While Heather was pregnant, I started calling the baby “Lumpy” from Pooh’s Heffalump movie, even though neither Heather nor I had watched the movie. But the voice of “Lumpy” in the movie trailers always brought a smile to Heather’s face, so the name kinda stuck.

We picked up the movie the other day while we were at the store and watched it tonight. Here’s where it gets kinda freaky. In the movie Lumpy had the hiccups, and they sounded exactly like Savannah’s hiccups. And Lumpy’s little “call” sounds very much like Savannah’s little gassers!

The last line of the movie by Pooh was “you know we never really did capture a heffalump that day, it was more like Lumpy, um captured us.” You know, Pooh was right. Lumpy has captured our hearts the day we saw her.

Yeah, as weird as that sounds, it happened last night. Heather was cleaning around Savannah’s umbilical cord and it came off.. EWWW.. Not bad for being 8 days old. It doesn’t look infected or anything, but we’ll be sure to keep the area clean.

All three of us… thank God.. and doing great. We had a bit of a scare Friday at the hospital. I had left for the morning to go let Otis out and to grab a quick shower. Heather called me shortly after I left in tears, which naturally put me into freak out mode. Dr. D. came in to check on her and to remove the two pain medication leads that went right into her incision. Well, one of the leads broke off inside Heather. I finished up at home and raced back to the hospital to meet Heather as they were taking her to have a CT scan done to assess the situation.
The CT scan didn’t really help pinpoint the location/depth of the broken piece. Our doctor called the manufacturer to find out more information about this issue. They said it happens on rare occassions, at Good Shepherd hospital, Heather was the first to have this problem. The rep said it would be fine to leave the piece in there, but Heather’s doctors (and us for that matter) didn’t feel comfortable leaving the piece in there.
Surgery was scheduled for Friday afternoon, and was completed without any complications. They ended up reopening a small section of her original incision to get the piece out. Friday evening Heather was up and walking around with little or no pain/discomfort. We were still hopefull of hitting our Saturday release date.
Saturday morning, Doctor D. checked Heather and gave us the all clear to go home. YEAH!!!.. It was news that carried mixed emotions. Yeah, we’re going home.. but umm fear of having to care for the little one by ourselves.
We were released from the hospital shortly after noon on Saturday to head home with our new little angel. I’m not gonna lie, there were a few tears shed in the car ride home between proud poppa and momma. We got her home and the car unloaded and had a sense of “now what?” We just kinda chilled for the day. Heather’s mom stopped over for a little bit, which gave me a chance to run to the store. We went for a short “show off” walk around the neighborhood. Sheer exhaustion put us to bed early that night, and thankfully, little Savannah let us sleep most of the night. I think we got up about 3 times for diapers and feedings. The same held true for Sunday night as well.
It’s going to be nice being off work this week. It’ll give Heather and I a chance to kinda get in a routine with Savannah. The following week, I’ll be working from home in the morning, and then heading into the office for the afternoon. Heather’s not supposed to drive for two weeks, so having me here is really helpful.

Man, a lot has happened over the past few days. Almost all of it good. Let me recap the events that have taken place since I left off. In the last entry, Heather was still sitting there at 3 cm, and they were increasing her potocin IV every 15 minutes. The doctor checked her around 6:00 and she was still at 3cm. For the record, that was 12 hours of potocin with a 1cm dilation increase. Dr. said that a c-section was looking more and more like a possibility. The baby wasn’t in any danger so we decided to give her a little more time, by now they were pretty much pouring the potocin in with hopes it would speed things up. Her contractions were hanging steady around 50, with the occasional spike to 70, but we couldn’t get enough of the big ones together to push her over the edge. About an hour and a half later (7:45pm) the doctor checked her and she was stuck at 3 still. It didn’t look like we were going to get this baby out the usual way. Once the decision was made, it’s like a tornado came through the room. Within a matter of minutes, Heather was prepped and on her way to the OR, the grandparents were wisked away to the waiting room and there I was, left alone in the room in my fancy blue scrubs. Alone with my thoughts and fears. I realize that they wanted to move quickly to get the baby out, but both Heather and I didn’t really have time to absorb what was going on.

About 10 minutes later I got the call to come over to the OR. Walking in and seeing Heather all prepped for surgery had me worried, yet anxious to meet our new little baby. Doctor got things underway, with a few tugs and pulls here and there we soon heard the cry of our new little girl. Tears of joy on our faces, Heather and I made eye contact and I said to her, “Punkin, we got our little Savannah!” When I got the OK to come over and see her, she was absolutely perfect. It was love at first site… all over again. First it was with her mommy, this time with her.

The doctor said she was looking good. She had an APGAR score of 9-9 because her hands and feet were a little purple, but they’re fine now. I was torn between two ladies in my life. They said they were ready to take Savannah to the nursery, but part of me wanted to stay there by Heather’s side. Heather pretty much kicked me out of the operating room to go be with our little baby girl. I was with her for a bit in the nursery before going out to give the news to the waiting family. When I walked out, you could cut the tension with a knife as my mom & dad, Heather’s mom, Christina, and Connor all waited to hear what I had to say. Being the wise ass that I am, I gave them the thumbs up as I approached the door. I said “Heather’s fine, baby’s fine, I gotta go,” and started to walk away. They pretty much jumped me before I had a chance to move an inch. Once I gave them the news, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Including one very proud pappa!

Heather was still in the OR for a while as they finished up her surgery, so I was kinda bouncing back and forth between the nurses station and nursery checking on the two most important ladies in my life. Because it was pretty quiet in the nursery, I was able to bring the waiting family members in to view our little princess, even Connor got to see her (we snuck him in there).

Daytime tv still sucks. Heather’s still pregnant and I’m slowly regaining my lost sleep. Doris arrived shortly after noon and I gave mom a phone call with an update. Heather got her epidural right before Doris arrived and is feeling good. She’s about 3-4 and 80% when the doctor checked her.

Tammy’s still laughing at my comments, which is always a good thing. She’s getting a kick out of watching me try to get comfortable in the “daddy chair” in the room. I spoke with mom and she’s been keeping the rest of the family in the loop with updates. She and dad will probably be here sometime around 3:00ish. I feel kinda bad having them come over this early, there’s not much going on at this point. Heather’s finally comfortably now. Hopefully she’ll get some more sleep before the big event kicks off and takes all the energy she can muster together.

We’ve been here a little over three hours and I’ve already managed to snag a little nap. Hopefully I’ll be able grab another quick one before the show really gets on the road. Dr. D was just in about 20 minutes ago to check on how Heather was progressing. They started her on pitocin around 6:45 and have been increasing the dosage every 30 minutes.

Tammy, our L&D nurse, is great. She’s got a good personality and hasn’t kicked me out yet for making jokes. She’s our third backup cord cutter incase I’m passed out on the floor and Doris is crying too much to make the snip.

Heather’s starting to feel the contractions more and more now that they broke her water when the doctor was in. I slept for crap last night, maybe a solid 4 hours tops. I got up and went into the basement to fart around online for a bit to hopefully tire me out. Heather slept pretty good last night, I think her body forced her to sleep considering the task she’ll have to handle today. We’ve placed an order for two epidurals, one for her, one for me. I have a feeling we’ll only get one… oh well.

I called mom after the doctor was in to let her know how things were going. Of course she’s ready to drop everything and rush right in. I’ve been trying to explain to her that there’s really nothing going on right now so there’s no big rush. Doris went into the office this morning to get some stuff done. Might as well, not really anything to do here but watch tv or sleep. She’ll be over here probably sometime before noon.

One very odd observation I’ve made so far. Since we’ve been pregnant, we’ve been recording A Baby Story on the TiVo and watching them when there’s garbage on tv. The same holds true when you’re in the labor and delivery room at the hospital. I woke up from my nap and Heather was watching A Baby Story… Another observation I’ve made… daytime tv sucks ass. I’m glad I have a job to go to so I don’t have to watch this garbage all day long.

Not much else to say right now. Gonna try and grab some more zzz’s while I still can.