I'm a daddy!

Daddy's Log Stardate 03.14.2011 13:37 hours

After a short 5.5 hours of labor, Hot Mama delivers the best looking baby I've ever seen in my life!  Of course he is, because he's ours!  Seriously though, he's a good looking kid.  At 9 pounds and 5 ounces, Junior cannot be compared to any of the "Fruits of the baby" fruits in my previous post, but since they stopped at a baby weighing around 8 pounds, I think I'll make up my own fruit, and I pick a Smith County Watermelon!  Man, summer can't get here fast enough for one of them!

There aren't many babies born 3 months old out of the womb, and I'm totally proud of Hot Mama and the job she did!  The Doctor told us a few seconds after he was born, "This baby is gonna be reading by tomorrow!"  HA! 

I was totally nervous about experiencing the whole labor and delivery thing, but I have to tell ya, it was one of the most increadible things I have ever witnessed and something I'll never forget!  That baby came out my favorite color...purple!  How cool is that?  Maybe thats why kids like Barney so much?  I had the honors of cutting the umbilical cord!  Let me tell ya, that thing is stout!  It took me 3 cuts to get that thing fully cut!  I wished I had some line that strong when I go fishin!  After cutting the cord, they put Junior under the heater and on the tray and he went from purple to normal in a matter of minutes...it was unbelieveable!  Standing there looking at something that God created through me and Hot Mama (mostly His and her work!) I was just speachless...all I could do is say, "Heyyyy"...."Heyyyy"  After a few more minutes, I had him holding onto my finger and opening up his eyes for the first time and seeing me for the first time...my face started hurting from smiling so big!  Junior checked out to be in the 90% percentile or better as far as size measurments.  (length, 22 inches, weight 9 lbs 5 oz and head size, I don't recall what this was)

Later that afternoon we move over to the post pardom room and anxiously await to see our new creation again!  (He was getting checked out by the nursery)  After we saw Junior for the first time, we all 3 hung out together for about an hour, then they took him away for about 4 hours!  Not fun!  Junior was now all wrapped up and swaddled and cuter than earlier!  Man...if this kid keeps this up, he's gonna be a looker!  Look out ladies!   :-) 

Later that night, Junior and I had the most increadible experience!  I was sitting down and holding him and we just stared at each other for about an hour....I could literally see my reflection in his eyes...I cried some, grinned even more, and started telling him about the fishing trips we were going to be going on.  He's totally psyched about catching his first bass....he told me....right after he said "da da" (all within 1 day old)  The kid's pretty smart!  ;-)  How can you not feel God's love when you are staring at God's creation through you?  I had no idea that I could love Hot Mama any more than I did, until that moment.  Junior is now a bond that we'll always have and always share and noone can take that from us!

The one thing that I didn't really have sunk in was the fact that he's gonna want to wake up every 2-3 hours to eat and have a diaper change!  There is no waiting for that to happen!  I mean it's have a baby, then boom! cry, eat, potty, sleep, cry, eat, potty, sleep....Oh my gosh, the first poopy diaper...

So this is how it went down....Junior has been very very gassy since we have had him and feeding him and we'd hear that boy poot and poot and poot, and I'm talking if you had your arm or hand around his booty while he pooted, you felt it and it felt like poop....but it wasn't!  So, about 3:45 am....a little over 12 hours old....Junior had just been put back down to sleep after a nursing and Hot Mama and I were basically asleep and I hear a sound that sounded like a small cannon going off in the distance....I'm talking it was a noise that scared me and made me totally dread checking him out.  After my delirious mind thought, "My gosh, that's got to be a poop," Hot Mama said, "I think that's gonna be the first poop!"  So, I get back up, check that diaper and WOW, the first thing that I felt was pride that my son could have a poop like that, but then I remembered, the first diaper change honor was given to me.  (I think I got conned into this too....that Hot Mama is sneaky sneaky!)  ;-)  The great thing was, the first poop didn't stink at all!  Can I hear a Halleluiah!?  No stink, but major nasty, and a total blowout....what a way to be introduced into diaper changing!

So, I do all the stuff and wipe Junior down and am wiping him down with the wipes and whizzzzzzzzzzz!!!!  Are you kidding me!?  I'm getting peed on with the first diaper?!?!?  uuugghhhhh!  Unbelievable!  Not only did he pee all over the changing table(not me), the pee stunk so bad I about gagged!  I had to get my shirt and pull it up over my nose!  Hot Mama is over in her bed dying out laughing at me and I'm hoping to not be the first daddy to ever have pass out from the smell of pee!  Isn't that weird?  Poop didn't stink, but the pee bout knocked me out....literally!  So...I get him wiped off again, settled and good to go!

The next day, I'm changing my second diaper and guess what?  I'm definitely not fast enough for this peeing thing...Junior is 2 for 2!  Luckily it didn't come up on me....diaper #3, he did it AGAIN!  Ok...so what in the world is going on here?  Hot Mama is laughing and I'm wondering why he's only peeing while the diaper is off?  Hot Mama's sister has been down to help (She's had 2 recent babies of her own and been a tremendous help by the way) and she finally tells me a trick.  "When you pull back the diaper, blow on him...doing that stimulates him to maybe pee again."  She told me, "When you wipe him down with those cold wipes, thats whats makeing him pee again!"  Ahhhhhh, I see, said the less than a 2 day daddy!  So, I get the 3rd diaper change and blow twice for good measure and wait a few seconds and start changing him....get the wipes out and BAM, 3 for friggin 3!  This time there was some pressure built up and I had to put my hand up to block it so it wouldn't go on our table!  I gotta admit, I was impressed with the pressure of a 1 day old...but this blow on him thing didn't work!  I finally got a diaper change without pee going everywhere....you gotta be quick on them boys!

2nd night and the waking up thing is getting to me....I'm dragging, and I wake up the next morning with my face stuck to the pillow because of my slobber....I was friggin tired! 

In being a daddy for 2 WHOLE days now, I think my experience is definitely not green anymore, a few times yellow, and I'm sure I've got many things to learn....what I do know is, I'm so excited to be a daddy and learn about Junior and see him smile and play with him and I hope I get in a few more times of staring at each other before he gets too old to do that.  Looking at your child eyes and having him stare back at you is a completely humbling blessing from God that everyone deserves to have. 

Hot Mama is doing great and recovering well and Junior is doing great as well.  He's a little Jaundice, which means he's a little yellow and the liver is having a little trouble catching up and doing its job of converting something I think....so we are having to put a biliblanket on him to help catch up the liver. It's a pad that has some type of light that helps the liver process the way it's supposed to and get out all that bad stuff.  Junior looks like a little glo-worm with that thing in his gown or onezy. Jaundice is common in babies, but Junior sure doesn't like laying on that pad...he just can't get comfortable on it and this is when I realized that my compassion and love for my kid was volcanic....I wanted to lay on that thing for him, but I couldn't, and that really bothered me.  So I held him and let that pad lay on his back and he seemed to be much better with it that way. 

I love Hot Mama, but I'm definitely in love with my boy too.  Maybe I'll give Hot Mama some slack for "conning" me into having this baby ;-)...and maybe I really was conned after all...life is great and all these comments of "your life will never be that same" make me want to say, "bring it on!"  ;-)