The Birth of a Blog

Olivia loves kissing Jake every chance she gets

My initial intent was to sit down and write this post over a month ago.  I was hoping to take you on a blogging journal with me as we prepared for the birth of our second child.  However, being the Tech Geek that I am I couldn’t just sign on to a free blogging service like Tumblr, Posterous, Wordpress.com, or a plethora of other services.  With different limitations to each I decided to host my own blog which wound up requiring much more work than originally anticipated.  So, I hosted a server with Bluehost and installed Wordpress.  Finally, a month later I’m posting my first blog.  Well, we now have our second baby so maybe I can start where I intended too…

My parents were coming out to visit for 2 weeks as the due date was firm, September 2nd.  Susie had a planned c-section given that’s how Olivia was born.  We had a few days until the big day and were excited about spending time with the family.  Susie’s family was to come out the day before the birth.  We were all set or so we thought…

Sunday, August 30th 2:00am PST…I awoke to the sound of Susie calling my name.  I’m a very heavy sleeper so the fact that her calling my name on the 10th try working was actually quite a feat in itself. Startled and tripping out of bed I rushed to the sound of her voice which happened to be in the bathroom.  She was bleeding!  I was sooo scared and it brought me back to the time she was bleeding with Olivia’s pregnancy. However, this was different because we knew she had Placenta Previa back then and this pregnancy was cleared for that.  After rushing my parents back over to the house to stay with Olivia, Susie and I sped over to the hospital.  Fortunately, for us this was less than two miles from our house.  Of course, I took the opportunity to run as many red lights as I could knowing this might be my only opportunity to have such a legitimate reason of doing so.

After spending 8 hours in the hospital waiting to be seen by the Dr. (apparently he had Sunday mass to attend to) we learned that the bleeding may have been caused by Placental Abruption where the placenta is actually tearing away from the uterus.  The decision was made to have the baby then.  We had not known the sex of the baby as Susie wanted it kept as a surprise, in fashion with the terms of Olivia’s pregnancy.  I wanted a boy since we already had our baby girl.  Of course, I figured it would be a girl though if nothing but the simple fact that I wanted a boy.  Susie felt it was a girl and I figured I’d be destined to hanging out at Sephora and Victoria’s Secret the rest of my fatherhood.  We had only 1 boy name picked out (the same name we had for Olivia had she been a boy) and about 7 girl names we couldn’t settle on.

Sunday, August 30th, 12:04pm: Jake Henry was born 8 pounds, 8 ounces and 21″ long!  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  Waiting in anticipation for the birth of our child I was snapping pictures (when the Docs said it was appropriate to do so).  I knew I’d be delivering the news of what we were having to Susie as that’s how we planned it.  When the baby came out all I could see was “the boys“ and I was sooo elated!!  ”We have a boy, We have a boy!!”  Susie remembers me telling her that I got my boy and I’m done!  She talked about having more than 2 children and I guess I was so happy that I knew I had one of each that it completed things for me.  The talk of a 3rd one will have to remain on hold at this time…

Over the next 3 weeks as I was out on paternity leave our families came over to help out every day.  They were very supportive and although there was a lot of chaos and commotion it was nice to have family close by.  Adapting to little Jake has been easy. Partly because we’ve done this before but also because we wanted him so badly.  Olivia just loves her little brother!  She kisses him all the time and we haven’t noticed any jealousy at all.  That might be due to the fact that she was only 16 months old when he was born or the fact that she’s naturally very loving.  She’s always going up to strange kids and trying to hug and kiss them.  Sleeping is as you’d expect.  It’s apparent the stark difference in needs between Jake and Olivia at this point.  I’m really focusing on Olivia’s needs at this point given how impressionable she is at this age and the fact that Susie has been mainly taking care of Jake with the feedings, etc.  Susie recovered incredibly fast!  She lost 26lbs in just 6 days after giving birth.  Granted her 13 mile swim across the Monterey bay, 26 mile bike ride through Pebble Beach and the 6 days of starvation did help I think it’s still pretty good.  Okay, so none of that is true.  What is true?  The fact, that I’m still fat!!  I gained weight right along with her and have I lost anything? The only thing I’ve lost is the ability to wear my pants!  Oh well…it’s taken me a lot of work to get this way, I just can’t get rid of it…to do that would be to disrespect all the heavy eating and lounging I’ve been doing over the past year.

My intent of the blog was to be able to share what’s happening in our lives with friends and family as well for me to have an outlet for my thoughts and feelings.  As many of you know I have a lot on my mind… not because I’m busy but just because I think of a lot of stuff all the time.  But it’s dumb stuff you say? Well yes, that’s true but it’s still clogging up my little brain and you never know something I might say may just be worth hearing…well not hearing unless you’re reading this out loud.

On that note, I’m hoping to post a blog at least once a week if not more.  As you can tell I also have pics and some of our latest videos here as well for you to enjoy.  Please leave comments as you wish on our site as we’d love to hear from you guys.  Until next time…