Studio711.com – Ben Martens

I was told many times, “You can’t prepare for fatherhood” and my joking reply would be, “Great, then I’m not even going to try.” That was sort of true, but even though I don’t think we went nuts planning for parenthood, I did have some expectations. And they were wrong.

The biggest one is probably how often a baby eats. I had heard that 2-3 hours between feedings was normal. Ehh that’s not so bad, right? Well, what I didn’t know was that the clock starts as soon as they start eating. So out of that 2-3 hours, take out 20-30 minutes for the actual feeding, some more time for changing a diaper, and then more time for trying to get him to fall asleep again.

Lots of people told us to “sleep when he sleeps.” Sure, that’s a good idea, but the flip side is that we’re awake when he’s awake, even if it’s 2am. And we’re so used to sleeping once per day for 7-8 hours that sleeping in 1-2 hour segments for weeks on end is really draining! Thankfully Tyla has usually been able to take an afternoon nap with Elijah and I’ve been known to stumble down to my car for a quick 15-20 minute nap in the parking garage at work. I’ve resisted adding up how much sleep I’m getting each night because I think that would make me even more tired.

There have been many times since Elijah’s birth that I’ve thought about the Mark Lowry comedy skit “it came to pass.” He says his favorite Bible passage is “And it came to pass…” When Elijah is screaming in the middle of the night for an hour straight and we can’t figure out what’s wrong, I remember that it’s going to pass. When we’re trying to drive him somewhere and he’s so unhappy in the backseat, I know it will pass. And when he’s snuggled up to me sleeping peacefully, I enjoy it because it’s going to pass!

Today is Elijah’s one month birthday which means that Tyla and I have successfully kept another human alive for one month. (That reminds me of another great comedy skit, this time from Kermit Apio.) The last month has had it’s hard times, but overall I feel like we’ve had it pretty good. Elijah is generally well-tempered and we can usually figure out why he’s crying to get him happy quickly. He’s eating well and gaining weight at a great pace. Every time I look at him, I’m filled with immense pride and excitement for the adventures we’ll have together in the years to come. I love you little man!

By far the most common comment Elijah receives is about his hair. We were curious where it came from, but when Mom arrived she cleared it up. Apparently I had a full head of hair when I was born too. I don’t know if a full head of hair is hereditary, but if it is, this explains where it came from. Here’s a side by side of Elijah and me:

On Friday the 14th, we had one of our regular OB appointments. Tyla was 9 days past her due date and while the fetal heart monitor tests were looking pretty good, her amniotic fluid was dropping quite a bit. The plan was that if she hadn’t gone into labor by Sunday morning, she’d come in to start the induction process, go home for 24 hours and then go in Monday to really get the ball rolling. When our OB ran that past the on-call doctor for the weekend, he wasn’t comfortable based on the day’s test results. He wanted to get the induction started sooner.

So on Friday night, we checked in to the hospital at 7:30, and after a couple hours of paperwork, they started her on Cervidil. She was hooked up to a fetal monitor and a contraction monitor. We finally fell asleep around 12:15 but 45 minutes later, the nurse came in and asked if Tyla was feeling the contractions. “What contractions?” The nurse said they were moderate and was really surprised that Tyla couldn’t feel them since they were clearly visible on the monitor. (She had been watching the screen out in the hall.) She seemed a little concerned about how the baby was reacting and asked Tyla to roll on her side a bit. She said Elijah’s heart rate was dropping quite low after each contraction and staying low which indicated that he was not handling it well. She said she need to call the doc and when she reached for the oxygen mask I scurried out to the hall to call our doula.

By the time the doc arrived about twenty minutes later, the nurse told us she was pretty sure that Tyla was heading for a c-section. After 30 hours of natural labor and birth classes, this was quite a blow to our plan. We tried all the lines of questioning that we had learned, but the answer was always the same. There was no choice to make the doctor was pretty convinced that no matter how labor started, this was going to be the result and that if we hadn’t been on the monitors, it would have ended very badly.

As we were trying to resist signing any papers, our doula walked in. The doctor had seen her in the hall and brought her up to speed before she walked in  so when she saw us she confirmed that we really did need to do this to save our baby’s life. Doulas aren’t cheap and over the past few months, we had gone back and forth on whether or not it was worth it. With that one single answer, she made that whole fee worth it. Here was someone who specialized in helping mom’s through natural births and avoiding medical interventions whenever possible, but she was fully convinced we needed this procedure.

Once we stopped digging in our heals and signed the paperwork, everything kicked into high gear. About 1:30am they were prepping Tyla for surgery and wheeling her off. The doula and I got into our protective gear and went into the operating room with Tyla. I held her hand as the very nice anesthesiologist got her started on the epidural and then I stayed right by her head as they started the procedure around 2:25am.

At 2:39am, Elijah left the womb and was officially born. His first act was to let out a nice stream of poo as they carried him over to the warming table to clean him off and take some measurements. He was letting out a very healthy cry when the doula reminded me that this was my baby and I could touch him and talk to him. It was easy to forget in the room full of sterile equipment and gloves. Now I don’t know if this was coincidence or not, but as soon as I leaned over to touch his chest and said “Hi Elijah, I love you” he immediately stopped crying. It was incredible and I was a ball of tears. Of course he started crying again, but we shared an amazing moment.

Within a couple minutes they had finished their tests so I picked him up and held him wrapped in a blanket. We took him the 10 feet back over to Tyla and held them close together. She started feeling a bit sick, and since the baby was out, the anesthesiologist had a full suite of medicines to work with. He turned some knobs and she felt a lot better very quickly.

It took about 30 minutes to get her sewed back up and wheeled back to the room. We laid naked Elijah on Tyla’s bare chest and got that valuable skin-to-skin contact. For a solid hour they sat like this as Elijah rooted around on his own trying to start his first breastfeeding session.

With a c-section, they want you to stay in the hospital for 48 hours so we didn’t leave until Monday morning, but the time was well-spent. Elijah didn’t really feed the first days but everyone told us that was very normal for c-section babies who take a little extra time to clear the amniotic fluid out of their system. Once he was through that phase, the lactation consultants made regular visits to our room to help Tyla get started with breastfeeding.

We haven’t decided if we’ll have more kids, but if we do, I can almost guarantee they will be delivered at Evergreen. It’s routinely ranked as one of the best places to have your baby and it’s easy to see why. Every nurse, doctor, pediatrician, and lactation consultant that we met were incredible people that hold a special place in our hearts. Whenever we had a question about anything, we’d hit the call button on the bed and not only would someone come answer the question, but it would be somebody who specializes in that exact question. The breadth of knowledge and resources at our fingertips was astonishing.

Elijah’s birth was not at ALL what we had planned except for the end result: a healthy mom and baby. And what else really matters? God’s guiding hand is abundantly clear in how this played out and we couldn’t be more thankful.

I’ve been writing on this site every week day for almost the last 11 years, but I could seriously see that streak being broken soon. I knew that a newborn was a lot of work, but wow, this isn’t what I expected! He’s a great kid and is doing very well, but the goals I have to set for myself each day are TINY. Thankfully Mom and Dad are staying with us for a bit and have been an enormous help keeping the house from falling apart and giving us some breaks so we can get some sleep. I’ve been trying to add up the little bits of sleep that I’ve gotten each night and I can’t figure out how I’m still able to function. But hey, it works and everyone is healthy so I’m not going to complain.

My digital life started in 2002. In the years leading up to 2002, I have maybe ~50-100 photos per year. After that I have thousands of photos per year. Couple that with the explosion of the internet in the late 90s, archaeologists are going to know a LOT more about the year 2010 than they will about the year 1990.

I wonder what this is going to be like for my son. He’ll probably have photos from almost every week, if not every day, of his life, but will they be in a useful form? When I think about my own baby photos, I instantly remember a dozen key photos. What will pop into my son’s head? A folder of thousands of pictures that he’s never been able to look through?

There are a few tools around which try to sort through your photos automatically and pick out the best ones, but we’re not quite there yet. Until some magic tool comes along, I’ll keep storing all the data and manually going through a subset of them with Lightroom.

On Saturday morning at 2:39am, Elijah Dallon Martens was born! He was 8 pounds 1 ounce and 20.5”. Tyla and Elijah both did great. We came home from the hospital on Monday morning and we’re still trying to figure out how get any sleep.

We’ve been keeping his name a secret the whole pregnancy and it’s fun to say it in public now. The name Elijah was on one of the few names we both had on our individual lists. Dallon is my dad’s first name. So Elijah’s middle name is his grandpa’s last name, just like it is for me and my dad, etc.

While we are thrilled to be home, the hospital was incredible. If we do this again, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose Evergreen a second time. Everyone from the doctors to the nurses to the lactation consultants to the janitors were super helpful and friendly. As first time parents, it was comforting to know that whenever we had a question, all we had to do was push a button on the bed and an expert would walk in to not only give us the answer to that question, but also provide lots of background on the topic. We made good use of those opportunities and asked tons of questions. A lot of this is still a mystery to me, but I can’t imagine being home along with a newborn without the education we received in the last two days over and above all the classes we took.

Pastor Weiser from our church came to visit on Saturday afternoon and baptized Elijah. There was no medical rush for it to happen but Tyla and I both felt a lot better having it done right away instead of waiting a week or two. We’re planning a quick affirmation of the baptism in church this coming Sunday. The service is at 9:30 and you’re all welcome to come!

I will get more pics posted as soon as I find 10 minutes to sit at the computer, but here are a couple to get you started.

“You’re still here?” That’s the question I get from people at work who know that Tyla is about ready to pop. There’s no baby yet, but we’re really getting close. The due date is June 6 but we’re about smack dab in the middle of the “normal” window for birth. The national average for first time moms is that they go five days past their due date which would put us at about a week from now. They won’t let her go more than two weeks past the due date so one way or another he should be coming out before the 20th!

While we do talk a bit about enjoying these last few minutes of peace and quiet, we’re incredibly eager to meet this little boy who has been following us around for almost 40 weeks!

In one of our recent classes, the teacher talked for a while about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS.) I had heard it in passing before, but I didn’t know much about it. The SIDS website defines it this way:

SIDS is the sudden death of an infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history.

I was surprised to find out that this is basically a catch-all answer for “we have no idea why your baby died.” Wow! In the year 2013, babies are still dying and science can’t figure out why. That’s incredible! All they can do is offer tips for things that seem to correlate with lower numbers of these deaths. A lot of these tips were discovered by studying cultures with higher than normal SIDS rates and understanding what’s different about their culture. Here are some things that lower the risk:

• SIDS occurs less when parents have babies after their teenage years and when they wait at least 1 year between the birth of a child and the next pregnancy.
• Infants should always sleep on their backs.
• They should sleep on a firm mattress in a crib with nothing but the baby (no pillows, no covers, no bumpers, no toys, etc.)
• Avoid exposure to tobacco smoke.
• Breast-fed babies have a lower risk of SIDS than formula-fed babies.
• Offer a pacifier to the baby.

It’s nice to know that there are things we can do to help lower the risk, and hopefully some day they’ll understand what causes this. It turns out that there is an adult version of this too, though it appears to be much less likely.

There is a deluge of product information available for a pregnant couple, and as a first time pregnant couple, we didn’t even know what types of things we should be buying, much less which specific brands and models we should look at. Rather than researching everything individually, we decided to pick one overall book and stick with it, for better or worse.

The book we picked was called Baby Bargains. The book is organized as a big list of all the things you should consider buying and then for each item, the book discusses what to look for, how many you need, and which brands might be the best fit for you. While I’m sure you could take any one item and have a long argument about it with someone who likes a different brand better, we knew that following the book should lead us to a pretty good option.

Even with all that background, we still had a big task ahead of us. Our gift registries were carefully crafted as a list of items we thought we needed, so after the baby showers (THANK YOU!) we headed to Babies R Us and walked out with three carts full of stuff. The UPS man arrived later in the week with endless boxes that completed our Amazon registry. I’m sure there will be plenty of surprise trips to buy something we didn’t think of, but I feel like we have a pretty good start.

We did waffle a bit on our car seat decision. We started with the new Graco 40 which is supposed to hold a child up to 2 years/40 pounds. When we got it home, we discovered that it was too wide to fit in the middle seat and it was a couple pounds heavier than most carriers which seemed unnecessary. We ended up getting a slightly smaller Graco model which saved us quite a bit of money and also fit the car better. Only time will tell if it was a good decision. I’m sure we’ll have a lot stronger opinions about these purchases in a year!