Carp-e-Diem !

We found out in spades that when Roly is going to cry, he doesn’t work up to it in little baby increments.  It comes out like a giant dinosaur bird shriek right off the bat.  This is especially alarming at 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 am (we got all of those last night), when you have just dropped off to sleep for 10 minutes.  We are not sure what was the deal – he’s still too new-born to just be awake at night; it seemed to be either gas, or maybe discomfort from his recent circumcision?  Whatever the case, it was a REALLY tough first night home.  He had trouble nursing (which was not the case in the hospital); he preferred to scream into the nipple like a microphone, rather than nurse from it. 

I (Toby) am recovering from the birth, and the subsequent tubal ligation pretty well. I have come off the heavy meds, though I still feel like I got punched in the the gut when I walk.  My sweet big children remind me daily that I ’still look like I am going to have a baby!’  Oh, the honesty…

Roly is quite handsome (no partiality here); very pink and filled out in his face.  Though Max and Lucy were not considered preemies, they were both quite yellow and looked more like funny little monkeys.  Glad to have a healthy boy, and such support and love from family and friends. 

Roly made it through his circumcision with flying colors this morning. There were a few moments of F.U.D. (fear uncertainty doubt) yesterday evening because of a mixup with who the pediatrician is. Since the kids pediatrician is a member of a large medical network (Sansum Santa Barbara), and Sansum has its own on-call pediatrician, all peds work should have been done by the Sansum peds as opposed to the hospital’s on-call pediatrician. However, Wednesday morning the hospitalist came to do Roly’s first exam.
Toby explained that Roly would be seeing the Sansum Peds and that he would be (according to the nurses) doing the circ (the hospitalist doesn’t do circs, one has to make a separate appointment). The hospitalist agreed and would make a note in the chart.
We had been told that the procedure would be quick and were expecting that the Sansum Peds would do the procedure later that day. By 4p, no Sansum Peds had come by, and so since Toby was a bit more coherent than when she came out of surgery (I’ll let her tell you about that experience) she began to work on making sure the circ happened while we were still in the hospital. She was motivated by the memory of Max not getting a circ appt until he was 6 weeks old (he ended up getting in on a cancellation at 9 days). By this time of day, the Sansum Peds was gone, and we were in the dark as to how to proceed. Our nurse didn’t know why the hospitalist had come by and went to work for us to figure everything out. The confusion lay in the fact that while the kids see a Sansum pediatrician, Toby’s primary physician is her OBGyn, Dr. Green. Since Dr. Green is NOT a Sansum physician, Roly was not automatically a Sansum patient. This explained why the hospitalist saw Roly. The hospitalist was true to her word and she had made arrangements with the Sansum Peds to get the procedure done on Thursday morning.
All is well that ends well.

Roland William Theule entered the world at 8:58p with an assist from Dr. Ralph Green and nurse Robyn at Cottage Hospital Santa Barbara on 7/20/2010, his official due date.

Toby pushed for just over an hour, with Dad and Camille (her mom) counting to keep her on track and holding her legs in the correct position.  The baby was scored at 9.9 (out of a possible 10) on the APGAR test which is a very good score.

At birth, baby weighed 8 pounds even and was 19.5 inches in length.

Below are some pictures :

This was Toby’s first 40-week pregnancy.  Her water broke spontaneously at 37 weeks with both Max and Lucy.  With those extra 3 weeks, this one weighed in at nearly 2 full pounds more than Lucy at birth.

Length: 19.5 inches
Weight: 8 lbs 0 oz.

Apgar (whatever that is) : 9.9

Time of Birth : 8:58p

Baby name : TBD