livingwithevan.com

Category: Photos

  • Updates… video’s and pictures included

    Updates… video’s and pictures included

     

    Evan has been doing so well, we could not be happier about his progress. He’s gained about 6 ounces since birth and boy does he eat. Sarah’s milk came in and she’s been a machine. I checked the refrigerator in the ICU tonight before we left and there was enough in there for his next 5-6 feedings. She was very excited about it and so am I, much better for him than formula.

    The doctors are watching his intake and output very closely to make sure he’s getting the right amount of calories. We actually weigh each diaper after a changing and I can tell you that a Pampers size 1 diaper has a tare weight of 20 grams. His heaviest diaper, was over 120 grams! Guess that’s what happens when they give you meds to make you urinate. They regularly increase his total calories and he’s been taking it in stride. He’s up to feeding every 3 hours and taking 67mL (2 1/4 ounces). He takes the first 3/4 of it really, really fast and then he wants to take a nap and we have to coax him to eat the rest by bugging him. 🙂

    Tomorrow is our last day with him before the surgery. He’ll be fine, I know he will, but it’s really hard to think about what is going to happen to him without completely losing it. Despite everything that we’ve done to learn about and prepare for this, it’s still really, really hard. We’re having him blessed tomorrow afternoon and several family members will be there for it. Thursday morning they will wheel him down to a waiting area right outside the OR at about 8am. Sarah and I can be with him in that room right up until they wheel him into the OR. Surgery starts at about 8:30am and will last a 3-4 hours. We’ll go on a tour of the cardiac ICU and chew on our nails in the waiting room until he’s out. I’ve seen many pictures of other babies after they come out of the surgery, it’s not pretty and it’s going to be heart wrenching. We don’t know what life is going to be like for him immediately after the surgery, supposed to meet with the surgeon tomorrow and we’ll find out. How long will he be sedated? How long will he be on a ventilator, feeding tube, catheter, etc? What should we expect in general….???

    Enough of daddy being a downer…. here’s some pictures and video of the most handsome baby you’ve ever seen.

    OK, OK… I know daddy is mean and should let the little guy get his rest, but he’s sooooo cute when he’smoving around I had to mess with him a little bit. (I removed the audio in this one, the nurses were talking in the background and ruined it, but the video is still great)
    Do you have your tickets? from William Wood on Vimeo.

    So I am sitting in the chair feeding the little fella and I sit him up to burp him and what do find? Evan has the same issue as daddy, his pants never seem to cover everything they are supposed to.
    Evan is just like daddy. from William Wood on Vimeo.

  • Day 2

    Day 2

    Evan is officially one and a half days old. He’s been doing what I imagine most babies do for the first few days, sleep. His blood sugar was bouncing all over the place but that has stabilized. We’re trying to get him to eat on his own so that he does not need the feeding tube but it’s proving difficult with the people in the NICU shoveling 30mL of food into him every 3hrs like it’s Thanksgiving dinner, it’s no wonder that he’s not hungry. The surgery is scheduled for next Thursday, until then he’ll be monitored in the NICU. Sarah has been discharged from the hospital but has one more night in a ‘nesting room.’ After that we will go back to the hotel here in Ann Arbor at least in theory. I doubt we’ll spend much time there, we just won’t have a room in the hospital.

    Here are several pictures from the last couple days…

  • He’s here and he’s amazing!

    He’s here and he’s amazing!

    I’ll post more details about the labor and such later, but for now…. He’s finally here!!! Evan Michael Wood was born at 5:39AM. He was 8 lbs 6.4 ounces and measured 21.5 inches long. Mom and baby are doing great. We’re waiting to get results from the echo-cardiogram and i’ll update more later.

     

     

  • Nursery is done!

    Nursery is done!

    Evan!  Your room is finally done!  I think we are just about as prepared as we will ever be.  It took some serious organizing but everything has come together nicely.  It is hard to imagine just how much a little baby has until you start to put it all away.  First there are all of the extraordinarily generous gifts we have received.  Then there are the cases where you are out shopping and pick something up “just because” or maybe it was a good deal.  Not to mention all of the Mom-2-Mom and garage sales…  All of that piles up and man are we set for a while.  I’m not sure how many more clothes we can even fit in the closet.  It almost looks as if the entire Jungle 1-2-3 collection exploded in his room but then I took a gander at this picture and realized that indeed we are missing some items but that will be juuuuust fine.

    The colors in the photos are a little deceiving.  It is much more on the softer than brighter side.  On Evan’s crib, we have a mobile, sleep sheep, and musical light thingy.  Poor guy will be instantly overstimulated.  Also, because one should not use bumpers in the crib anymore, we got the idea from friends to still display them by attaching them to the outside of the crib.  And because one should not use a quilt in the crib anymore, we just attached it to the wall so it can still be on display.  Why do they put all this stuff together as a package if it is bad for baby?

    Ahh well who cares.  We love how it turned out and can’t wait to show it off to Evan, whenever he decides to make his entrance… which doesn’t look like anytime soon.  Anyone care to guess his birthday? 😀 YAY!

  • Nursery explosion!?

     

    This is normal right? I mean he’s not going to spend much time in the nursery in the beginning anyway right? I guess my task between now and next Thursday is to clean this up mess. Orrrrrrr… Mom will be here next week and will be looking for something to do, hmmm. 😉

     

     

  • University of MI Appointment #3

    Mom and Evan are in the home stretch now, we’ve got just over a week to go! We have worked out most of the logistics for the birth, at least the ones that we can control, the rest is up to Evan and when he decides that he wants to make his debut.

    The appointment today was very routine and barely worth the drive to Ann Arbor, but that’s ok. They asked how Sarah was feeling, asked if she was experiencing any signs of labor such as contractions, fluids, etc. Nothing to report there. Then the doctor says, “ok, we will scheduled your induction for July 18th.” Huh? This is the first we have heard about being induced. We put the brakes on that… We want to let it be as natural as possible, the longer he stays in there the bigger and stronger he’ll be for the surgery. We informed her that we will be moving to Ann Arbor next week to wait it out and don’t want to induce until the following week if nothing has happened. We’ve talked about this with them before but I guess when you talk to a different OB every time the wires can get crossed. She had no issues with our plan.

    We talked about what to do if she does start having contractions before we get ‘moved’ to Ann Arbor and ran through a few scenarios…

    • Call the U of M Birth Center Triage if we have any questions 24/7  (speed dial added).
    • If her water breaks or she starts to have any bleeding then we go directly to the nearest hospital.
    • If she starts having contractions and they’re regular and strong we can go to the nearest hospital, if when we get there and they check her out, she’s not dilated very much then the best bet is to get back in the car and head to Ann Arbor.
    • If contractions get to be about 8 minutes apart, strong, 1 minute in length, and consistent for an hour then we would head to Ann Arbor.

    I don’t suspect that we’ll need to do any of these, but we’ve got to be thinking about them just in case.

    One concern to us is the possibility of Sarah needing a c-section so we talked about that also. In the event of a c-section Evan would need to be moved to Ann Arbor and mom would be stuck in Kalamazoo until she’s been released from ‘major surgery.’ What scenarios would necessitate a c-section?  We talked about a few of them and the doctor did not express any concern that a c-section would be needed. <fingers crossed>

    They listened to Evan’s heartbeat and sent us on our way. Drive time 3.5 hours, time in waiting room/exam room waiting to be seen 1.0 hours, actual appointment 20 minutes. 🙂 <shrug> oh well, lol.

    We will move to Ann Arbor next week, have 2 appointments in Ann Arbor starting the following week and if Evan has not come by July 25th then they will begin the induction process. They prefer to start the induction early in the week with heart patients so that it’s not happening over the weekend when the hospital and especially the pediatric unit is not at full staff. Good call!

  • Biophysical US @ 33 weeks

    Biophysical US @ 33 weeks

    Last Friday we had our second biophysical ultrasound and non-stress test. As it turns out Friday afternoon is not a good day for appointments. Wow, was it busy. The nurse came by after about 15 minutes, looked at Evan’s non-stress results, said it looked great but she wanted to get 8 more minutes of data. 25+ minutes later they unhooked Sarah from the machine. We went over to the ultrasound area and waited some more. The ultrasound was pretty standard, it’s always great to see him. They didn’t see any issues.

    I am really excited for our next U of M appointment this Friday. They are going to look at his heart again and see how it’s doing but what I am most interested in are his measurements. It has been several weeks now since we have heard anything about his size and we’re anxious to hear.

    The surgeon says, the bigger the better. I think this will play a large role in the delivery. We’ve got some logistics to figure out still. Do we “move” to Ann Arbor early and wait it out? Do we schedule it and induce? Do we wait for labor and drive the 1.5 hours to Ann Arbor (OB’s suggestion)? I think the exams and ultrasounds the last 2-3 weeks will help us make that decision. We would prefer to let it happen naturally but if he’s already a really good size (which at last look was looking good) then maybe it would make more sense to induce for logistical proposes.

  • Biophysical US @ 32 wks

    Biophysical US @ 32 wks

    Continuing since our 30th-week appointment, we are going to have weekly ultrasounds.  Usually this wouldn’t happen until week 36, but seeing as we are a special case we get to go more often.  Starting at this appointment, we also have weekly fetal non-stress tests.  I had no idea what this was but I get to sit in a chair for 20-30 minutes with 2 monitors strapped to my belly.  One is for measuring contractions and one measures the fetal heartbeat.  I am given a button (think Jeopardy-type buzzer) that I have to press every time I feel Evan move.  They are looking for a correlation of Evan moving plus an increase in his heart rate within a set amount of time.  Evan passed with flying colors.  His heart may be bojangled but dammit it works awesome.  Lil fella is going to be alright after all. 🙂

    The ultrasounds we have now are called biophysical ultrasounds.  It just means they are looking at his overall development.  They don’t take any measurements except for amniotic fluid levels.  A couple weeks ago it was suspected that the ventricles in his brain were too large so they also measured these.  We weren’t worried then and it turns out that he is growing into them just fine.  They appear pronounced but measure normally, so there are no other indications of any problems.  He was again head-down facing my right side, which explains why I suddenly get shooting pains on my right side and rib area.  Of course we couldn’t get a profile pic because both his hands and a foot were in front of his face.  Plus it is only getting more and more crowded so the likelihood of getting a nice profile ever again is getting slim.  We did notice his little hand holding onto something and it was the umbilical cord.  When we zoomed back a little bit we could see that he was not only holding onto it but sucking on it like a paci.  We could see his little chin moving and everything.  Very cool.

    Thanks Mom for coming with me to my appointment.  I’m really happy that not only I got to share him with you but also you got to experience your first US.  Only a couple weeks left until we meet him in real life. 🙂

    Here the tech points out the hand, with the fingers on top and it resting in his palm.  Nice fat little arm too. If you squint a little you can see that the dark part in his grip is  the cord itself.

    Zoomed out, to the right you can see the highlighted region of his forehead and start of nose.  The flicker of white in the middle of the image was his little chin moving.  Too bad he was being a little stinker and wouldn’t give us a better shot.

  • Best shape of my life

    I know these are a little old but I thought I would post some belly comparison photos.  Right now I am at 32/40 weeks.  I’ve gained… 30ish pounds… I think.  Turkey weighed 4 of those pounds himself last time we checked.  I absolutely love the round shape he has given me.  I get it now why pregnant woman have said they’ve never felt more confident of their bodies.  While I cannot go that far, I will say I love the way I can’t see my feet. I love the shadow Evan helps me cast.  I just love having him so close to me.  There will definitely be more to update, but for now here is how everything has looked so far.

     

     

  • Baby Shower

    Thanks so much to my sister and mom for hosting a shower for Evan.  Thank you family and friends for showering Evan with so much love and generosity already.  Among you, he will surely find no shortage of your kindness.  We received some adorable clothes, lots of nursery items, and oh-so practical tips and tricks from experienced moms.  Baby stuff is soooo cute and cuddly.  Thanks ladies (and Paulie)! The camera was a little squirrely so sorry the pics are what they are, but I also didn’t need 100 photos of my double chin so maybe it was a blessing in disguise. 🙂 Can’t wait until you all get to meet my little sweetie!  With his morse-code kicks he sends his deepest appreciation and thanks.