History of the J Man

A couple photos from his birthday party at Grandma & Grandpa’s house.

Poor Elliott.  First it was the bris when he was a week old and then yesterday I took him to the pediatric surgeon to get his tongue evaluated.  The lactation consultant suggested I do this because she suspected that he might be “tongue tied.”  The other terms used for this are ‘Ankyloglossia’ or ‘short frenum’ which mean that the lingual frenum is short and restricts the mobility of the tongue.  In Elliott’s case the tip of his tongue couldn’t touch the roof of his mouth and the lactation consultant thought it might be restricting his ability to nurse efficiently. 

I took him in to be evaluated and sure enough the doctor at Children’s Memorial said he was in fact ‘tongue tied.’  She said she couldn’t be certain it would help with breastfeeding but kids with this are likely to have speech problems later since there are certain sounds that can only be made when the tongue touches the roof of your mouth.  If we waited until he’s older to have the frenum sniped it would require sedation and surgery.  Instead, she just snipped it right there in the hospital yesterday and it took about 2 seconds.  He nursed and was asleep in my arms 10 minutes later. 

His latch seems a little more comfortable for me and he seems to be gulping away so I’m hoping this helps solve some of my nursing challenges and also avoids any speech issues later. 

Here’s a link I found with more info about being “tongue tied.”

Nana and Papa got Jonah goggles a few weeks ago for his big boy swimming class and he loves them! Here are some photos Dena took when she was over one night of Jonah in his pj’s and goggles.

A goggles and “swimming” video to go with the photos above…

Couch Swimming from Julie Diehl on Vimeo.

A quick post to share a couple cute photos from the last few days.  The first is one Chris took of Elliott on the couch, I think it turned out well so I’m posting it. We have a very similar one of Jonah when he was this age on our red couch too.

The next is from this morning.  It’s a photo of both boys in our bed.  It’s become the tradition this week for Jonah to jump in bed with Elliott and I when we wakes up.  That gives me some extra time to nurse and even get a shower in hopefully while Elliott goes back to sleep and Jonah watches a movie, this week it’s been Princess and the Frog.

This last one is also from today.  From the walk Elliott and I took to order Jonah’s birthday cake.  It was a hard angle for me to get since E was in the Moby wrap on my chest but he looked so cute in that new hat.

Last night we did the bris for Elliott at the Koslens.  We had a pretty good crowd of people there, maybe about 25 in all, and they got to see a pretty good show.

If you’ve never attended a bris before (I’ve been to one other one, but it was so crowded, I didn’t see any of the juicy parts), this is the Jewish custom of ritual circumcision, the way the child is welcomed into the Jewish faith.  It’s similar to a Christian custom of baptism, but instead of splashing a bit of water on the scalp a few times, the tip of the penis is sliced off.  The Jews do not fuck around.

The mohel (the person who actually performs the surgery) was a very nice man named Dr. Bill Barrows, who Julie found online.  He was one of the few who didn’t seem loaded with a lot of attitude about how the child would be raised.  Also, just for the record, when you do a home birth, it is difficult to find someone to do the circumcision, as most places said, “Talk to your OB,” who would say, “Talk to your pediatrician,” who would then refer you to the OB again.  I’m glad we did it this way.

Everyone gathered in the Koslens living room.  A table had been set up which everyone gathered around, with a little place for the baby to lay where his arms and legs could be pinned down.  Amy and Tim acted as Elliott’s godparents, Julie and I said a few words, Dena and Julie’s parents also had some readings.  Then it was showtime. 

They strapped him in.  Mark, Julie’s dad, was instructed to dab the baby’s lips with wine as needed, but to me it looked like he was shoving a purple rag halfway down his throat a little too often.  Even after the mohel told him to stop, he kept doing it.  I didn’t say anything, though, as one of my rules in life is that if you are ever in a position where part of your penis is about to be chopped off, the bar should remain open.  Literally one minute later, after a couple of expert incisions from Dr. Barrows, it was over.  The procedure itself was pretty quick, though judging from Elliott’s reaction, not exactly painless.  And then, as is Jewish custom, it was time to eat.

Overall, it was a very nice evening, and a good way for Elliott to me a lot of Julie’s side of the family. 

Sidenote: I ended up eating at the table where the circumcision was performed.  I didn’t see any penis blood.

Yes, it’s two of everyone’s favorite things, together at last! 

In an effort to get Jonah to poop on the potty, we’ve had to engage in some bribery.  A couple of months ago, we began the arrangement that if pooped in his potty, no matter how small, he would be rewarded with some sort of prize.  These prizes started out small, usually a small sheet of five to ten stickers.  I suppose this was in conjunction with the size of the nugget-sized poops Jonah was presenting to us.  But within the last couple of days, the size of the poops have gotten much larger; as a result, we’ve stepped up the prizes.  The other day I gave him a Percy train (from the Thomas the Tank Engine series, as if you didn’t know) and also a Cubs-themed Mr. Potato Head, both of which he loved.  He also saw me get them out of the closet, the place where we keep the larger loot.  Unfortunately, he now understands where the good stash is at.

The end result of all this is that he is pooping the potty with somewhat alarming frequency, each time demanding a “closet prize.”  Our theory is that he’s saving them up in a sort of fecal holding pen and letting them leak out a little at a time in order to increase his overall income.  I guess I can’t begrudge him this, as it is eminently logical and is exactly what I would do in his situation.  Still, I have to wonder whether I’m creating some sort of complex.  Anyway, the good news is that he’s pooping in the potty a lot more these days.

As for the nudity, Jonah has also discovered what a joy it is to walk around without pants.  Again, I suppose none of us can blame him for this either, as he finds he’s most comfortable that way.  Usually we’ll put him down for his nap with t-shirt, underwear and sweat pants on and he’ll emerge with only the t-shirt.  Also after bath time, he’s a lot more adamant about running around nude rather than put on his jammies.  What will be really fun is when he starts to whip out his junk at the grocery store or Target.  I don’t think we’re at that stage yet, but those days are just around the corner.

Little Elliott (by the way, still not so sure about the “Little E” nickname, as I don’t want any of my children to be associated with NASCAR) is slowly adjusting to life outside of the womb.  I find his appetite is increasing, but like all babies, his activities are reduced to eating, sleeping, crying and moving his bowels.  Sometimes he’ll be awake and just sort of look around, which is nice.  Jonah has also figured out where Elliott gets his food from, as one of his current favorite phrases is, “Elliott get milk from boob?”  Usually this is framed as a question, as if he’s just confirming what he already presumes to be true.

Here we are at the end of Day 2 in the life of E.C. Diehl, and things are still going quite well.  We decided to take Little E out to Nana and Papa’s house, as well as a trip to Babies R Us and Jimmy Johns for lunch.  We concluded things with a stop at Starbucks.  A few people recognized that we were carrying around a newborn, and a couple even asked how old he was.  It was a little odd to respond, “One day.”  Had we delivered at Prentice, we would have probably still been at the hospital.  Score one for homebirth, I guess.

Elliott did a good job with being in the car, though he didn’t really like being strapped into his carseat.  The one we have right now seems a bit too big for him, so we might end up switching it out for our other, smaller seat that we used with Jonah.  We’ll see. 

He also had his first bath today, and predictably hated it.  Jonah did a nice job with helping out, but Elliott definitely wasn’t having any of bath time.  Once he got out and dry, he was OK though. 

Grandma and Grandpa Diehl came by pretty much as soon as he was out of his bath.  He was mostly asleep or half-asleep the whole time, so my Mom didn’t really get a chance to see his eyes, which she wanted to see.  There will be time enough for that, I suppose.

***

Just got back from giving him 2 oz. of formula, changing a poopy diaper (still meconium) and changing his outfit because he peed all over me.  Good times.

***

A few words about Jonah: He seems to be adapting OK, though he is definitely a little more manic when people come to visit.  Not sure if this is a call for attention or what, but he seems to slip into a higher gear for sheer entertainment purposes in order for people to notice him too.  Maybe it’s just my imagination.  Anyway, everyone who comes to visit pays a lot of attention to him, so I assume he’s not feeling too neglected.  Plus he’s cleaned up on big-brother gifts, so he’s pretty pleased with that.  My parents gave him a big milk truck that he’s now enamored with. 

One other note on Jonah — for a while he would say, “I not like you!” to me.  When I asked why not, he would say, “Me not know,” or “I don’t know.”  Sometimes it would be accompanied by him hitting me.  He also bit me last month.  Not sure where that came from or why he thought that, but fortunately it seems to have been a phase that he has now grown out of.  I think I also encouraged it by asking, “Do you love me?” to which he would respond, “No.”  For a little while, I would show people and they would sort of laugh, which probably encouraged the response.  I’ve avoided doing that lately and we seem to get along pretty good now.  Needless to say, I won’t be testing him there any time soon.

Julie: 

Looks like it’s time to officially change the name of this blog.  I’m thinking something like “History of the J Man and Little E”…

Jonah’s little brother was born early Monday morning, May 10, 2010 at 2:42 a.m.   I started feeling contractions around 10 p.m., after celebrating Mother’s Day with the family in Morton Grove then getting a crabby Jonah to bed once we got home.  Chris and I went to bed hoping to sleep through much of the beginning stages of labor.  Chris snored away without any trouble while I slept on and off for a bit, trying to relax through contractions and not wake up enough to even time them. 

Around 12:15 a.m., I woke Chris and asked him to get the phone so we could call our doula to ask her to come.  I thought contractions were about 8 minutes apart at that point.  I had plans to wait a little longer before calling the midwife but ended up calling her too around 12:45 a.m. or so.  The midwife got to our house around 1:40 a.m. and her assistant arrived a few minutes later.  At that point I had gotten up to soak in the bathtub while Chris started to set up the house for our homebirth.  There wasn’t a ton to set up but he had to put plastic down on the bed and on the floor and pull out some other things like towels for the delivery.

The midwife came and took my blood pressure while I sat in the tub and then left to get set up herself.  By the time she was ready I was also ready to get out of the tub.  It was sort of tricky getting out of the tub and walking back the length of the house to our bedroom but I made it. I crawled into bed, and Hillary checked me.  She said I was 9.5 centimeters and fully effaced so I could start to push any time I was ready.  That was much better news than when I got to triage with Jonah at the hospital and was barely at 5 centimeters.

***

Chris:

From my position at the head of the bed, I didn’t have such a great view of what was going on, though I held Julie’s hand and massaged her head during the more intense periods.  As the contractions started to come more forcefully, I could tell Julie was in a lot of pain, but fortunately they didn’t seem to last very long (at least to me; I’m sure to Julie they felt interminably long). 

At some point I did happen to look down and see his head poking through down there, and I heard the midwife say, “He’s in the call” or something like that.  I wasn’t sure what she said, as another wave of pain coursed through Julie’s body.  It was only a few more pushes and the baby was out!  Julie had only pushed for about 15 minutes, which is a far cry from the two hours from when Jonah was born.  In fact, from the time I woke up (12:18 a.m.) to when he was born (2:52 a.m.), only about 2.5 hours had gone by.  When Jonah was born, it had been a 30 hour odyssey.  From when Julie had started to feel the first contractions to time of the birth, it had been just under five hours, or about the length of a Red Sox/Yankees playoff game.

Once the baby was born, Julie got him on her chest and after a couple of fitful false starts, he latched on and started chowing down.  He didn’t cry out right at first, but once Hillary moved him over to the bed to run through the standard battery of tests, he was really able to test out his lungs, and they were in fine working order.  We debated over whether he looked like Jonah and after consulting Jonah’s baby book, decided that he didn’t really look anything like his older brother. 

I also found out that what the midwife had said was that our new baby had been born “in the caul,” which simply means he was born without the amniotic sac having been broken:

To be “born in the caul” simply means a child is born with the amniotic sac or membrane still intact around the body. When a baby is born in the caul, the sac balloons out at birth, covering the baby’s face and body as it emerges from the mother. The baby is in no danger of drowning, as it is still being fed nutrients and oxygen through the umbilical cord, and will not take its first breath until the face emerges from the fluid contained in the caul. The caul is harmless and is easily removed by the doctor or midwife. (From Wikipedia)

According to the article, only about 1 birth in 1,000 result in a baby born in the caul, and most of those are premature births.  It explained why Julie’s water had never broken.  Apparently being born this way is quite auspicious, according to our midwife.  She told us how European cultures believed the caul, or baby membrane, was said to have powers to save people from drowning, and how they were richly prized by sailors. 

The baby’s vitals all checked out and as the midwives were starting to pack up, my cell phone rang: Our doula had arrived!  Of course, she had missed the birth, which was too bad, but in some ways, it was great that labor was so smooth (relatively speaking) that we were able to manage things on our own.  She was coming in from Bolingbrook and had taken her time because she didn’t want to get there too early, but never in my wildest imaginations did I think the whole affair would take under five hours.  I remember distinctly hoping that we would be done by noon the following day as I rolled out bed just after midnight.  As it turned out, we were all tucked into bed as the sun was coming up. 

Around 6:45 a.m. or so, Jonah wandered out of his room, and much to his surprise, he had a baby brother!  I still can’t believe that he slept through the whole thing, and Bianca also didn’t make a peep.  I don’t know if her instincts told her what was going on and to lay low, or she was just tired, but neither Jonah nor Bianca disturbed us at all.  We were all set to call Julie’s parents to take them back to Evanston and get them out of the way, but it was never necessary.

Before she left, our doula was nice enough to make us some pancakes which we thankfully ate together.  Jonah was very excited to hold his new brother and had fun touching his fingers, toes and hair.  It was nice to see him ask permission to touch the baby; hopefully his respectfulness will last!

It’s about 5 p.m. now and it’s still hard to believe what we’ve all experienced.  Our home now has four people in it (five, if we count the dog!).  It’s going to take some adjustments and definitely won’t be easy, but I think we’re all ready for the adventure.  We’d better be, because it’s coming at us whether we want it to or not.

Finally, we did decide on a name, only an hour ago or so: Elliott Cameron Diehl. 

Jonah had his first drop off play date this weekend.  He went next door to his friend Luca’s house for a few hours.  I was a little worried about how the drop off would go since in the past either Chris or I have always stayed with him at play dates but I shouldn’t have worried.  He literally walked into Luca’s house, took off his shoes and dove into the box of cars.  When I said, “bye” he was like, “yeah, bye” without even looking up. 

They had a great time playing at Luca’s house and then riding in the wagon to the park.  Here’s a photo of the two of them at the newly redone park in our neighborhood.  It was wonderful of Luca’s parents to take both boys out so Chris and I could get some other things accomplished child-free, at least for now (less than 1 week away from my due date!).

Below is a photo of Jonah and Luca at the park.

I have some unrelated photos from this month that are cute so I wanted to get them posted before Jonah’s little brother arrives.  Less than 2 weeks until my due date now.  My last day of work is May 7th so I’m hoping he doesn’t come early, I’d like to get that one last pay check in. 

This first photos is of Jonah and Chris decorating Easter eggs at our house.  I think Jonah’s fingers got almost as colorful as the eggs.

A post-bath photo of him in his new Ikea bath towel with a hood that actually fits over his head. He’s outgrown the other ones we have…

And this last photo is from the other night. He fell asleep with his baby doll and I thought it was really cute. He used to sleep with Elmo like this but lately he’d rather have cars or trains in bed with him. He keeps talking about his baby brother sleeping in his bed with him too. I told him in his room yes, but they will each have their own beds.

I also found him one night with a bunny rabbit toy stuffed into the belly of his shirt, he fell asleep that way. Maybe imitating how I look? I’m not sure what that one was about and didn’t take a photo.