Let’s begin the story with the end: Everything is fine.

And now, for the recounting of the most terrifying day of our lives as parents.  In the wee hours of the morning during our first day at home after being discharged from the hospital with Daniel, we were just getting ready to change a diaper Daniel was working on.  Suddenly, Daniel began to sputter and choke and when I looked down at him, he was foaming at the mouth and having trouble breathing.  Needless to say, I panicked, picked him up, and grabbed the bulb syringe to suction out his mouth.  He still seemed to be having trouble breathing, and the foaming? — a seizure? we wondered.  We called 911 and the paramedics were on their way.

I was terrified.  Ever since that scare we had early in the pregnancy with the fluid in his abdomen that mysteriously went away, I’ve felt as though I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Could there really be something horribly wrong?  Could this be it?

Four minutes later about a dozen big burly paramedics, firemen, and sherriffs came charging into our house and into our bedroom.  (Kaeta and Jonah, by the way, were sound asleep in their bedroom, oblivious to this 3 am intrusion.)  By this time, Daniel had stopped foaming and could breathe just fine.  The paramedic who checked him out said his vitals were perfect, he was showing no signs of distress, his oxygen level was great, and he looked like a perfectly healthy 2-day-old baby.  And these were not the symptoms of someone coming out of a seizure.  He said we could take him to the hospital if we wanted to, or we could just follow up with our pediatrician at our next visit.  Big sigh of relief.  Now maybe we could get some sleep!

Nope.  Two hours later, after nursing the baby and trying to get back to sleep, Daniel spits up.  Blood.  Trying not to panic this time, we called the after-hours nurse.  She says we better take him to the emergency room.  It’s possible that he could have a tear in his intestine.  Thump.  The other shoe.  So now I’m back to panicking.

Having just come home from the hospital, we still had a lot of stuff packed, so we quickly loaded it back in the car.  Maintaining the speed limit (really!), we drove back to Seton, since we had just been discharged from there.  But apparently that was wrong.  Once they’d admitted us and checked him over, they said we’d need to transfer to Dell Children’s Hospital.  They loaded Daniel in an ambulance, and I rode with him while Derek drove our car to Dell.  (And to complicate matters, it was the day of a half-marathon, so Derek had to drive way out of the way to avoid the race route!  But it worked out fine.)

At Dell, we answered the same dozen questions over and over (what happened? how much blood?  breast or bottle?) and eventually they decided to (1) x-ray his abdomen and (2) put a tube down his throat into his stomach to examine the contents.  Believe it or not, he objected much more strongly to the x-ray (I guess the table was cold).  The tube down the throat didn’t seem to bother him that much.  Not nearly as much as it bothered us!

Not finding more fresh blood in his stomach was a good sign (it meant he wasn’t actively bleeding), and the x-rays looked good too.  It took a while to check everything out, but the doctor and nurses were great, and they discharges us around 11:30.  The doctor’s theory is that Daniel must have been choking on some mucus or something in the back of his throat, which would explain the foaming.  Then in our panic to suction out his mouth right away, we might have scratched the back of his throat (apparently an easy thing to do), causing it to bleed and drain into his tummy, which would explain the spitting up blood.  A plausible explanation, but nonetheless terrifying to witness!

Derek’s theory is that Daniel just wanted to ride in an ambulance.  When the foaming at the mouth and consequent 911 call didn’t work, he had to go to Plan B: spitting up blood.  But one way or another, he was determined to ride in an ambulance.  I don’t want to know what Plan C might have been.

So, that was a looong 9 hours of insanity!  Our goal the next night was: “No trips to the hospital,” and we’ve now pulled that off 2 nights in a row.
Daniel went to the pediatrician yesterday and is doing just fine.  He is almost back up to his birth weight.  He is the picture of perfect health for a newborn, despite all his efforts to scare us half to death.  Our prediction: he’s going to love roller coasters when he gets bigger.

Born 1/21/2010 at 5:18pm

6 lbs. 11 oz., 19″ long

Here he is with the special gift his brother and sister picked out for him:

Mother and baby are doing great!

Coco and I had our last regular OB appointment this morning — during which we found out that even though I am not in active labor, I am already 4 centimeters dilated!  Translation: nearly halfway there with very little pain.  And hopefully Coco will be born very soon.  We also found out that while Coco seems to be doing very well, the amniotic fluid level is getting a little low, so my doctor is not very comfortable letting me go much past my due date (this Friday).  So an induction will be scheduled for next Monday if I’m still pregnant by then.  But please, pray that I’m not!

Still no baby, so I’m getting in a few little things while I can:

Mash-up Stories

Kaeta is constantly telling stories to herself while she plays, and they are often weird mash-ups of stories that we read or talk about.

A couple of nights ago, she wanted to play Star Wars with some of Jonah’s dinosaur toys.  Darth Vader was, naturally, a Velociraptor.  But since he could never succeed in doing evil (because Brachiosaurus Leia would swat him with her tail), he was hilariously ineffectual.

The other day she made a Mary & Joseph scene out of some magnets, bits of metal (nuts, bolts, and such), and a purple scrap of paper, taped into a dress for Mary.  She was playing with them and narrating for a while when I heard her saying, “But Joseph was caught in the brambles!  The wallaby came, but he couldn’t get Joseph out!”  Things were looking bad, but then, “God came, and he let Joseph out of the brambles.”  Her first Deus Ex Machina!

New URL?

I logged into Godaddy.com to do something this week, and it suggested that we buy the domain “FreeTheKurths.com” — I hope we don’t need to!

Why I am the worst father in the world

Kaeta is fearless when it comes to jumping off of high places toward me, because she knows I will always catch her.  It’s this fun father-daughter thing we do.  So last night, she was standing on her bed, and she wanted me to lift her up so she could turn off the ceiling fan light.  I was going to let her, but she was being really demanding about it, so I took a step back and gave her a look that says, “can you ask nicely?”

But I didn’t realize that she was already jumping off the bed toward me!  So I took a step back and completely missed her! She fell smack on the ground, hitting her head on the bed.

And then, between sobs, she kept repeating, “I jumped, but Daddy didn’t catch me!”  Oh, man!  A day later, I still feel pretty bad about that.

Soon all non-baby-related things will seem too insignificant to post, so I’d better get this out now.

The Monkey’s Fist

I got a really neat book for Christmas about how to tie knots, and this weekend I attempted The Monkey’s Fist. It turned out pretty well, I think!

Kaeta was very interested in what I was doing, and she’s been tying my practice ropes into knots a lot. I started showing her how to tie shoes, but no luck there yet.

Tokyo Steakhouse

On a different note, we have a tradition of going to Tokyo Steakhouse (a teppan-yaki restaurant, like Benihana) shortly before having a baby, so we decided to do that tonight, bringing the kids. I thought they would really love it… Well, Kaeta did, mostly. Jonah was totally freaked out the whole time. He started crying when the chef began hitting his spatulas against the table, and he completely lost it when the chef lit the whole table on fire. But he did enjoy the food!

Budding Photographer

The other day we had some friends over for dinner, and Kaeta got our camera and was taking pictures of everyone. A little later, I noticed that she was missing, and I found her in her room, with the camera set up on the edge of a chair, taking pictures of her toys, like this:

So fun! I love the dinosaur next to the princess dress. She took literally 100 pictures that night!

Been in “early labor” for about two weeks now…. and very ready to move past this!

This is from a week ago.  Derek made it possible for me to post pictures all by myself without using any fancy code!  So now I’m testing it out.  As far as the pregnancy goes, we’re at 38 weeks now and are definitely in “any day now” territory.  So stay tuned!

A Koala Bear!

If you’re seeing this, then I was successful in moving this site to Dreamhost.  Woo hoo!