Cooper Comes Home

Well, we’ve made it to Tuesday!

They discharged us from the hospital and we made our way home Sunday afternoon. It was a good ride home and went well. Janelle’s mom and sister stayed with us for a few hours to make sure we were all settled in. My parents came in Sunday night to stay with us. (My dad had to go back to Ashland Monday morning, but my mom is staying with us for a few days.)

The first evening and night went okay. Things were a little rocky in the middle of the night, when an exhausted Janelle and David didn’t know what to do with a fussy Cooper who just didn’t want to do anything but scream and cry. But we made it through.

As with most new parents, getting sleep is a little rough. He has a case of jaundice, so they wanted us to feed every two hours. (That’s two hours from start of feeding to start of feeding.) Feeding that often means little sleep for Janelle, and it started catching up with her. Luckily, we made it through the night and passed Cooper off to my mom after his 7:00 a.m. feeding. Thank God she was there. We finally got an hour and a half of good, solid sleep. I think we were both out cold in 5 seconds!

Last night was better. He still got fussy at one point, but it wasn’t nearly as bad. We quickly learned to take turns staying up with him. (We knew that, but it’s just hard your first night – no one wants to go to sleep and not be there for him.) We again handed him off to my mom after his morning feeding and grabbed a couple hours of sleep.

We made our first trip out of the house with him yesterday, too. Because of the jaundice, the pediatrician wanted to see him on Monday. It was an easy trip there, and other than him peeing all over the place (diaper off) when they weighed him, all was well. The doctor told us he was all normal, things were looking good, etc. We took him to the lab to have some blood drawn to test his belliruben (jaundice). That took longer than we would like, and when they were taking blood he SCREAMED like crazy. But we got through that, too. They called later on with the results, and his jaundice was going down like they wanted and said we didn’t need to come back until his 2 week old visit. (Day one his jaundice count was at 9.5, then up to 15 and then 14. It had gone back down to 10, which most likely means it has peaked and should be clearing up. As long as it’s under 17 at his age, they just keep an eye on it.)

I think we’ve gone through every piece of clothing that fits him, and each of his receiving blankets. We’re just keeping up the wash and that’s fine. He was back to his birth weight at the doctor, which means he’s eating well. (They told us we can go to 2.5 – 3 hours between the starts of feeding, which translates to another half hour of much needed sleep.) He’s probably hitting 8 pounds today, so that puts him at the beginning of the 0-3 month outfits. That’s good, because we have a lot more of those than new born outfits.

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough. I do want to say thank you for all the emails, texts, messages, etc. that you have sent to us. I’m sorry that I haven’t returned most of them, as you can imagine it’s been a little crazy. But we are extremely grateful of your support, thoughts and prayers.

All is well, and we’re fortunate to have such a beautiful and well-behaved (all things considered) young son. We’re cherishing every minute with him, and can’t wait for the next glance, the next little smirk…even the next dirty diaper and spit up. Check back often as I’ll try to keep this updated and add a few pics when we can.

Love,
David

ps – We did notice that they had finally put his picture up on the hospital’s website: http://babycentral.centralbap.com/default.asp?group=49676

Welcome Cooper Neal Kitchen!

What a day!

We went to the doctor on Wednesday afternoon, and found out that she was dilated to 2.5 – 3 cm. He said he would be surprised if we made it a week. A week? Yeah, right!

Thursday morning (just hours after the doctor’s visit), Janelle woke up around 2 am with labor pains. She let me sleep another hour, and then woke me up around 3 am. We worked through it all and hung out at the house. She basically walked through the contractions.

Around 5 am, they seemed to be getting closer and more intense, so we decided to come on in to Central Baptist Hospital. We got here around 6:30 am, and at first they took their sweet time. They finally did the medical history, etc. and checked her. She had dilated to 7 cm! They rushed us to a delivery room so we could get started and get Janelle set up with an epidural to help with some really, really bad back labor pains.

We were in the delivery room for several hours, working through contractions. When the doctor came in, we found out that Cooper had turned face up, instead of face down. We also learned that Janelle has a small pelvis, and if we couldn’t get him to turn around he wasn’t coming out that way. She pushed and pushed and pushed…for a couple hours she went through contractions and pushing. Finally, about 1:30 pm, they decided he wasn’t coming out that way and determined it would need to be a c-section.

After the prep work and all, they took Janelle to the OR around 3 pm, and came to get me a little later. At 3:36 pm, I got to watch the birth of Cooper Neal. The doctor showed him to us, and then took him to the other side of the room to clean and check vitals. Janelle was in a little pain and a whole lot of discomfort, so they knocked her out while they finished with her surgery.

The nurses handed Cooper to me, and after a few minutes in the OR I walked him down to the nursery, where they cleaned him up some more, checked his weight (7 lbs, 15 oz), and length (20 inches). He stayed in there for some time.

Janelle made her way to recovery, and we were finally re-connected there. After an hour there, we should have been able to go to our room, but they didn’t have any that were clean. They did eventually bring Cooper to us, and Janelle’s parents and sister were able to come back and see everyone. After about 3 hours, we finally got to our room.

So we’re here now, and all is good. With the c-section, we’re here until Sunday (unless something changes), but everything is going well. Cooper has a full head of hair and is absolutely perfect. We are so fortune to have such a wonderful son, and such great friends and family to support us through this experience.

I hope you’ll enjoy a few pictures, and thank you for your calls, texts, emails and well wishes.

The Waiting Game...

We are officially full term (37 weeks) which basically means this baby could pop out at any time. Hopefully, he'll pop out soon. This whole pregnancy thing is getting to be very uncomfortable :) Actually, I shouldn't complain too much. Overall being pregnant hasn't been as bad as could have been. I've just reached that point where I'm going to be uncomfortable no matter what. The contractions that I have in the evenings don't help with the uncomfortableness either!

David and I saw Dr. Atkins again today. He said everything looked good. My cervix is 80% effaced and I am dilated about 1 1/2 to 2 cm. So, while I'm not actually in labor at the moment, I'm on my way!