Recovery and settling in

It has now been over a week since Henry was born.  After four days in the hospital, we are all home now and trying to settle into the routine of feedings, changings, attempted sleep and repeating.  On top of the new activity schedule, we stay very busy chasing and playing with a two year old boy.

I am reminded that you are never fully prepared for the sleep deprivation that accompanies the care of an infant arrival.  At times it feels like a cross between boot camp and "Hell Week".  Even the Geneva Convention bans the use of sleep deprivation as torcher method.  Any enemy combatant with children has probably been through the sleepless nights before.  Just throw in a pacifier, swaddle blanket and 5 diaper changes and you will have "daddy duty" for one night.

Fortunately, we have been blessed with an abundance of help from our family (hense the main reason that we left the beautiful mountains of Colorado).  Amy's mom, June, spent almost two weeks at our house helping with everything from laundry to squeaky door hinges (she's the handyman in this family).  My mother took over the role when June had to head home.  And, Grandma Karyn is soon heading this way to lend a hand, too.  Most people think that having three mother-in-laws is a curse, but I find it to be a blessing.  Plus, they read this blog, too.

Evan continues to thrive a as a new big brother.  He always wants to check on the baby and help bring blankets to him.  We are shocked at how well he has accepted the new family member.  With the exception of one fairly unintentional wooden spoon projectile toward the baby, all is going well between the two of them.

Amy is continuing her slow progress to recovery.  We have now passed the milestone of being able to get in and out of bed on her own (damn high bed).  While not ready for a marathon yet, she continues to progress a little every day.

Thanks again to everyone for all of the support and great emails.  As we continue to find an extra five minutes here and there, we will try to start responding again.

Big Brother Evan is doing great, too.

With all of the commotion around the arrival of Henry, it's worth mentioning that Evan is doing really well.  He loves his temporary residence with Mima and Papa (who continue to spoil him).  With visits from Grandpa Bill, Aunt Casey and Auntie Grace, he is definitely not starving for attention.

Evan came to the hospital on Sunday to meet his new baby brother for the first time.  Aside from nerviously chucking the baby gift (rattle) across the room, he did great!  He received two gifts "from the baby" and loved playing with both of them.  He held Henry's hand and even asked to kiss the baby before he left.

Today will be the true test as we hope to be home together as a family for the first time.  It will definitely be a lot of work to manage an infant with a two year old under foot.  However, I'm pretty sure that we are not the first family to attempt this endevour.  Plus, we have great help from family and friends.

One additional photo that I have to tie in here was taken a few days ago by Aunt Dani as Carter and Evan played golf in their yard.  Because Evan is so skinny, we have trouble finding pants that actually fit.  Apparently these pants were too big!  Check out the look on Carter's face as Evan lost his pants during his golf swing.

We are blessed with two beautiful boys!

Welcome Henry William Keller!!

Daddy holding Henry in the recovery room.

Amy, Evan and I are pleased to announce the arrival of Henry William Keller.  He was reluctantly pulled into this world on May 27th at 7:00pm.  Needless to say, his birth process was full of trial, drama and a scare (similar to the delivery of Evan).  However, that is all behind us and we are now blessed with a beautiful, healthy boy.

After extending five days pasted her due date, Amy finally started experiencing some regular contractions around 8pm on Thursday evening.  We didn't want to jump to conclusions, so we settled in with our new contraction app for the next several hours until the pattern finally showed 5 minute intervals for greater than an hour.  At this point, we placed the phone call to my parents for babysitting help to watch Evan.  It was also this time when I began to question if I had enough fuel in my car to make it to the hospital.  I had topped off the tank on his due date, but we were pushing a week late at this point.  Oops...just enough fuel.

Mommy and baby with skin-to-skin time.

Sometime around 1:00am, Amy, her mom and I headed off to the hospital.  Much like the first delivery, Amy insisted on walking into the hospital without the help of a wheelchair.  Once registered, we spent the next 3 hours confined to a 9x9 cell in the triage area while the hospital staff conveniently ignored Amy's labor and discussed more important topics outside of our door...like new craft ideas, gossip about coworkers and boys.  As Amy labored through the pains, I'm pretty sure she wanted to throw something at the staff.

Fortunately, the gush of fluid (water breaking) that almost flooded the room (slight exaggeration) got their attention.  Before long, we were placed in a HUGE labor and delivery room with an amazing staff of nurses.  I remember looking at the mini-couch/pull-out bed thinking "why in the hell would that be in here".  In my naive mind, I thought we would be pushing soon and holding the baby shortly.

Mima holds cute little Henry.

After the doctor arrived and met with us, I spoke to her privately in the hall to discuss pain medication options without bringing them up in front of Amy.  The doctor told me that based on the clinical data, we were looking at another 12 hours before she would be ready to push.  Huh?  Amy was fighting hard from contraction to contraction with only a two minute break in between.  Twelve more hours??

Eventually, I learned to appreciate the couch by tucking my knees to my chest and mimicking the fetal position.  This allowed me to sleep in 15 minute intervals.  Amy was eventually comforted by the pearls of modern pain medicine.  Now it became a waiting game of: monitor heart rates, turn Amy over, assess and repeat.

Throughout the next 11 hours, we all became very cognizant of the rapid pulsing sound of the baby's heart rate.  Whenever it slowed below the rhythm of a fast tango, we all jumped up to watch the monitor drop dangerously low into the 70's.  Our angel nurse would come bounding through the door moments later to quickly adjust Amy's position and the baby's heart rate would soon accelerate back to acceptable levels...the dance continued.  This is a very scary and humbling acoustic recognition, especially given our experience with Evan's birth.

Grandma Long snuggles with the little peanut.

We continued down this road for the next 11 hours.  We had great support from our families and tried hard to keep others updated with text messages and phone calls.  Every hour revealed a slow progress toward full dilation.  We seemed to be going in the right direction...albeit slow.

Sometime around 6:30pm, our usually chatty and extremely cool-headed nurse came bounding through the door with a different demeanor.  This time she was verbally spouting off clinical concerns that began to paint a picture of rapid c-section.  As we wrestled to grasp this new overload of information, our trusted doctor came running into the room and said we're going to the OR now.  It was very apparent that this was not a discussion, this was a medical emergency (I later found out that she thought Amy's uterus was about to rupture...in fact post surgery she told me that the uterine wall was only 1mm thick).  My heart completely sank for Amy.  She had worked so hard over the last few months and past 23 hours to manage a successful VBAC experience.  Now, that dream was being ripped away and she would once again be faced with the long road of recovery from surgery.  However, we both knew without a doubt that we needed to take whatever steps to assure the safety of her and the baby.


Once again, I watch my world come crashing down as the room filled with keyed up medical professionals shouting orders, calling for more help and quickly whisking my wife away toward a hastfully prepped operating room.  As a paramedic, I know this tone of emergency all too well.  It is the time when all medical professionals shed all of the ancilary patient care skills and dig deep into their skill set to leverage that no-nonsense, level-head professional that they can transform into when the proverbial stuff has hit the fan.




Aunt Casey and her little man.

 I was rushed into a pair of surgical coveralls, mask, shoe covers and cap.  Then came the three minutes where they sit "dad" in a wooden chair outside the OR doors while staff from all throughout the hospital rush down the hall, grab a mask and back through the swinging doors where my wife is quickly being strapped down and prepped.  I now refer to this wooden chair as the "God chair".  Not because some medical ego or other reference.  Because this is the chair where I (and presumably many other fathers) have dug so deep into our soul to plead for help and support from God.  I prayed and tried to connect from a level that has only existed once before...22 months ago to the hour when I sat here preparing for the delivery of my first son.


In less than three minutes, my hasted prayers were concluded and I was rushed to a stool next to Amy's head.  I tried very hard to connect with my wife through the touch of our hands, staring into her eyes and any comforting words that I could muster.  At this point, the only visable section of my wife to support was her head and arms.  All other areas with blocked with the blue sheet that shed me from the surgical act of extracting my son.  Within two minutes of sitting on the small stool, there was a commotion of jumbled voices and the strong cry of a new born's first wail into the world.  The lump in my stomach quick moved up to my throat at this point.  The amazing staff quickly assured Amy and I that we had a healthy, beautiful and hairy son.  One milestone was complete, but Amy was quickly fighting to battle off the effects of the medicine and being opened up to the elements.

Evan at the hospital for the first time.

The hours that followed contained a stark contrast of exuberance with the birth of our our son and the struggle of Amy to recover from the effects of surgery and anistisa.  We were transfered to a regular Mother/Baby room that would be our home for the next four days.

As for the exciting part, Henry is a beautiful little boy (yes, I'm biased).  He was born weighing 8 pounds, 7 ounces and measuring 21 inches long.  He has continued to thrive and adapt to his new world.  Momma and baby are both doing well and on the path to recovery.

We are blessed with an amazing support structure of family and friends.  I hate to quote Hillary Clinton, but we have "a village" to help raise our children.  Thanks to everyone for their prayers, thoughts, letters and calls.

More updates to follow...

Still waiting...5 days late!

Well, the due date for Baby #2 has come and gone without much pomp and circumstance. Technically, the rent was paid through May 21st, but we have not started the eviction process yet. Amy is doing really well and focuses hard to remain patient while waiting for Mother Nature to accelerate things along. At this point, we are scheduled to meet with the doctor again on Friday morning to discuss our options. We are all hoping that things will start to progress before we get to that point.

Now that I have made some changes to the blog hosting, I should be able to post pictures and updates more frequently. Please check back for updates...and keep us in your thoughts. Thanks!

Amy and I just returned from a GREAT trip to southern California for a friend’s wedding (Amy's college roommate Traci) and a couple extra days of R&R. We were blessed to have Grandma Karyn, Aunt Casey and Aunt Grace come to Louisville to take care of (and spoil) Evan while we were off gallivanting around the wine country.

We flew out to Los Angeles very early on Thursday morning. Evan stayed the night with Gramma and Papa since our morning started out around 4:00 am. As usual, Amy slept most of the flights out there. I took the opportunity to catch up on newspaper and magazine articles (no laptops on this trip). We actually landed at LAX around noon local time. We rented a little Jeep SUV and headed north on the six-lane Interstate (ugh).

Santa Barbara was beautiful and sunny! Amy had booked us a room at the Hotel Santa Barbara, right in the middle of the downtown shops and restaurants. We took advantage of the location and hit the streets for a little window shopping and happy hour bar specials. We managed to tip our glass at three different establishments before the night was over. We had an excellent dinner at Seagrass Restaurant and finished out the evening with a calorific helping of ice cream from Cold Stone. Yum!!

We packed a full day of activities in on Friday, including coffee on the road, a beautiful 3-mile canyon hike, lunch at a 100+ year stagecoach stop, two wine tastings, cheese/wine shopping and even cleaned up in time to make the outdoor rehearsal barbeque. Thank God for internet planning, Google maps, cell phones, the GPS unit and a little impromptu flexibility.

Traci and Jeff did an amazing job planning the perfect wedding weekend. The entire resort was rented out to wedding guests and family. The setting for the wedding was picture perfect and the weather seriously could not have been any better. Traci and Jeff are blessed to have such wonderful family and friends (present company included) to surround them and take part in such a special event.

Amy and I had a small little cabin to ourselves at El Capitan Canyon Resort. We enjoyed sleeping with the windows open and snuggling down under the blankets by morning. My liver is still recovering from the endless flow of wine and my bathroom scale is not talking to me now because of the dietary impact from my overindulgence of rich foods. Still, I greatly needed a break from the diet routine and loved every minute of our vacation.

Thanks to great family and cell phone pictures, we were never too far away from Evan and knew that he was in trusting hands (even for the late night emergency room visit and the dinner next to Mohammed Ali). That said, it was a wonderful feeling to get home to our little man (except when I almost knocked Amy over trying to beat her in the door). We missed him a ton! I’m ready for another vacation, but it might be a while before we are ready to leave Evan behind again.

Growing Boy!

Evan recently passed his 7 month milestone and is doing great! At his 6 month doctor checkup he weighed 15 lbs (30th percentile – little peanut!) and is 24 inches long (50th percentile). Doc says he’s fantastic (ok, those are mom’s words)!

E started daycare in early February. He’s getting the hang of it and seems to like it, although he has decided to boycott naps. He only gets about an hour’s worth (total!) of naps a day. They try but he just won’t go to sleep. Guess there is just too much new fun stuff to check out. He’s also gotten his share of the daycare germs already – has had a runny nose (among other things) since about day 1. Oh well, guess it comes with the territory. Brad and I sure realize how easy we had it with Gramma watching him every day!

He’s getting to be such a big boy. He’s rolling all over the place now and is starting to figure out how to scoot a little bit and maybe even trying to figure out how to get up on his knees. It’s pretty cute watching him try to figure it out. Looks like he’s analyzing his form and trying to remember what he sees his friends at day care doing! He’s sitting up like a champ too – almost doesn’t need any support behind him. He has adopted a cute little dance too that looks like he’s doing the jive with his head. Definitely his mommy’s boy! He’s eating all kinds of fruits and veggies now – the latest is asparagus and cauliflower. He’ll eat just about anything but would take any fruit in a heartbeat – and you can’t give him the fruit too early in the meal or he’ll cry if you try to give him the veggies. Little stinker!

Brad and I are having a blast and enjoying every minute!

First Day at Day Care

Evan officially started day care this past Thursday. We have been blessed the past 3 months to have his grandmother watch him during the week. However, now that he's becoming a big boy, it is time for him to start going to "school".

Amy did a great job preparing Evan for day care. Everything has been labeled and tagged with his name (kind of like the military). Extra diapers and wipes have been purchased and delivered to the little shelf with his name on it.

Amy was also very strong when we had to leave him in the classroom for the first time. Evan, on the other hand, was completely fascinated by all of the new toys and sounds. I'm not sure that he even noticed when we left the room. According to his report card (and the redness in his eyes), his naps have been a little limited these first few days.