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3.30.2006
a note from paul harvey
okay, so, yeah, i guess we went and had a baby.
what's that? you want more details than that? oh. most of you probably know that val's original due date was march 28 -- just two days ago. there had been some talk between she and her doctor that maybe they'd take the baby a little early if things were moving along and val hadn't started into labor, like around the 17th or even as late as the 24th. i kind of had the feeling that nora, being the second child and having an older brother who arrived about ten days early, probably wasn't going to wait around for that, but what do i know? i get all my pregnancy information from what to expect when you're expecting and reruns of er and the cosby show. 17th comes and goes. doc says, nope, we're gonna still wait and see what happens. on sunday the 19th, val starts having contractions -- at 10:30 at night, and they're about five to six minutes apart, regular as a drumbeat. so we're up and getting things cleaned up, packed up, house arranged, trying to figure out whether to call my parents or to wake carl up or to call the hospital or what -- and then they start fading, from six minutes to eight to nonexistent, apart from the little "ouch!" i hear val utter every now and then as we're sitting on the couch and watching tv (but really more keeping an eye on the cable box clock, counting silently to ourselves.) no go; we give up and go to bed. "boy, it's a good thing we didn't call anyone and wake them up in the middle of the night," we say. tuesday night/wednesday morning (really 3:30 am wednesday morning), val sits up in bed and says "aaaaaa!" i am immediately awakened, and miraculously don't have a coronary on the spot. val says, "my water broke." this, of course, means it's game on. carl's still asleep? check. so we first call my parents, to have them come down to watch carl while we head to the hospital (an hour drive for them if they left at that moment, remember.) my mother answers on the first ring, her bright "hello?" sounding like she was answering telephones at 3:30 in the afternoon for a major multinational bank -- i am amazed at her ability to sound chipper, when my own voice sounds like steel wool on broken glass. "better get in the car," i say. call #2 -- ronda, as interim babysitter. we rationalize this one on the basis that peej is already awake anyway, having to be at work at 5:00. we are correct; she agrees to come over immediately. again, some last-minute cleaning and packing, including carl's suitcase of toys and things, val's hospital bag, me making sure i have cameras and paper and stuff (but, as i would of course come to regret later that evening, no clothes for myself). it's cold and a little icy outside, the last remnants of march's final snowstorm-that-wasn't, so we make sure we've both got warm coats and things. val's contractions have definitely started now -- they were about five minutes apart when she woke me up, and -- ulp -- now have gone to about three minutes. ronda arrives at about 4:15, we have a quick little conversation, load the car, and off val and i go to the hospital. note, for future reference, that we have to pass two hospitals, including the methodist behemoth known as riverside about eight hundred yards away from our house, on the ten-minute drive downtown to mount carmel west. the first obstacle: the traffic light at milton, which i think is owned and operated exclusively by residents on the other side of broadway, because no matter where you stop on our side, you can't trip it. it's, of course, red, and there isn't another car anywhere that i can see. why did i go this way?, i'm thinking, and contemplating actually getting out of the car to push the pedestrian crossing request button in order to change the light, when good sense strikes me and i just run the damn thing. (attention columbus police department: sorry.) this, as we will see, is a good thing. on to the slightly icy freeway, and i'm kind of driving slowly, barely getting to the speed limit, because i'm thinking to myself, now would be a bad time to get pulled over for speeding. this, as we will see, is also a good thing. we arrive at the hospital at 4:30 am. val's contractions are getting stronger, about two to three minutes apart. we walk to the door and are prevented from entering the hospital by the cunning addition of locks. yes, unless you're going to the emergency room, you can't get into the hospital at night. val, fortunately, seizes on the nearby emergency room entrance, and we just kind of breeze through the anteroom and into the hospital's guts. (in hindsight, i think they must have realized val was in the process of delivering and let her pass, because we didn't talk to anybody -- when i got locked out in the same way later that night [true!] i had to plead my case and show my little hospital id bracelet to a kind nurse who unlocked the interior doors for me -- because those are locked, too.) up to the sixth floor and we're in the maternity ward, the labor and delivery section. very quiet. we find the nurse's desk, get checked in, give them our id and insurance information. val's very calmly telling them, "yeah, they're about two minutes apart," so they take us down the hall to a delivery room. one of the nurses is hanging around; val disappears into the bathroom to get undressed, and i dump our stuff in the corner. val reappears wearing a hospital gown, and the nurse -- sally -- gets her situated in bed. she leans in to check where things are with the baby -- -- and it is at this point that all hell starts to break loose. because what we didn't know was that once those suckers sped up, they would really speed up, in both frequency and intensity, with lightning speed. didn't happen that way with carl, doesn't happen that way with most women, but apparently, nora june was pretty much done being cooped up. val starts kind of thrashing around. she's cogent and clear, but you can tell these new contractions are causing her a lot -- a lot -- of pain. she can only sort of keep still for the nurse to see about how far she's dilated. sally finally gets a guess off -- about seven centimeters -- and another contraction hits, hard. now there's a lot more thrashing and... not quite screaming, but maybe it's first cousin. sally trots over to the intercom, says "i could use a few more hands down here right now," and within seconds there's seven people in the room, doing... i dunno, medical-type things. contraction. this one's hard enough to actually get that scream, and my wife starts twisting. my hand is holding hers, and this is the moment when she starts with the fingernail-claw thing. one of the nurses is trying to get an iv into her arm, and she can't keep still long enough to let her. sally's trying to get val's history, and i'm having to answer most of the questions. one of the other nurses is moving the bed around, getting the stirrups up -- and now there's a shriek from my wife, who is freaking out, moving all over the place, death-gripping my hand, and basically trying to let us all know in no uncertain terms that this baby is coming out right now. "hold on, val, the doctor's right here, we're getting him in a gown now." (it's -- thankfully -- one of the other docs from val's ob's office, down there on someone else's behalf.) more of the freaking out. the nurse is still struggling to get that iv started -- just the needle part! -- and val is all arms and legs, almost struggling with us. i'm holding one arm, the nurse with the iv's on the other, there's a nurse to my right trying to keep her legs in the stirrups, we're trying to keep her calm, val is yelling "i have to push!" and we're all telling her "no, not yet, it's too soon", and i look at my wife and try to tell her i'm there, to breathe, we'll get through this together, it's gonna be all right, and i turn and look at the doctor and he's holding our baby. ...what? and then it's over. i hear the little cry as the doc checks her, and he says, "congratulations, it's a girl,", and they're cleaning her off, and val is quiet and okay and looking a little concerned but not really all the worse for the wear, and the nurse says "you've still got your lipstick on!" and they put nora in val's arms and we've got a daughter. it is now 4:55 am. we have been in the hospital for twenty minutes. so, let's recap, shall we? 3:30 -- water breaks. 4:15 -- leave for hospital. 4:35 -- check in to maternity ward. 4:55 -- have baby. they did get that iv in to val's arm, yes -- but they never actually got it hooked up to anything until, oh, about 5:10 -- and then it was just some saline. no epidural. no drugs (well, two motrin. that doesn't really count.) no serious complications (three stitches, i think he said.) two pushes. one baby. we emailed a phonecam picture to val's parents in hawaii -- my mother-in-law said, "well, that can't be them, it's way too soon." i called my parents to tell them the good news, and they were just pulling in to the driveway at the house. at 6:00, i looked at val and said, "so, what, do you want to go to bob evans after this for some breakfast?" we kind of stared at each other in disbelief at the... surreality of the whole thing, but there it was: we had a new baby. and now you know... the rest of the story. good day! 3.24.2006
what a good big brother
carl and nora
3.23.2006
hanging out on the boppy
bright eyes
home again home again jiggety jig
3.22.2006
nora's dark hair
hello world
nora june
3.21.2006
spring?
3.17.2006
sweetest office assistant ever!
 mar17_0002 i was worried how our impromptu day at the dayton office would go, but what a good boy to sleep peacefully while his mommy works! see, i told you he was my angel baby! 3.15.2006
greatest. prank. ever.
found via boingboing:
at last saturday's cal men's hoops season finale versus usc, bears boosters pulled a prank that straddles the fuzzy gray line between "crap-yer-pants hilarious" and "inexcusably cruel." go, read, and laugh yourself uncomfortably silly. also, more commentary from bruce schneier here. 3.14.2006
not getting a series 3 anytime soon, apparently
just saw this on pvrblog: tivo announced its new pricing plans for service the other day, and it's eliminating the lifetime service option entirely. if you buy a tivo from here on out, you'll have to pay some kind of monthly/annual plan...
bummer. magic
while perhaps a little blue in the language department, this bit from the new wonkette boys today is a) spot on and b) absolutely friggin' hilarious.
3.13.2006
trixie tracker
this one's totally for valerie, the woman who made her own detailed legal-sized excel spreadsheets to keep track of her blood sugar and the various things she ate and drank, back when she was first diagnosed with gestational diabetes:
trixie tracker. i'm not sure that i, personally, am that committed to charting sleep and poop schedules, but i could totally see my wife proudly putting a sleep distribution chart in the baby book next to that first lock of hair... picture 1 of 3
3.12.2006
picture 2 of 3
 mar12_0001 originally uploaded by valerie dahlberg. just one more picture to take with all three baby girls out and about! 3.10.2006
overlook
vaporization might be a better alternative
mer sends along this hilarious/horrifying story of how easy it might be to acquire a credit card in your name.
ye gods and little fishes. and they all lived happily ever after, the end.
3.07.2006
everyone in this room is now dumber
remember when everyone was all het up about justice kennedy doing his own research on the internets and citing international law in support of a supreme court decision?
what if he'd cited billy madison? my temps
temporary insanity
gus has been bugging me to blog this since it began saturday, but i like to know how a story ends first before blurting it out...
turns out that if you want to close on a home improvement loan you need to show your id, you know, so terrorists don't get funds to buy a furnace. and furthermore, they check to see if that id is, in fact, current. turns out mine was not. was not! it didn't expire on my 30th birthday as i thought - it expired last july - on my 29th birthday! this spiraled my saturday into chaos as i hurried to the closest bmv only to be told that since i had exceeded the 180 day grace period that my license was totally invalid and that i would need to present my birth certificate or valid passport (mine expired in october) and my social security card in order to get my temporary license permit. that's right ladies and gentlemen, i - at 29 years of age and 9 months pregnant - had to get my temps! my temps! then i needed to take the written exam and if i passed then i could take the driving test! stunned, i left the office as everyone in line turned around to stare at who was getting this horrendous news. i had called gus to bring me the check book (what establishment doesn't take credit cards these days!) so i climbed into his car, told him the whole story and proceeded to bawl my eyes out. he had told/scolded me it was a big thing on the way home from the bank in his most lawyerly voice. turns out he was right, as usual. i was pretty sure i had my social security card, but my birth certificate i hadn't seen since i applied for my passport so who knew where that was. after a horrible morning of tearing apart our files and every other place a memento could have been stored, i finally got a hold of my mom who quickly found both pieces. good thing. because if you don't have those pieces and the other pieces of id you may have are expired, you're screwed. the rules of what documents the ssa and the bmv will accept are totally inconsistent and are without clear logic once you get past your birth certificate and your official, original, authentic, signed when you were 9, social security card. the bad thing about your mom having your documents is that you 1. have to call her and tell her what stupid thing you've done and 2. she's married to your boss, who's already had it with your pregnant inaptitude, and who is repsonsible for your company car. i will never live this down. so i went yesterday to get my temps, seen above, and to the testing center across town to take my test. yeah, it's not really a written test, it's all done on a touch screen. it politely tells you the correct answer when you miss one, which is nice. i missed four of forty. not too bad, there are after all some pretty arcane driving laws. but now i know that taxis must stop at all railroad crossings. who knew? then this morning i went and picked up my poor grandmother so i could arrive at the bmv for my driving test with a licensed driver (and with a sick carl in tow) and the very kind woman who promised to work me in this morning took me out to my car. okay, start the car, left turn signal, right turn signal, now honk the horn - oh my god, it's a total flashback - then over to the cones!!! i'm not a bad parallel parker. but those stupid cones and their treacherous little white poles. i passed, by like an inch. she was even nervous, she just kept saying, "just don't hit anything, just don't hit anything." i told her not to worry but it was close. relieved, we started out on the driving test. i made one wide left turn because i couldn't remember if i was supposed to go to the closest left lane or the far right, but i'll take that 5 pts. because i hate it when people waiver in their driving decisions. but i didn't speed (among the reasons i failed my very first drivers test at 16) and she gave me a generously short test and stamped my paperwork. i took grandma home - legally - and went back over to my neighborhood license bureau with carl to get my real license. the picture on my temps was better, but i've not been so proud to hold that little card since i turned 21. so the moral of this story is, know your expiration dates and the location of all your documents, because all of us american patriots who have never had to worry about "having our papers in order" are in for an ever greater shock as we make these documents more complicated to get/keep and more intertwined into our every-day lives than ever before. story sub-moral, if something like this is to happen to you, hope that you're scary pregnant so that everyone is sympathetic and helps you do things really quickly so you don't go into labor on their watch. 3.03.2006
late entrant for the arnold classic
xxi
believe it or not, the first place i saw or heard about this was the volokh conspiracy:
here's the backstory. 3.02.2006
everyone nests in their own way
 now that the worst of my work duties are over, i've finally had time to really focus on the important part of preparing for our daughter's arrival. 3.01.2006
well i want it that way
ok, i admit gus's night of fire was really something... but this is my personal fave from google video.
(note guy on computer in background...) dear god my eyes
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