Monday, January 2, 2012

Hello baby, goodbye sleep

Where have I been? How dare I disappear for so long without even leaving a note or having the common decency to give you a call to let you know I was ok? I know a mere apology won't suffice. I can however account for at least nine months of my absence to this:

Meet Virginia "Ginny" Noelle Gibbons, the newest member of our running crew. She joined the Gibbons gang on Dec. 27th 2011, take that Uncle Sam! She weighed in at a hefty 6lbs 10oz's. She's only been here for 6 days and already we like a lot of the same things, such as, eating, sleeping, pooping, and most importantly boobs.

Like in the wild Nancy's first instinct was to eat her young.

But after an hour of some pretty tense negotiations, we were able to talk her out of it.

For the two of you that read my blog, and the one of you two that cares, here's more or less how it all went down.

No matter how much I tried talking her out of it, at around 1am Dec 27th Nancy went into labor. At 4:00am the contractions were close enough together to warrent taking a ride to the hospital. It was pouring rain and the contractions were getting more abundant. I wanted to take a taxi and have the baby in the back seat, like on TV, that way we could save all that money on medical expenses. Nancy insisted I drive. I used the drive to the hospital to force Nancy into choosing a name for the baby, I knew that in her stressed state, she would be more likely to settle on one of the names on the very tiny list we had made that week. My hunch paid off and we had the named locked in before we got to the hospital. At 4:30am we arrived and checked into our labor/delivery room. We were going to try natural child birth, the way the Marquis De Sade intended, especially since the pain and frequency of the contractions made it seem like the baby was due any minute. We thought for sure we were at 7 to 8cm. (FYI, 10cm is what you need). Then the RN told us we were just at 2cm. After a couple more contractions, I can only assume were terrible, and an open dialog that involved a lot of crying and begging, mostly from me, we decided to administer the epidural.

I'd like to stop here for a second and send a personal thank you to Mr. Epidural for inventing the single most amazing procedure in all of mankind. Sure the wheel is OK and fire is great and all, but the epidural is without a doubt the most useful and impressive discovery in all of time itself. You people with kids know what I'm talkin' 'bout.

After the spine tap started to work it's magic, Nancy was her less intense self again, and we pretty much just hung out shooting the shit for the next 10 hours. Then at 4:30pm it was go time, 10cm dilated and ready to rock. The room came to life with nurses running around and doctors checking in. Each contraction was met with a chorus of chants and cheers to push, breath, and squeeze. I think at one point one of the nurses even had pom poms, a rainbow afro wig, and a sign that said "John 3:16".

After 2 hours of pushing and lots of stuff I can never un-see, our little bundle of joy made her triumphant entrance into the outside world. I got to cut the cord, which I guess means I'm a doctor now, right? We hung out with the baby for a little bit and were then moved to our recovery room. They keep you for 2 nights so I got to sleep on this:

It was like something out of of the Ikea rejected design files. I felt like I was sleeping in the front seat of a 1970's van. We found out the worst part about having a baby is eating the hospital food. It was slightly better than a high school cafeteria and a little worse than an all you can eat Sizzler's last week before the health inspector closes it down.

The baby did good on all her baby tests and they sent us on our way. They forgot to tell us what to do with her after we left the hospital, but we've seen all 4 seasons of Jon and Kate plus 8 so we should be fine. I'm picking out my Ed Hardy shirt tomorrow.

We were a little worried when they baby did this:

But after close inspection we couldn't find any numbers on her head. I guess she just likes to rock.

We are all home and doing just fine now. The baby wanted me to let you know that she is registered at Target and Walmart.

I'll try and pop in here from time to time with musings on fatherhood and other silly things. Thanks and sorry for the long hiatus.