Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

I’m not sure why, but trying to figure out whether Toren looks more like me or Debi seems to be all the rage.  So, I figured I’d conduct a nice little scientific test.  Here’s Toren:

Here is parent #1 (blinded so no one is biased by the sex):

And Parent #2 (also blinded so no sex favoritism):

 Loading ...

First, a couple photos from the hospital.  Here is Toren sleeping with the cookies Debi’s family sent:

They may not have filled him up, but they kept Debi happy.

Here’s a shot of Toren’s first feeding and diapering sheet:

We were supposed to track every time he ate, what he ate, whether he had a wet or soiled diaper, etc.  You see that greenish brown stuff toward the upper left – yep, that’s from the 3-diaper change incident I mentioned in my previous post – he shot it all the way across the baby holder and on to the card. Should I be proud of him for that kind of defecating power?

Here’s one more that is more a memory of the hospital since we’re now home – the bracelets/anklets that we wore:

Debi had two, I had one, and Toren had two, with tags hanging off them.  We cut them off last night once we got home.

Speaking of coming home from the hospital… I periodically joke that Toren is more of a Morgan than a Cragun because he has some traits that Debi has.  First, he loves to sleep (hooray!).  Second, he hates to be cold – HATES IT!  And third, he hates any kind of change.  (Yeah, these are probably traits all babies behave, but Debi shares them while I don’t.)  So, as we got him ready to come home yesterday, we switched him into a new outfit.  He seemed okay with the new outfit: a short-sleeved onesy with animals on it.  Then we put him in his car seat and he went crazy!  I’m not sure he cried that much when they cut his foreskin off!  We eventually got him to calm down with a pacifier, but he still didn’t seem too happy.  We made it home before the final melt down.  The new outfit, car seat, and now new digs must have been too much for him.  Lucky for us, some swift feeding action combined with a swaddling got him resettled and he eventually calmed down.  Phew!

He seems to have now adjusted enough that I was able to snap a few photos today.  I put him down today after his early morning feeding.  His hands seemed a little cold, so I put some socks on them.  Twenty minutes later I found him like this:

Yep, socks on the hands not going to happen.

Later, after a feeding, I was able to snap a few shots with his onesy off.  It was the first time he’s been calm enough and warm enough to not freak out when he doesn’t have anything but a diaper on.  Looking at the photos now makes me want to caption them all with what he must be thinking.  You’re welcome to attempt your own captions:

Belly full, arms by my face, I can handle this!

I could wake up; let me think about that...

I call this next sequence: The Many Faces of Toren

Just wait to see what's in my diaper!

Nah, I don't wanna!

I'm the poop shooting champion of the world!

Meet the tip of my tongue!

We call this one "drunk baby". It's how he looks when he's completely full and ready to sleep.

Look, no teeth! (it's a yawn, actually; he's not crying)

The next few are a sequence that made me think he was telling a story, kind of like a comic strip.  So, try reading the captions that way:

Do you smell that? It's awful!

Well, it's really not that bad.

It's actually quite tolerable.

Doh! I was wrong - that's pungent!

You know what, I think that smell may be me...

Wowser! It is me! I stink!

Maybe if I act like nothing happened, no one will notice...

Okay, not the best comic strip, but what do you expect from a sleep-deprived father.

Here are a few other fun photos:

I shot this one then realized, “Wow, I’m a giant!”

We were trying to get him to show off his baby muscles in this one:

Yeah, no luck.  He’s a bit pear-shaped. It’s all good though – Debi loves pears.

And here he is napping.  It’s not the best picture, but I didn’t want to use the flash for fear of waking him up:

At some point I’ll post some pictures of Debi with Toren, but she hasn’t been willing to let me yet.

So, yesterday’s update was the scary one. Today’s is the fun one. Since we’ve recovered from the trauma a bit, we have had a number of first-time parenting experiences. So, hopefully this will offset yesterday’s post…

We decided to have Toren circumcised. That six-word sentence substantially minimizes the debate we had over this decision. I’ll spare you the details, but it literally came down to a 50/50 split as to whether or not we should circumcise him. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant circumcision, and since we’re science geeks, we didn’t know what to do (picture Spock trying to figure what to do when logic is irrelevant). So, we flipped a coin – heads we circumcise, tails we don’t. It was heads. Bye-bye foreskin.

Anyway, he was circumcised Wednesday, but he seemed to be doing okay with it. However, his penis was very sensitive (I can understand that!), which meant that every time we tried to change him for the first day or so after the circumcision, he would fight us and cry because we had to change the dressing on his penis. He’s getting a little better, but at the height of the pain I was in the middle of changing a dirty diaper but had failed to cover his penis, trying to spare him a little pain. Just as I put the new diaper underneath him, he let loose a torrent of urine. I obviously can’t be mad at him for doing what he needed to do, but it was an unpleasant surprise. The stream was pretty high, though, so maybe I should be proud of his urination skills (I’d say he had a good foot and half of clearance). But he did urinate all over the new diaper, his socks, his bed, and, since his carrier was right next to the couch I was sleeping on, he also managed to pee on my bed. Not too shabby for one stream!

This next story is even better. The diapers we’re using here at the hospital are Pampers. They have a cool stripe down the front that is yellow when it’s dry, but turns green when he’s wet. I looked down at his diaper after a feeding to see if he needed a change and it was green. No problem – wet diapers aren’t hard to deal with. I got my new diaper ready, slid it under, then pulled out the wet one. Just as I pulled it out, he launched a volley of feces right into the new diaper. He was lying there silently, almost as if he was daring me to get mad at him. Lucky for him he’s cute. I grabbed another diaper, slid it under, wiped everything up, then pulled out the newly soiled diaper. Just as I pulled that one out, he launched a second volley. This one had a bit more punch and volume – it covered the new diaper, but also managed to hit his receiving blanket as well. He was still lying there silently as if nothing had happened. I let him hang out there for a few minutes to finish up before I tried to get a third diaper on. Some day he’ll need to learn that looks can only get him so far!

Toren’s officially two days old! Here’s the rundown of what happened on the day he was born (starting the night before). NOTE: The rundown is a bit detailed and graphic, in case that’s a problem for you.

We were working in front of the TV Monday night around 7:30 pm when Debi felt something wet. It wasn’t much, but it made us a little nervous that maybe her water had broken. Since it was just a little bit at that point, we didn’t really think much of it. I went to bed around 11:00. Debi stayed up reading.

She came in to get me around 3:00. She started having minor contractions around midnight, but became very uncomfortable around 2:30. They were strong enough that she couldn’t speak and were spaced around 5 minutes apart on average. She recorded them for almost an hour just to make sure, then came to get me.

Once I was awake I recorded the contractions until about 4:30, when it was pretty clear that she met the criteria for being in first stage labor. We called the OB and she told us to go to the hospital. We took a quick shower, then arrived at the hospital at around 5:30.

We went to triage where a nurse got Debi settled and set up to the requisite devices to measure her contractions. The nurse seemed a bit skeptical as she knew we were first time parents and didn’t detect any amniotic fluid. By 5:50 or so the contractions were apparent on the monitor, but there was no more leakage… Then the dam broke during a particularly long and drawn out contraction! It was remarkable just how much fluid was in there.

The nurse’s skepticism disappeared at that point and they admitted Debi. They put in the epidural around 6:30 then we waited. She was dilating, but kind of slowly. It was slow enough that I ran home to pick up a few DVDs to keep us entertained. We turned on the first Lord of the Rings movie (Fellowship of the Ring) and were about 2/3 of the way through the movie when a nurse came in to check Debi’s progress (she was dilated to a 7 and about 90% effaced) and saw blood.

While it isn’t certain just what caused the gush of blood, the OB thought it might be a minor placental abruption (the placenta separating from the uterus). He didn’t like it, but he didn’t think it was a serious problem, yet. However, Toren’s heart rate did drop to below 110 and didn’t come back up. The nurse cleaned it up, but 5 minutes later it happened again. When the doctor saw that, his mind was made up – emergency C-section. The staff sprang into action and Debi and I got really worried. Toren’s heart beat was okay, but still low.

It took them about 20 minutes to get her prepped, then they led me to the OR. I sat next to Debi’s head and held her hand and rubbed her hair while they started the surgery. They had her pumped so full of liquids from the IV at this point that her jaw was shivering uncontrollably. The doctor gave us updates from the other side of the sheet, and in about 5 minutes Toren was out.

That’s when the terror started… A nurse took him to a station that we could see from our vantage point and worked him over. We couldn’t see very well, but we were waiting to hear him cry. He didn’t it. We heard her ask someone for an oxygen tube; for some reason it wasn’t hooked up already. It took them about 20 seconds to get it to her and then she had some issues getting it connected. All the while, we didn’t hear him cry.

A neonatologist suddenly appeared and that’s when Debi really got upset. The neonatologist started working him over, slipping a tube down into his lungs to clear them. All this probably only took 2 to 4 minutes, but to us it seemed like an eternity. We finally heard a faint cry, which was reassuring, but it wasn’t the wail we really wanted. Another minute later he was crying pretty good.

The neonatologist kept working on him, then they called for an incubator to have him sent to the NICU. It took a few more minutes for the incubator to arrive, but by the time it did, the neonatologist changed his mind. He decided Toren was good enough to go the regular nursery.

As the nurse carried Toren to the waiting incubator, she did pause long enough to let him give Debi a kiss on the cheek. He was aware, breathing fine, and not crying, which was reassuring. As the nurse taking him to the nursery was about to head out the door, she confirmed the APGAR scores – 2 (immediately after birth) and 8 (five minutes after birth). For those not familiar with APGAR scores, they are quick ratings of a newborn’s health that are useful for determining whether they need immediate medical attention. A 2 means he was in serious trouble. An 8 means he was fine. He improved rapidly, but it was still very disturbing.

I followed the nurse up to the nursery with Toren where they began to check him out more slowly. They kicked me out after about 5 minutes, which was kind of annoying. They told me to go find Debi’s recovery room and they would bring the baby when we had a room. The problem was that Debi was still in surgery, and now that I was out of my scrubs, I couldn’t go back in. I ended up sitting out in the waiting area for a good 45 minutes, unable to check on either Debi or Toren. I was getting really frustrated because there wasn’t anything I could do.

Eventually the hospital staff took me to the recovery area (not the recovery rooms) where Debi was just out of surgery and beginning to recover. She had to meet certain criteria before they would send her up to a recovery room. She did by about 4:00 or 4:15, but they didn’t give her a recovery room for almost another hour. By that time, it had been almost 3 hours since we had seen Toren and we hadn’t heard anything. I did sneak out just before we went up to the recovery room to check on him and he was sleeping soundly in the nursery.

Once we got to the recovery room, they did bring Toren, but they had already fed him a bottle of formula. They also explained that, because of the traumatic birth, he needed to be checked for his blood glucose level before every feeding, which meant a heel prick and blood draw. Due to some breast milk complications, we ended up giving him bottles of formula throughout the night, but his blood glucose levels remained below 40 (first ones were in the 20s), which meant he had to get checked before every feeding.

That first night was pretty miserable as we were up to feed him about every 2 hours and that meant calling the nurse, waiting to hear how his glucose levels were, then hoping they were above 40 so he wouldn’t have to have both heels pricked. He failed a couple of times, but finally rose above 40 Wednesday morning. By Wednesday afternoon his blood glucose was in the 60s and the pediatrician said we could stop the checks. We could finally start to relax when it came to Toren. The only other hurdle he still seemed to have (other than breastfeeding, which is a whole different issue which I’m not going to go into), was his hearing tests. His left ear passed the first time, but his right ear didn’t. It failed the second time too (he passed 2 out of 4 tests and you have to pass 3 out of 4 to be okay). His right ear finally passed Thursday (3 out of 4). So, he’s good.

By Thursday morning, the pediatrician said his weight was down to 6lbs 11oz, which means he has lost about 3 ounces is all. They don’t start worrying unless it increases to about 10% of his body weight. So, we’ll keep up the feedings and hope everything works out okay.

Debi is doing fine and I finally got some sleep last night. In fact, things were calm enough last night that we actually had dinner together in the room and finished watching The Fellowship of the Ring then went to bed around 9. We also had a few minutes to film Toren during a feeding. We were hoping to catch him making the little sucking face he makes when he is hungry, but it didn’t come out in the video below (and I forgot to render it with sound this morning when I ran home to shower), but it’s a cute little video so people can see that he’s okay. We particularly like his faces at the end:

Toren – eating in the hospital from Ryan Cragun on Vimeo.

Toren’s first video from Ryan Cragun on Vimeo.

Just so you know what’s going on, the lactation nurses here suggested we try this alternate feeding method so long as we want to continue trying to breast feed. Supposedly it helps (I’m a bit skeptical).

If all goes well, we should be home tomorrow.

Contractions started at 2:30. Water broke at 5:40. Epidural in at 6:40. Now we’re just waiting… :)