Melody, a birth retrospective (finally!)

Posted on January 3, 2010 by David

I’ve finally gotten enough sleep and have enough free time and hands to be able to type up a blog post. It’s been busy! It’s been sleepless! It’s been loud!

So here’s my attempt to ‘catch up’.

Melody’s Arrival

On the 19th I was in school for most of the day. I would leave early, but I had a test I had to take at 7:00pm. We had to go in the next morning and arrive at the hospital at 6:00am to start being induced. I took my test and left as early as I could, so I could get as much sleep as possible.

I returned home at 8:30 pm and had dinner with Jolene. I was ready for a sleep filled night to get ready for the next morning.

Only I didn’t sleep. I felt like a kid the night before Christmas, and tossed and turned. I only got 3 or so hours of sleep, when I sorely needed more.

We arrived at the hospital, and started the induction process. It took nearly an hour for an IV to be put in, so we had a late start. Waters were disturbed, and things went on their way.

Eventually, the pitocin started to be pumped in…

Jolene could only have so much at a time. When on one side, the baby’s heart rate would decrease when a strong contraction was had, presumably because the cord was getting pinched at these times. Because of this, we had to take things slow.

The entire process was pretty much what I thought it would be. I was calm, but tired throughout. The nursing staff at the hospital was amazing. We had several very kind staff members on hand throughout the delivery.

At about 8:15pm things started getting near the end. I was pretty calm throughout but at this point I started freaking out quite a bit (though I think I held it inside fairly well). The nurse that was the instructor for our birth class was the one who ended up coming on her shift and helping deliver. Our doctor waited for the moment to arrive, and was simultaneously delivering another baby in another room. Final arrangements were being made, the room started getting transformed for the event.

The suspense was huge. Eventually, pushing started. I decided to stay up near Jolene’s head rather than down at the business end of things. I figured that if I could be of any assistance it would be to my wife, not the doctors. That may be partially an excuse as well, since I was, as I said, freaked out a bit. Faster than I could have imagined the baby shot out and was planted firmly on Jolene’s chest. It was breathtaking, and ridiculously fast. My other thought was that she had a huge amount of hair for a baby.

They started checking her to make sure she was ok, and she scored fairly high on the ‘apgar’ scale. This is what measures the initial life signs of the baby, and is an indication as to how healthy they are.

She was then given to us. Grammy, the other ‘birth coach’s said hello to her, and I took as many pictures as I could to send out. The swine flu made this a 2 visitor maximum, so I felt like I needed to send pictures out via my iPhone to make sure everyone was included.

I finally sat down and really looked at her…

It was wonderful to finally meet her. We stayed in the hospital for an additional day as she was slightly jaundiced and they wanted to make sure she was ok to go home. She was, and we departed the next day. Spending the first night with the baby was exhausting, since she seemed to want to be up all night.

Melody has arrived!

Posted on November 22, 2009 by David

At 9:25 on November 20th: 8 pounds, 14 oz, and 21.5 inches long.

We’re exhausted, since we have had very little sleep. She’s a nocturnal baby, you see…

Here’s a link to pictures from her debut, and coming home

Swine Flu. Welp….

Posted on October 28, 2009 by David

This letter made Maddie cry and Ben upset…

… so I guess the only people that can be with the new baby are me, her mom, and her grandmother. In other words, Jolene and her two coaches. It’s sad that everyone can’t come, but at the same time… we’re not going to let it interrupt the happiness we feel.

Long Time no Post, Schoolings, Week 36

Posted on October 16, 2009 by David

I have every intention of keeping on posting here. I really do. I’m finding between work, baby preparations, and school that I’m lacking in time to do much of anything. Some of the things that have been keeping me busy are…

School

I’m set to register for my next semester, and am planning on taking:

Intermediate accounting – A logical extension to the first two accounting classes, I’m planning on going through my whole accounting book over winter vacation to prepare myself. It’s been a while since I took my accounting courses and want to brush up.

Managerial cost accounting – Standard cost systems for processes, basically budgeting and costs for systems used in business. I’m pretty sure this focuses on the internal users of accounting info, rather than public documents.

Federal Tax Accounting I – Required for the CPA exam, should I choose to take it. This one I’m not really thrilled by, but I want to make sure I’m prepared just in case I want to go down that road.

SAP in Business – I’m an accounting information systems major, so I think I should concentrate on, well, accounting information systems. This is optional but I would think it would be mandatory for this major.

Visual Basic Programming – I’m taking python, have taken java, dabbled in php and perl, so this should be fairly straightforward. This language lets you make quickie applications to handle a wide variety of needs on the windows platform, and I have no experience in it.

Baby School

We went to baby school! Last weekend we got to go and sit in the womens health center at Bay Medical Center. I got to learn about all sorts of things, such as:

The ‘Ring of Fire’ (poor Johnny Cash)
Weird electrode looking things they hook up. One of them gets ‘drilled’ into the babies head!
Techniques for handling the contractions
Aftercare for the baby
How Bay Med handles things, procedurally

Afterward, we went on a tour of the birthing facilities. It’s on the third floor of the hospital, and is actually very nice. They have a fridge, hardwood floors, and a general ‘apartment-but-not-really’ vibe. Basically as ‘homey’ as they could get in a hospital. More excitingly, they have WiFi throughout! Might be nice during some downtime, if there is any.

At the end we got our prize:

We sure are certifiable!

I do feel better now that I’ve seen the hospital. I was a bit anxiety ridden beforehand.

Week 36

Jolene is doing well, but feeling ‘very pregnant’. She has developed a ‘pregnant waddle’ as she walks now. We’re coping, but the whole thing tires her out. The baby feels neat when she moves, but you can tell she’s getting more and more cramped in there. She doesn’t ‘hit the walls’ as much as she did, since she has little room to do so. She does shift around a lot. It’s pretty neat to feel her feet or whatever sliding around in there. All that’s really happening is that the baby is fattening up.

As an aside, I had a bit of an issue, but am now fully vaccinated against all flu viruses. The CDC wants the families of newborns to form a ‘cocoon’ around the newborn. The people at the CMU health department didn’t understand at first, but after repeated visits they gave in.

Weeks 32-33, He-Beastie Birthday

Posted on September 27, 2009 by David

It’s been busy. I’ve gotten about half of my Python programming class completed, and have recently taken my first tests at CMU. It seems like if I’m not driving to and from school, I’m doing homework or work or some other thing that keeps me from posting. Yesterday we went to the CMU Vs Akron football game, for example. Since we’re not going to be able to make the homecoming game because of childbirth classes, we took the kids to see their first CMU game before we wouldn’t be able to. It was lovely, and rainy throughout the entire game. I think only I and the she-beastie enjoyed it. No pictures, since it was so very wet out.

Weeks 32-33

Jolene is doing well, though she has acquired some of the more common issues that a pregnant woman has. Braxton-Hicks contractions are NO FUN in the middle of a soccer field, behind the CMU Kelly/Shorts Stadium.

We’ve delivered our birth plan to the baby’s doctor. It’s such a detailed document and contains stuff that… I couldn’t believe was on there. Jolene doesn’t know, but I scribbled “I want to wear a grass skirt to deliver the baby” on the bottom of it before handing it to the nurse. What a surprise that will be!

I guess right now the baby is between 4-5 pounds, and is starting to get more normal looking skin colors. She’s putting on weight, and generally making mom uncomfortable. Also, she’s losing the wrinkly “alien looking” skin texture. Which is good, because the alien birth look is so 90′s.

The he-beastie turned 10!

He is now officially a double-digit individual. He had a birthday party with family all coming over to have lasagna and give him his presents. I missed half of the entertainment, having class through the beginning of the dinner party. No pictures here, but he made off quite well. It almost makes me want to turn 10 again. It was nice having everyone over all at once, even if our house is so tiny.

We have these wonderful friends that live in our computers!

Posted on September 20, 2009 by Jolene

Yesterday, we had a get-together with a few friends that we met on a message board. Most of them, we have met in person before, but a couple we had not. We feel very blessed to have these people in our lives. Even though our face to face contact is rare and brief, we consider them very dear friends.

These amazing and generous people threw a little shower for our little lady! Heather and Kate did the planning! Kate and Bill got to the chinese restaurant early and decorated everything. She brought an adorable cake!

She even brought clay so that everyone could play a shower game. Everyone had to make little ‘clay babies’ and I had to pick the winner! My friends are not artistic. Not with play-doh, anyway. The results were HILARIOUS, though. Nothing like a roomful of grown adults playing with clay!

They traveled from all over the state. All the way from Kalamazoo, Detroit, Muskegon, Lansing, Grand Rapids and even Alpena! And they brought the baby-beastie gifts! David even got his man-bag diaper bag! LOL (this was a big concern for him- Thanks again, Jim! LOL)

I just want to thank you all, again. I don’t think I could possibly thank you all enough. It meant SO much to us.

CMU Week 3, Baby Week 30-31, Beasties Week 1 at School

Posted on September 11, 2009 by David

CMU

Things are going well at college for me – things are getting routine. Instead of bringing my GPS with me to Mt Pleasant, I’ve started leaving it at home. I figure the iPhone can handle anything I need to find anyway.

Supply Chain Management: I can now say that I don’t think this is something I’d like to do for a career in the future. It’s gone past the first chapter introduction information and has moved on to ratios and the like. Nothing mindblowing, but the way it’s presented is not the way I would think if I were in the situation in the business world.

Python Programming: I’m 40% complete with the classwork, and have been doing it from home mostly. I plan on hopping in for some assistance on the next chapter though, some of the syntax in this language is a little off. This is somewhat challenging since I’m basically teaching myself.

Financial Analysis: Easy so far – still doing annuities and perpetuities and the like. So far it’s mostly been review. I had to buy a calculator since my graphing one isn’t what the book is based on. I’m not really that pleased with the BA-II calculator as it’s kinda janky in the way that it requires input. Then again, I didn’t want to use the graphing one because it too has a bad input method for uneven cash flows and other finance items. Stuff like this, but longer since this is a small example: NPV(12,0,{100,200,300,400,500})*1.12^5. Yeah, I don’t want to do that on a test.

Marketing Management: I’m enjoying this class more than I thought I would. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. I recently received the outline of the final project and started compiling data for my company, Urban Outfitters. Everything is group-work based in this class so far, it seems. As a veritable hermit, that’s challenging.

Integrated Business Experience: SAP. So we’ve started to use the industry leading Enterprise Services product. I’m actually very excited about this class. Good experience with this product is very marketable.

Week 30-31

She now weighs about 3 pounds, and is starting to become quite the boxer. I can now sit back and watch Jolene’s stomach’ jump’ at me. She’s regularly kicking, both her brother in the head as well as my hand. The baby is gaining weight still, and this is making Jolene more uncomfortable. She’s dealing with it well, however. We also got a new Pack n’ Play (thanks mom and dad!). It’s got some rather unique features. Putting it all together felt like I was a soldier putting together an M-16 for the first time – it was harder than some of the content of the classes listed above. It comes with a vibrating device and a light as well, plus changing table, plus a napping pad. This is really what we need, given our little area we have.

Beasties 1st Week at School

The other two beasties had a successful first week at school.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever David, I’m off to school…”

I didn’t get to hear much from the kids since I’ve been going to school during the times that they’ve been getting out. All of the exciting news gets simmered down by the time I hit the house. I missed both of the orientations because of school too. Things seem to have gone well though, and adjustments have been successful: Ben for not having his sister at school with him for the very first time, and Maddie for going to a new, more grown up school.

More pictures here…

Overall, everything is going exceedingly good, but also exceedingly busy.

A big day for my big girl!

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Jolene

Probably nearing 2 years ago, I made a deal with Madalyn. If she stopped sucking her thumb, I would let her get a couple streaks of color put into her hair. At the time, she wanted purple. Off and on, she would try different methods to ‘earn’ her hair-do.

This summer, Maddie went away to camp for the first time. About a week before she left for camp, I went to say goodnight and saw her put an X on her calendar. I asked what the X’s were for and she told me that she put an X on every day she didn’t suck her thumb. There were 2 straight weeks of X’s. I started paying attention during the day and peeking in on her after she was asleep, and sure enough… no more thumb sucking! She decided that making new friends at camp was SO important that she didn’t want to risk anyone making fun of her because she sucks her thumb.

About a week after she got home from camp, she reminded me about our deal. I tried to talk her into coloring her hair pink, but she wanted to go blond! We decided to wait until just before school started so it would still look good for her first day of junior high.

Today was the day. We had 4 “peek-a-boo” blond highlights put in under the top layer of hair. When she puts the sides up, you can see 4 definite streaks. When the top layer is down, you can see a few lighter strands, but it just looks like she spent a lot of time in the sun this summer. We thought about putting the highlights on the top layer, but then they would show roots when they start growing out. This is a one time deal. Mom isn’t paying to do this on a regular basis!

So… today, we headed to the local beauty school.

She was so excited. It turned out exactly as I hoped. Enough blond that the grown up girl is happy, but hidden enough that I don’t have to admit that she is old enough to have highlighted hair!

Baking with Ben

Posted on August 30, 2009 by Jolene

For the past couple of months, Ben has wanted to make Chocolate Chip Muffins. He had never had chocolate chip muffins… but he just KNEW they were going to be good.

I looked around for a recipe for him, and found one- I won’t post it because it wasn’t good enough that we will ever re-use it… but he was a happy, happy boy. His sister was away at camp so he had the kitchen and mom all to himself. This is rare- with Maddie wanting to be a pastry chef… she thinks she’s an expert already and constantly bosses him around.

I was able to sit back in my chair with my camera and let him go to town. I offered advice if I saw he was about to do something that would kill the muffins (tablespoon instead of teaspoon kind of stuff) and take pictures.

They turned out exactly as they should have- they had cinnamon in them and I think that none of us were fond of that- but they were edible.

And not one picture of the finished product… We were too busy eating them while they were warm!

Vacation is nearing!

Posted on June 9, 2009 by David

I bought myself some chineese food today, and as always there’s great wisdom in the cookie:

fcookie

Sounds good to me! Think they mean the Mississippi? Here’s our vacation route:

The first leg of the trip will bring us to Chicago, where we have pricelined a hotel room for dirt cheap just 1 block off of Michigan Avenue, where we’ll be shopping.

The second leg of the trip will bring us to just outside of St. Louis. We’ll be staying at an upscale hotel there for, again, dirt cheap. The town is Collinsville, and is just oustide of St. Louis. It’s the home to the largest ketchup bottle. I will make it a point to visit there before we head to the arch.

The third and final leg will bring us south of St. Louis through to Branson, Missouri. We’ll be staying at the same timeshare we were at last year – it should be amazing.

The Cooke Family Website

Category Archives: Beasties