Nothing Every Day

We hadn't named our little guy yet and we wanted to get it figured out so we could send out an official announcement. At some point I'll explain his name in depth, but the short version is that I had been thinking of using Wright for a middle name for quite a while, and we were both pretty comfortable with Ephraim for the first name. Looking at him though, it just didn't fit quite right. We also thought that there weren't many good options for nicknames. Everest had come up a while back on our list of consideration - we really thought it fit him, and the short form of Ever felt right as well. I suppose the mountains out the window might have lent some inspiration. We had been planning on having Amity come and meet him right before we all went home together, but now that he was here we realized we wanted her to be the first besides Kim and I to meet the new family member. Bob and Patti brought her to the hospital, and she was ecstatically happy when I went to get her,...

The drugs did their work, and things started getting a lot more interesting. As contractions got stronger, and things got more painful, we decided to get an epidural started sooner rather than later. They came to put it in about 8pm, and getting it set went flawlessly - Kim got multiple compliments from the anesthesiologist on her perfectly situated and steady spine, which he said was a textbook example of how to do it and perhaps the best he had ever come across. Chalk one up for those yoga sessions. After the epidural had set in, they decided to check Kim's progress and her water broke almost immediately. Things started moving faster, and Kim and I took guesses on the time of delivery, and whether the birthday would be the 18th or 19th. I was shooting for 11:30 and the 18th. Kim was guessing after midnight (12:07 if I recall correctly) and the 19th. Our midwife, Karen guessed that it would be before 1:00 AM. At about 11, Kim started feeling like she could push, but they w...

My son, Everest Wright Adamson, was born on 12:21 on October 19th. This is the beginning of his story. Late Friday evening, after having an impromptu dinner with some friends and getting Ami put to bed, Kim started having some pretty strong and frequent contractions. She was about a week out from the due date (October 24th), but Amity had gotten here exactly one week early so we were fully aware that things could happen at any moment. We weren't sure whether to head to the hospital or not. This was a bit different from the first time around - Kim's water broke early in the morning and we knew immediately that the baby was going to get here one way or the other. Kim called her midwife and asked for an opinion. We decided that it very well could be the real thing, and started packing up. We had Kim's mom, Patti, come over to watch Ami, while I packed the car and made a last-minute run to the gas station... we probably could have made it, but I figured our chan...

Amity's Arrival from Kim Adamson on Vimeo .

Around 5:30 on Saturday, it finally happened. We held her. It seemed like the nurse (Megan, who was fantastic) might have made an exception for us and let her try to breastfeed, because we really hadn't expected to be able to and it was an awesome surprise. That had been a huge concern for us because we had heard so much about the health benefits and so many horror stories about how hard it was for a lot of women and their babies. They say that starting within the first hour is really critical, so both Kim and I had been stressing about whether it would be a huge roadblock since it had been over 15 hours since she had been born and she hadn't really been held at all. Turns out that our fears were unfounded. Amity got right to it without a single problem, and it was a massive relief on a couple of levels. First, because of the aforementioned anxiety, but second and more importantly, because a healthy appetite is one of the best signs you could hope for of a healthy baby. A...

That first day in the NICU was the hardest. We weren't able to hold our girl, she was hooked up to a lot of lines, and we were pretty unable to do anything for her except just sit there and talk to her. She was hooked up to a status monitor which we would develop a love-hate relationship with. It provided a certain amount of comfort because we could observe all of her vital signs at a moment's notice, and see without a doubt that everything was checking out just fine. We also knew that if anything started to go wrong multiple nurses would be there within seconds to check on her. However, whenever one of the values would go out of the acceptable range, an alarm would go off. It wasn't bad as far as alarms go - fairly soothing and benign, really. It was just the knowledge of what it meant that became stressful. Not all of the sensors were 100% reliable 100% of the time, so occasionally the alarm would go off for no good reason, and every time that happened there was a momen...

At some point while the nurses were tending to the baby, I realized that I hadn't even checked the gender. I walked over in the midst of everything, saw that it was a girl, and barely managed to tell Kim before we both got choked up about it. I think I had honestly been expecting a boy, but now I don't think I could imagine it any other way. After the nurses had been working on the baby for a few minutes, they wrapped her up in a blanket and brought her over to Kim. The baby was really pale, and not very active. Kim was only able to hold her very briefly, and it was pretty emotional. I was faced with a big decision - I felt like I really needed to stay with the baby, but I didn't want to leave Kim in what was going to be a really hard situation for her. I started to ask her what she wanted and she told me to go with the baby before I even finished. The baby was loaded up on a crib/table thing and I followed the nurses as they wheeled her down to the NICU. I remember t...

After we got the epidural done, things started getting better almost immediately. After 30 minutes, it had gone from something traumatic and distressful to a place where Kim was almost napping, she was smiling, and we were actually able to talk together and be excited again. It actually worked well, because Kim and I had time alone together, we could talk, and we had a reprieve from all the chaos for a few moments. After an hour and a half or so, it was time for Kim to get checked again. She was feeling contractions getting stronger, and she was starting to get the shakes, and I thought that the epidural had really gotten things going - and it turned out, Kim was almost entirely dilated. Karen (our midwife) told us that she was at 9.5 cm - we got things arranged, myself and Laura (the nurse, who reminded me of Megan Lawson and who was amazing) held Kim's legs, and Karen decided it was probably time to push. One of the most interesting things to me was how the process ...

I am a father. Our daughter was born March 3, 2012, at 2:13 in the morning. 3-3-12 @ 2:13. Interesting symmetry there - 3312213. We had no indication on Thursday night that Friday would be different from any other day. We thought Kim's water broke during the day Thursday, but she went in and got checked, and it was a false alarm. I had been stressing about grading and a lesson observation that I had scheduled for Friday morning, so I ended up staying up until midnight (as late as I've stayed up this semester). I was up early and out the door, and I got to Berthoud with a bit of time to spare. I got stuff set up for my demos (I brought in a bass guitar and some other stuff for wave demonstrations), got my printing and lesson plans set aside, and then about 2 minutes before the lesson started Kim called me and said that her water actually  did  break, and that yes, she was sure. Her contractions weren't bad and she hadn't talked to the midwife yet, so I said I w...