions were 5 minutes apart, she was only dilated 1 cm. Our nurse, Shannon, decided Alice had been laboring long enough already and 'manually dilated' her. You don't really want details on how this is done, but I thought Alice was going to tear the bedrails off and beat Shannon with them. Since the dilation finally kicked Alice into gear to deliver, she ended up forgiving her nurse after she was immediately wheeled into the labor and delivery room and Shannon took over as our delivery nurse.

Alice was hooked up to an I.V. and drugged up with painkillers, then given an epidural around 1:00 or so. After a few hours the contractions weren't building well enough so a pitocin drip was started around 2:45 and by 3:15 she was already starting to push. Alice did really great, but Vivienne just refused to come out- close, but not quite. Shortly after 5:00, her OB-GYN decided that Alice had been struggling long enough and brought out the forceps. The final minute or so of delivery ended up happening amazingly fast after Dr. Ryan lost the fetal heartbeat on the monitor. I didn't believe it was possible for a group of ten or so people to move that fast.

At any rate, Vivienne was born with the umbilical wrapped around her neck twice and she wasn't breathing when she came out. They immediately went to work on her and within 15 or 20 seconds she started to wail and complain. I don't think I took a breath from the time Dr. Ryan lost the heartbeat until I heard Vivenne cry. Fortunately, Vivienne recovered quickly and her APGAR scores were 6 at 1 minute, and 8 at 5 minutes. Not too shabby considering all she had to go through to get here.

After her mom and I getting to briefly meet her, she was whisked off to the nursery so they could monitor her blood oxygen saturation (which turned out to be just fine) and they had to get her body temperature up and stable. We ended up getting her back around 10:15 and she seems to have gotten the knack of breastfeeding already. She slept well through the night- woke us up twice and needed to be changed once and made a good crack at feeding. She hasn't really fussed much at all, but I'm sure that will change.

I'll give another update tomorrow after Alice and Vivienne are released (no internet access at the hospital).

As a sidenote- Vivienne was born on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall. It's good to have something positive happen in the face of all we've dealt with over the last year.

7:00 a.m. update

Well, it's now almost 7:00 a.m. and we're still at the house. Alice managed to sleep for a while after taking the percocet. Her contractions haven't changed much and we're just hoping they either get it together or give her a break until Vivienne is actually coming. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we head into the hospital sometime this morning.

10:00 p.m. update

Alice's contractions were a bit erratic this afternoon and actually stopped for a 45 minute period around 3:00. They kicked back in after that at ~9 minute intervals. Went back to the hospital (on doctor's advice) around 6:00 and they spent about 2 hours poking and prodding her only to determine that she really isn't quite ready yet. They gave us the options of: staying and Al getting some shots for the pain, or going home for a while and getting a couple of percocet and we opted for the latter. Even with the pain medication Alice is having a rough time, but the contractions are getting a little shorter. We'll return to the hospital when Al's water breaks, the contractions get to be 3-4 minutes apart, or she can't take the pain any longer.

At any rate, one of the three above conditions will likely be met before 7:00 a.m., or so the doctor thinks. Also, for anyone trying to contact us by cell phone once we're in the hospital- you're not going to have any luck. We don't have reception and I'm probably not going to answer the phone anyway :)

There's a link to Touro on the right sidebar so ya'll can call the maternity ward to check in on things.

Current news

We saw the doctor this morning (before the hospital) and things are in motion. We're back home this afternoon but we'll be heading to the hospital around 5 or so. Alice will probably end up delivering sometime between midnight and tomorrow morning.

It has begun

Alice thought I was jumping the gun last night but it appears I wasn't. At any rate, she's been having contractions overnight and they're about 10 minutes apart right now. We're going to head into the hospital this morning.

I'll post more when I know more.

Little Viv

Well, she was kickin' ass and takin' names today. I'm fairly convinced (with some shaky physical evidence to back it) that she'll be making an arrival shortly. Al isn't as convinced but I'm fairly sure she's wrong. I packed the cameras, bags, strapped the carseat, etc.- all ready to go.

Dodged the bullet

It looks like Alice and I can stop worrying so much about Ernesto. We're going to keep an eye on it, but the chance of us needing to evacuate looks pretty slim right now.

Eastward shift

The 4 major international models have Ernesto shifting east-northeast and nailing Cuba. This should cause it to stall and lose a bit of strength. After that it will enter the gulf and continue a trend that puts it on top of Pensacola early Friday morning as a cat. 2 or possibly a 3.

The general trends of an easterly shift in all the major models bodes well for us. If the 3-day models still show it that far to the east on Monday, then we should be in good shape here.

Here we go again

Alice and I are making preliminary plans to evacuate. The storm models are still diverging quite a bit, but a number of them have it making landfall somewhere between here and the Florida panhandle. If we need to evacuate we're going to head to Virginia again since one of Alice's Dad's good friends is an ob-gyn there.

At any rate, we'll make up our minds by Monday afternoon. We have a doctor's appointment that morning and the 3-day tracking maps (which are far more accurate than the 5-day) should show us where landfall is likely.

If we evacuate I'll continue to update this site regularly. I'm just hoping it doesn't turn into a Katrina II blog as well.

Meandering

The storm models are all over the place right now. Half of them have Ernesto beating the crap out of Mexico and the other half beat the crap out of Cuba and south Florida. Unfortunately, the truth often lies in the middle, and the middle is a path straight up the center of the Gulf. This is the path NOAA is predicting.

Now... I'm not really concerned that this storm is really going to hurt New Orleans. Even a direct hit by a cat. 1 or 2 really can't do that much more. What I (and Alice) worry about is that the city will be emptied if a cat. 1 hits here. That means hospitals, EMS, etc can't be counted on.

We're discussing the options at present- maybe we induce ahead of landfall, maybe we evacuate early, maybe....

We just don't know and both of us have had a bit tougher of a year than we'd ever imagined. I just hope this thing dies off before it hits the Gulf.

Friday morning update

It looks like Ernesto and D'Bjons'l are in a race.

Baby Ernesto

97L appears to be well on it's way to becoming the 5th named storm this season- Ernesto. It will likely gain tropical storm strength within the next day or so and if it maintains the current path, will end up entering the Gulf of Mexico early next week.

Of course, even if it gets that far the chances of it tracking towards us are slim. Still, it has people here a little on edge.

Everyone, Meet........

Tropical Disturbance 97L, which is in the process of being upgraded to tropical Depression 5.



As a point of reference, this is the same initial path as Katrina. Needless to say, Alice is absolutely overjoyed about this since evacuating will be so much more fun when she's 9 months pregnant.

Lizards of New Orleans

Well, there still isn't a heck of a lot to report.

D'Bjons'l has gotten into the habit of kickboxing with her mommie's cervix around 8:00 in the evening, pretty much like clockwork. This causes a fair amount of writhing and cursing on her mommie's part. Still no contractions or anything that would make us think she's on the way.

The lizard is one of the 10,000 or so that inhabit our yard- the spider lily is a particularly favored location for them.

Update from the Doctor

Well, the update from the doctor is that there really isn't much to update. Baby D'Bjons'l seems perfecly happy just where she's at, despite what her parents think about that. We have another appointment next Monday and Dr. Ryan seems fairly sure we'll be doing that in his office and not in the maternity ward at Touro Hospital.

The Watermelon

D'Bjons'l's pad....

Just in the nick of time, I managed to finish up the baby's room today. I've felt more like a carpenter/painter than a chemist for the last 9 months but the house has come a long way as a result.

We're going to leave the walls white until she's old enough to decide on a color for herself. Although, if we can track down someone to do a nifty forest or animal mural we might do that. As she gets a bit older, we're probably going to add a little loft with a bathroom below since we have 12 foot ceilings (the room is already plumbed, the little old lady who had the house before us was a retired beautician and had her 'beauty parlor' in this room).

I think this is the end of the big projects for now. Alice has banned me from starting anything new until after the kid gets here.

No towels yet

Fortunately (for me) Alice hasn't gotten too worked up about posting anything. In the meantime I'll keep posting pics of misc. animals, most of which are pets of ours.

The turtle was on our sidewalk and we released him into a canal a few blocks away. What I wouldn't give for Lunar to be catch and release.

Alice Says....

OK, so my pregnancy has been pretty easy. I know that. I am one of the lucky ones. I have Braxton Hicks contractions all of the time, but have yet to have anything that feels like a “real” contraction yet. I even managed to sleep straight through the night the last two nights in a row. Sure, my left foot swells horribly on a daily basis. Yeah, its difficult to bend over to pick anything up from the floor and I just sort of drop the cat’s bowl to the ground rather than placing it there when I feed him. True, I am an emotional slob again like I was in the first trimester. But are these symptoms really all that bad? I guess my point is that I am beginning to think the baby is going to be late. All the Mom Wisdom says that nature has this way of making you relax about the anxiety about actually delivering a baby - it makes you so miserable at the end you don’t care what happens so long as the baby comes out. I just don’t think I am THAT miserable yet. So, I guess next we’ll have to post a picture of the cat or of Curt in some towels or something, because I am not convinced we’ll get to meet this kid any time soon.

about the same....

We don't have anything new to report. These pictures of Gorilla (or Jamie, as she's also known) are sure to please though.

Angus

I guess we're gonna have to post pics of flowers and Angus until baby D'Bjons'l (or Vivienne, as I call her) gets here.

Tuesday

Not much to report today. We do have a pretty nifty Bird of Paradise plant in our back yard though.

Update from the OB-GYN

Al had a doctor's visit today and the squirt is at zero station, though we don't which way she's presenting. Also, it looks like she's gonna be on the small side. Dr. Ryan was expecting her to grow a bit more than she has since the last visit but he did a stress test and she's responding just fine. If she delivers on or near her predicted date she probably won't make much more than 6-6.5 lb. Also, Al is at about 80% effaced but not really dilated much so it looks like I'll have time to finish painting the squirt's room.

For you family members that are interested, there will be a wireless webcam set up by her crib after we have her home for a bit. I'll e-mail anyone interesed with the address and login information once the camera is in place.

Curt

Big Al.....

Here's a picture of Al taken about a week or so ago.

First Post

Here's our first post. Alice and I will be using this blog to keep everyone up to speed on baby D'Bjons'l and his/her arrival (Alice still isn't convinced it's a girl, despite overwhelming evidence). At any rate, this is the best we can do picture-wise for the time being.