Humphrelia

This is the first post on our blog – again. We actually had several posts since we got it up and running a couple of weeks ago. But the database that stores all the posts crashed (curse you, MySQL). Since the site was only a couple of weeks old with a small handful of posts, I hadn’t yet bothered to setup backup processes (Murphy’s law, right?).

The only real news of the past few weeks is that Will turned two on Thursday (1/11). He got to eat his favorite foods including chocolate cake:

Synopses of the posts that were lost during the database crash follow: Read More »

Will has started sitting up, sleeping through the night, and eating solids, all of which mean he is 6 months old. I can hardly believe it myself. I still look at him and think “oh my, I have a child”. Many of you have come and visited and seen for yourselves that he really is mine, he really lives here in my house, and he is not the neighbor’s kid just posing as mine. For those who have not come to see him, I have started posting video, mainly because it is fun. The address is www.2001audi.castpost.com. At his 6 month well-baby check, he was 16 pounds 11 oz, and he got the official charmer stamp of approval. This is due to his wicked cute smile and the fact that he likes the blonds so much.

The link above does not work. Castpost cleans your free site and abandons all uploaded content if you leave it for too long without actively using it. Oops. Maybe at some point we’ll get videos added to the gallery. But we probably should get some pictures in there first…

Okay, so it’s been a while, but we are still here doing well. Will had his last urologist appointment last Monday, and all tests came out good – so no more visits to Dr. Massad. In case I have not mentioned it, she looks like a Gogo – ya know, the one on Surreal Life. Oh, well…

Will is sleeping for longer periods – about 6 hours at a time, at night. I have added some pics to the site so check them out.

Here are some from our trip to LA. Josh’s sis got married to a most fabulous man, and we are all happy to have another official family member. We also did a little site-seeing and gave will a bath in the sink.

Good Times.

Tomorrow, actually, is the two month milestone. I already miss his former tiny-ness – it goes so quickly. Okay, everybody, you’ve been asking, and I had no idea it is such a hot button issue; but, yes, I am breastfeeding him. Apparently that’s how you get an uber-baby: he is huge, though not as large as I was. He’s 12 pounds already, and he has an appointment on Monday. He will probably be 13 by then. I think Josh is giving him miracle grow as a snack when I am trying to bathe. Which is another thing for which there is hardly any time… Once I took long leisurely showers and the most exquisite baths, but now they are purely utilitarian… no real relaxing. C’est la vie. Okay, back to the topic at hand: people are quite polarized about how to feed their children. Quoting tribeswomen and throwing bottles at one another, it can get really dangerous out there. To tell the truth, I do both. The best advice I ever got was always keep a bottle and formula on hand. Especially when you leave the house because there are times in this day and age that you can’t just whip it out and shove it in his mouth. “Where?”, you ask: like in the car, namely, or in the middle of a restaurant that has the skuzziest bathroom you have ever seen and you have yet to master the stealth feeding techniques that take time to learn from all the breast gurus out there (yeah, you know who you are). And would you really want to eat in some of those bathrooms? Eew!

Another thing for the future moms out there: yes, sometimes it hurts; but only if you are doing it wrong or if you have an infection. Oh yeah, you didn’t know you could get an infection in your breasts, did you? Neither did I until it happened to me. They get hot and swell. Then there is the big red spot that looks like you got punched in the boob, and it hurts to nurse. You call the doctor, and they say, “Oh yeah, you have Mastitis” like “you silly woman, didn’t you know?”.

“You can come in later today; and, until then, massage the affected area, soak it in warm water, and nurse from the sore one first”, they’ll conclude. Can you believe this advice? What are they thinking? And will it fall off? I can’t go on with one boob: I would look like an extra from Total Recall! No worries – it does not fall off. And the infection goes away with antibiotics. But you can get the infection again and again and again… You get the picture.

Breast pads – everyone has their favorites: disposables, throw-aways, toilet paper… I hate them all. And I hate my bra, too, with its convertible attitude. “Hey, I can let my top down!”

“Yeah, well I don’t care. I want lace and color and wire to hold these bad boys up!” (wire can give you Mastitis) One day… one day. It’s all worth it though. Being able to feed your child from your own body is the best gift I have ever been given.

Can you believe it’s been that long? Well I can. You try getting up 3 to 70 times a night to feed, change, and generally entertain an infant, and it would feel even longer. Yes, this is your friendly new mom talking. I hope we didn’t lose too many of you to the temporary entertainment. It was short notice, and he was all I could find that was just as interested in me as me. Well, Will got an infection from the test we had last week and is bouncing back nicely after 3 days of total sleep, which was the only symptom that tipped me off to the general illness he was having. Giving him his medicine has proved to be a man’s job though. If I give it to him he enjoys the fun of gasping, coughing, and throwing up everything in his stomach after a 30 min feeding all over himself, me, and 2 towels. Yes, those are full-sized towels – not those little hooded thin baby towels that are a complete joke but are oh so cute in the thousands of pictures you take. I also have had my post-partum visit, which went fine. Soon I will hopefully be off the Coumadin (blood-thinning, anti-clot drug), so I can stop feeling like I have been hit by a bus. Oh yes, my love to all of you. This has been a hard ride, but you have all helped us get through it. Thank You.

This is Josh writing yet another post with some more news.

Will had his all-day doctor event today. We had to take him for some tests at the children’s hospital in North Atlanta and then to see a doctor after that – a pediatric urologist. They were interested in his kidneys. They once again positively identified hydronephrosis of the left kidney. They say he’ll have to go back for more tests in a few weeks to determine the cause of that – it could be a problem with that kidney’s drainage or it could be nothing… They also identified that he is experiencing uretal reflux – which means that his urine can backtrack from his bladder, through his ureters, into his kidneys. This apparently is not a major thing, will likely go away with age, won’t likely cause anything much worse than a urinary tract infection, and hopefully it won’t even cause that since he is on antibiotics specifically to prevent anything of this sort from happening.

This afternoon after we finally got back from the doctor visits, we got a chance to play video games – something we haven’t done for a couple of months. We beat Halo 2. The ending would have been great if Halo 3 were already out. It really leaves you hanging. The story is actually interesting, so I can’t wait for the next one to find out the rest of the story. But not having Halo 3 means I hated the ending. No resolution – leaves you thirsting for me… Much like a book I finished last night: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now I’ll have to read the other books in the series because the first ends so abruptly: I gotta find out what happens next!

Hello, all. Josh here again.

Well, we’ve discovered in the past couple of weeks the hard way that Will does not like formula… Malin got an infection, and the doctors decided to prescribe an antibiotic that was unsafe for nursing. So we had to bottle-feed Will with formula. After less than two days (she was supposed to be on the antibiotics for seven), we decided that she should stop taking them and return to breastfeeding. The doctors were able to find another medicine safe for breastfeeding – why the heck didn’t they just prescribe that one the first time, knowing that she was nursing? Doctors…

He had his first baby-sitter the other day: Malin’s mom looked after him while the two of us went out to a nice dinner to celebrate my birthday.

He’s also spent a few days without daddy, unfortunately: I had to return to work on Tuesday (02/08/05). And of course, there was a s#&@load of work for me to do upon my arrival. The first week back at work has passed… We had a team meeting at work (most of which I missed, unfortunately, due to a conference call I had to attend), and afterwards a happy hour. At the happy hour, my coworkers surprised me with birthday cake (or the closest thing to it that a sports bar has) and an X-Box game (Price of Persia: Warrior Within). Thanks, John, and everyone else who had a hand in planning it. The game is pretty cool: I did get a few moments to play it this weekend…

Don’t forget to visit the pictures page. You’ll see there are some big changes there. We’ve organized them and put some captions up. We’ve also taken a few of them down but added a bunch of new ones.

Will has had his two week pediatrician visit – nothing unusual going on. We found out that he has already grown a decent bit: 8 lb. 2 oz. and 22 in. long. We were also given an appointment with a pediatric urologist next week. During the many prenatal ultrasounds done, Dr. Yeagly noticed an enlarged left kidney. She gave me a note to give to the pediatrician for when he was born that reads, “Mrs. Roghelia’s male fetus has possible hydronephrosis of the left kidney and a possible duplicated collecting system.” After birth, more ultrasounds on him positively identified hydronephrosis and a possibly occluded left ureter. It sounds bad, but apparently it is not uncommon and is not an emergency provided the boy can pee fine (which I guarantee that he can).

The little rascal is sleeping better at night – he wakes up every three hours to eat and then will go back to sleep. This is really a sweet deal. He’s looking cuter and cuter. He’s taken interest with the mobile in his crib. His eyes can follow the little animals that hang from it as they spin around. And he is visibly excited when he touches one of these animals. I can smell those synapses forming!

We also learned a little more (a perhaps a little less) about his blood condition that necessitated the stay in the hospital NICU. The blood tests from mommy came back negative: meaning that mommy’s blood did not have the anti-platelet antibodies that were suspected to have caused the condition. This rules out Iso-Immunothrombocytopenia. The new diagnosis is Transient Thrombocytopenia – which means it was temporary but of unknown origin. This is actually good news because it means that chances are good it wouldn’t happen again if we have another baby. Were the cause of the condition mommy’s blood, then her blood could be the culprit yet again in a second delivery. Since that is ruled out, hopefully that means it was a fluke and is unlikely to occur again (if we decide to have another… a very big if at this point, if you know what I mean).

In case you couldn’t tell, this message was brought to you by the father, Josh. Malin will return as soon as she feels up for battling with the archaic tools required to post a page to a free geocities site…

By the way, we’re no longer on a free geocities page. This site is now brought to you by SliceHost.com and by WordPress blogging software, which makes it much easier to post.

This is the first time we’ve had time to update the page since Willem was born. He is nearly two weeks old now. The whole sordid story of his birth was just added (read on below). We’ve also put up a slew of photos of the little booger. We’ve got photos from when he was first born, some from his brief stay in the NICU, some with his parents, some with his grandparents, etc… Have a look here.

01/11/05
Some may have noticed that we didn’t actually add this paragraph on the 11^th: we’ve been busy over the last couple of weeks as you’ll soon read. By the way, this is Josh, the father, making this post, so you’ll be reading about Malin in the third person (unlike all of the other posts below).

The 11^th, one day before his due date, was when Willem decided to show up. He is continuing his papa’s tradition of being born on one of his grandparents’ birthdays – January 11^th is my dad’s birthday, and I was born on my mother’s mother’s birthday. It was quite a drama. Unfortunately, my prose is not dramatic, so please bear with me as I recount the tale:

At 5:00am Tuesday morning, Malin woke me up, doubled over in pain with a piece of toilet paper in her hand, crying, “Does this smell like pee?”

Apparently her water had broken, but she wanted me to verify that she hadn’t just urinated on herself. Sure enough, it did not smell like pee. As I got up and got dressed she called the midwife on call at the hospital. They told us to come on in.

Her contractions were pretty strong – much stronger than the faux labor she had experienced before. And they were regularly 3 to 4 minutes apart and about 45 seconds in duration. When we arrived at the hospital, the midwife wasn’t in a hurry to see us because she had only been laboring for about 40 minutes; and first-time mothers typically labor for 12 to 16 hours. The nurse in triage suggested she walk around a little. One lap around the bottom floor (the Labor and Delivery section), and Malin was in too much pain to try another. We went back to triage, and the nurse called the midwife down. The nurse did a litmus-test on the pad Malin was wearing to see if her water had really broken. The test showed negative, but the midwife showed up to examine her shortly thereafter. The cervical exam had the midwife spooked, saying “Wow, you’re dilated to seven centimeters.”

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