The info...

Jackson Thomas Vincent, born 29 April 2007.
23 inches long, 10 lbs 7 ounces
born at 5.09pm today
He is doing well and even tho I am nervous all seems well!

The Boy

Home

Well its slightly later, I've eaten some greasy breakfast and drove home to pick up some stuff for Debbie.
It was a long night, I feel kind of guilty for sleeping a few hours through the night.
When I got here Debbie's folks were up and heading over to the hospital, so I feel OK being home.
I'm gonna take a nice long shower; pack up some stuff for Debbie and then head back over there.
I ate my vitamins, drank some tea here and will be heading back there.

I apologize for my earlier post...I had just woken up and I was tired and just feeling overwhelmed...

More to follow, Munson has wireless internet, so I will at least be able to pop in from time to time.

The Longest Day...

It is 5.53am. We are at Munson. W have been here since 9am yesterday. Debbie has been having contractions since, ohh, 5pm yessterday but they don't seem to be following any pattern. Also they couldn't tell about her dilation yesterday after the doctor left so I don't know where we stand.
She has been up all night, unable to sleep due to the pain and vomiting. I think she is dehydrated as it is really, really dry in the room.
I'm exhausted, stressed and worn out.

Morning

The big day is here. I am feeling vaguely nervous and vaguely irritable. Perhaps not the best start to the day, but I think those two go hand in hand with me at this point in my life.
More to follow...

10.10pm EST

Laying here on the ground, watching the Fantastic Four on Cinemax HD(which we seem to have had for over a week...)
In 12 hours we will be at the hopital...exactly what is going on, well who knows.
Today we didn't do all that much. I ran errands and when I got home, we went for a nice long walk and went out for dinner.
Quiet. Uneventful. Calm.
Better to have a nice quiet day and evening before our lives change.
That sounds strong but there is really no other way to say it.

The house is relatively stocked up with goodies.
The house is clean.
The baby's room is ready and now all we have to do is actually go through this and have this baby.

Glad that today was pleasant, uneventful and mostly just quiet.

Oh, in a strange note, I have become obsessed with the song Illegal Alein by Genesis. Very silly and very wacky; I have come to the conclusion that Phil Collins, God bless him, possesses only one dance move.

Our House...

Is very quiet right now.
Debbie is asleep on the couch.
The elctric cat water fountain is bubbling with the correct amout of water.
Toffee is asleep near the window, Goo is crammed into his spotty bed, Pierre is on top of the fridge and Nico is on Debbie's lap.
In the computer room there is the sound of a clock; in the guest bedroom you can hear birds outside.
There had been some slight rain, the intermittent drip coming from the roof, the rustling sounds rain makes.
That is all about to change.
I have things to do today, finals are coming up next week and I need to bust tail to really hammer home what is in my head.
But I also feel like I should drink this silence in and enjoy it as very soon the silence that I hear will be largely gone, replace by the hustle and bustle of family.

April 29th...

I mentioned in an earlier post the significance of the date of April 28th, the day that we are planning to induce labor. Well at Debbie's last visit they made it sound like that inducing may not work immediately and the baby could be born Sunday.
So since I am awake right now watching Bill Moyer's excellent documentary on Frontline I pulled some info about the 29th of April, in case of that being his birthday.
Events:
1770 - James Cook arrives at and names Botany Bay, Australia.
1916 - Easter Rebellion: Martial law in Ireland is lifted and the rebellion is officially over with the surrender of Irish nationalists to British authorities in Dublin.
1986 - Roger Clemens sets a major league baseball record with 20 strikeouts in nine innings against the Seattle Mariners.
2004 - Dick Cheney and George W. Bush testify before the 9/11 Commission in a closed, unrecorded hearing in the Oval Office.
cough*crooks*coughcough

Births:
534 - Taliesin, Welsh poet, according to legend in Mabinogion
1863 - William Randolph Hearst, American publisher (d. 1951)
1899 - Duke Ellington, American jazz pianist and bandleader (d. 1974)
1901 - Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (d. 1989)
1929 - Ray Baretto, American jazz musician (d. 2006)
1931 - Lonnie Donegan, Scottish musician (d. 2002)
1933 - Rod McKuen, American poet and composer
1934 - Luis Aparicio, Venezuelan baseball player
1942 - Klaus Voormann, German illustrator and musician
1945 - Tammi Terrell, American singer (d. 1970)
1946 - John Waters, American film director and writer
1950 - Debbie Stabenow, United States Senator
1951 - Dale Earnhardt, American race car driver (d. 2001)
1954 - Jerry Seinfeld, American comedian
1966 - Phil Tufnell, English cricketer
1967 - Curtis Joseph, Canadian ice hockey player
1967 - Master P, American rapper(Uhhhh)
1970 - Andre Agassi, American tennis player
1970 - Uma Thurman, American actress

Deaths:
1980 - Alfred Hitchcock, English film director (b. 1899)
1993 - Mick Ronson, British musician (b. 1946)

So yeah...wonder when this will occur!

Me in the Triage room...

As we thought this was "it" we brought the camera that Dad got us for Christmas, a nice little Fuji that you can pocket. I've always wanted a smaller camera, my Nikons are great but all those lenses really add another layer that complicates the simplicity of taking pics.
Debbie wanted to look at the pictures that I had taken and when she was completed she took a few of me, in the corner, where I had sat on Monday during the intial stress test. We did have the same room in Triage tonight...

Here I am introducing a book I have been attempting to re-read of late, Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. If you haven't seen the eulogy Fox News did for Vonnegut check it out....

She did manage to coax a smile out of me....

And here I am jotting down some thoughts and such...


Here are the words from that notebook I am seeing scribbling in:
"We're in Triage. The nurse's name is Lucretia. Going to get DLR more water and I'm struck by how peaceful a hospital is at night. Very quiet. Very empty. I suppose that is the way they are. When Josh was sick I think it was the same, when DLR was sick and I spent the day in hospital I remember it getting quiet at night. I admit to being surprised but I welcome the peace. I'll try to keep a snapshot of it in my mind for when we're..."

Dry Run

Around 7pm this evening I was in the bathroom, about to wash my hands when there came a knock at the door.
"Are you done in there?" Just about, why?
"I think my water just broke!"
I fly out of the bathroom and flop into the hallway. Debbie rushed in, pulled up the boxers she was wearing and showed me what appeared to be her mucous plug on her thigh. I zipped down the hallway and grabbed the camera and took a picture of it, I may yet post this image...
She called the doctor on call and they told us to come on in to the hospital. We took care of some stuff, I went and got some iced tea, and then off we went to Munson, stopping to returnd the movie and video game that we had rented.
We got to the hopsital about an hour after the plug made its appearence.
This is the new emergency entrance to Munson Medical Center. It recently opened up and if we have to come to the hospital after 9pm that is how we will find our way into the bowels of the hospital where my mother and sister were born.



This is the baby monitor, the technology that they strap onto the pregnant lady to get the heartbeat and such for the baby. If you see in an earlier post Debbie standing up with these things strapped to her tummy they lead back to the baby monitor. I should note for the record that I think my Dad uses that same gel in his line of medicine. So when I saw it the bottle made me think of trips to Alma working in his clinic and the general wackiness that would usually engulf us.
The second pictures is the baby's heartbeat at the moment of the picture. The number to the left is his heartbeat, the number to the right is Debbie's bloodpressue.


Here is the wife, in full hospital gown, awaiting the on call OB's visit so she can determine wether or not her water broke earlier in the evening. It hadn't and we were sent home. Sent home seems cold when written but there was no need for us to stay at the hospital and we were allowed to leave. Hmm. Still sounds rather regimented.


This is taped to the wall in the triage room, a handy know your symptoms guide for early labor. Fascinating.

Whooooo!!!~

I am ordering this for the boy, and man am I excited about it!

Hospital Morning

Today's my brother's 30th birthday...he got the boy this Grover for the past Christmas.


Today was originally one of our target dates, meaning that we had thought about inducing today if the boy handn't been born.
Well, he hasn't been born so we went in to Munson for an ultrasound and then a non-stress test to make sure that all was well and we weren't poking fate in the eye by not inducing.
All in all the trip was an interesting one, i missed clas but had let the teacher know that there may be a chance that I wouldn't be there. Mind when I go back to class Wednesday everyone will think that we had the baby.

In my time at the hospital I tried to keep track of what was going on. There wasn't too much but here are a few things that I remember.
- In the waiting area before going into the ultrasound there were a few magazines and two books. The books happened to be Penguin poetry pocket guides for William Blake and Beaudilaire. I spent my time reading the latter, I found that I enjoyed his prose poems much more than his traditional poems. I also discovered that he wrote a poem entitled Lesbos(hah) and for the second time in a year I zinged Debbie by reading a poem and inserting the name Rapuda from a J.Geils Song. I also snuck into the impenetrable Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce as we drove downstate to leave for Ireland.
-During the ultrasound all I could do was cough, there must've been something in the air that just aggravated my throat. I was afraid that I was getting sick but when we left that closed space I was fine.
-We went from the ultrasound room out into the main body of the hospital. The maternity ward we've visited before so it was a nice short trip. As I opened up the door to the ward, a long hallway of mauve, what first struck me was the smell. It wasn't unpleasant, far from it. In fact we've been drinking these Raw potions of Kombucha. The first few bottles of this stuff that we've drank has smelled slighly vinegar-y. That is the smell that I found myself thinking of when we walked throught the doors. The longer we were there the less I noticed the smell.
-During the non-stress test(see the following photo) we got a call and a visit from Debbie's OB. Confused and thinking that whomever called was actually family I wandered out into the ward like a fool only to see the doctor. I greeted him with a heaty, What's Up Doc? Silly yes but I thought it fitting. As I settled into the corner and got into the conversation about where to goto next I looked towards the floor, I noticed that Dr.Nowak was wearing hospital booties. On his left foot, near the toes, was a single drop of bright red blood. At least I thought it was blood. I didn't ask.
-When the stress test was finall completed fifty minutes after it started and we were able to leave there came an interesting moment in the hallways running between the fetal ICU and the C-section room. Debbie was walking in front of me, swaying in the style only a pregnant woman sways. Walking towards us was another pregnant woman, husband in tow, in full hospital gown and gear. She said something along the line of "not today?" to which Debbie said no. What I found fascinating was their walk. They both walked the same way.
-We got into the car, walking through the rain. Debbie called her folks and opened up the conversation with our latest stock opener, "This is not the call". In our conversation with the OB inducing labor was brought up and we settled on a date to do so if need be, April 28th. Saturday. If this is when Jack is born he will share a birthday with these people: King Edward the 4th of England, Harper Lee, Saddam Hussein(!~?), Ann-Margaret, Terry Pratchett, Jay Leno, Penelope Cruz, Jessica Alba, Nicklas Lindstrom, Violent J of the Insane Clown Posse, Barry Larking, John Daly the fat golfer, Too $hort(!!!!!), Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Yves Kelin, Oskar Schindler, and many others.
Famous deaths on that day include: Zip the Pinhead, Benito Mussolini, Iceberg Slim, Jim Valvano, and two pro wrestlers Lou Thesz and Chris Candido.
Famous events throughout history on that day:1947 - Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia, 1967 - Expo 67 opens to the public in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2003 - Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store launches, selling 1 million songs in its first week and 1789 - Mutiny on the HMS Bounty. Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.


Took this shot on the way to grab some juice from the maternity ward pantry. Yes it is blurry, didn't notice until I got back home. Cool shot anyways. This was maybe 40 minutes into the non-stress test.


Here we find my lovely wife at 9.40am, standing up in the hopes that this position of her body would result in movement from the boy. it worked to a degree but like our cats during the day I think he just curled up and went to sleep.

Leave Them All Behind

Wheels turning around
Into alien grounds
Pass through different times
Leave them all Behind

Just to see
We've got so far to go
Until we get there
Just let it flow

Colours shining clear
Fading into night
Our grasp is broken
There's nothing we can do

I Don't care about the colours
I don't care about the light
I don't care about the truth