Humphrelia

I want to say something positive because sometimes I can be a real downer. The Jell-o was not bad!

On Tuesday morning at 2:55am. I awoke to what I thought was back pain.  took three ibuprofen and waited for it to take effect. I cat-napped for 30 minutes. I awoke to even more pain, but it had now crept around to my chest ,and I thought, “Oh this must be some really bad reflux.” So I took some Prilosec. The next four hours were some of the most painful of my life, and I have been through natural child birth (still need to tell you that whole story).

I tried to wait for my doctor’s office to open, but it was taking too long. Then we tried to find an urgent care facility. That is when my mother arrived. I had called her at 6:30 to see if she could swing by to help me figure out what was going on, at which time she suggested I drink some chamomile tea - to which I gently offered, “TO HELL WITH TEA!” She was a little freaked when she came in my bedroom as I was crouching on the floor rocking back and forth like a traumatized child.

My husband asked what he should do, and I did something I hardly ever do: I told him he needed to make my decisions for me because I was no longer capable, and to please do it RIGHT NOW. We got in the car and he took me to the ER.

Let me just say that you know it is bad when you fill out the ER paper work, under your name it asks if you are having chest pains or shortness of breath, and you answer YES! They start moving fast! I was whisked into the back and needles started being stuck in me and blood being drawn and an onslaught of questions (which I could barely answer because of the insurmountable amount of pain and the confusion that comes with it).

I was taken to a small room where I was treated by a doctor that did not wear a white coat but instead opted for a red and blue plaid Polo button down. He gave me very good drugs so I let his fashion choices go. This is about the time that they inserted another IV into my other arm. My veins had started shrinking so they put this one in the crook of my arm like the other one. I did not know at the time that this was the last time I would bend either arm for the next five days.

The pain was to return though, as I was trying to still nurse Ewan and I wanted to not have any drugs that would impede that. They offered morphine, which is fine for nursing mothers, but it brought little to no relief. The unfortunate thing about finding that out was the timing: I had been strapped down and placed in a large metal machine. The pain started to build before I even got in, but they said drugs would interfere with the test, and I was all “I can do it!” Sadly, I was mistaken. By the time I was in the machine for 30 of the 90 min that was required, I was crying and pleading for “it” to stop, screaming to be saved from the torture. This is when I finally got some drugs - 4 mg of morphine were shot in my veins, dope-fiend style. My eyes did not roll back in my head, and I did not fall to the bathroom floor with the syringe still in my arm. Instead I was still screaming in pain.

I was taken back to my room to moan and groan far away from other patients’ ears. After an hour of wailing, the pain started to ease to where I could sit down. I asked husband to rub my back. Thankfully, he did until all the pain just melted away.

The test still needed to be finished, so I asked if we could hurry it along before the pain came back. Lucky for me, a new kind of drug was waiting for me when I got back to my room - dilaudid. If I ever become a drug user, this may be my drug of choice. It made me crazy, wired, tired, and dizzy, and it even made me slur my words, but it took the pain away.

By the end of the testing they had stuck me in every machine the hospital had to offer and finally came up with what was ailing me. I had a gall bladder full of stones. One stone had escaped and clogged my common bile duct, causing bile to back up into my liver. And I also had a blood clot in my lung.

Now we had two major problems - one that must be dealt with immediately and one that has long term implications. I was immediately put on high doses of heparin to start treating the clot. Once that was under control they dove into the other more immediate problem. I had an endoscopic procedure done where they removed the stone from blocking the common bile duct and also opened the duct up so if anything else came tumbling down it would fall out instead of blocking the bile - mostly so my liver could start healing. The next day, which was Friday, I had a laparoscopic surgery where they removed my gall bladder and its trove of stones.

The pain from the stones is gone and in its place is pain from surgery - but I will take that any day. The blood clot is something I now have to deal with by taking serious blood thinners for now and then find a good hematologist in the ATL area to deal with my on-going care (chime in if you are one or know one).

I am now back home and steadily recovering from the surgeries. I am not, however, getting back to life yet. Hopefully that will start to happen by the end of this week. I did however lose all my baby weight while in the hospital, and I look forward to trying on my jeans when I can put pants on again. There is also something to be said for making it through this very creepy week alive when so many in the public eye have not.

I did not eat or drink for four days and when I was finally allowed to put something inside me besides air, they brought me green lime jell-o. It was the best damn jell-o I had ever tasted.

Ewan is now one month old.

He’s nearly the size that Will was when Will was three months old. He’s wearing Will’s hand-me-down “3-6M” onesies already. He weighs over 11 lbs. He’s already really good at moving that head around - goodbye, floppy neck syndrome.

We have more pictures. I know I’ve been bad about posting any of them, but I will post more soon. Now that I’ve returned to week, free time seems more and more scarce.

Sorry for the lame “filler” post. I’ll post again soon (hopefully) with pictures and more text to describe all that has gone on in the past month here.

We hope everyone is doing well!

Pronounced like Huey without the initial H. We actually probably won’t call him that, but it goes well with Willie (which we sometimes call Will).

Ewan James Strider Humphries was born on 5:44am on April, 20^th 2009. It was good timing because my parents were already in town to attend a grandparents’ day at Will’s school on that very day. Around 11:30pm Sunday night, Malin started to have contractions, and we headed to the hospital.

It was an even shorter labor than with Will - which is typical from what I understand (meaning that labor for second child is typically shorter than first).

I suppose it was lucky that it passed quickly because Malin had the horrible misfortune of getting a complete a-hole anesthesiologist. He was not very personable. He was short with us and mildly derisive, too. Malin had just been given Stadol (a pain-killer that doped her up solid) and was irritated that she was having trouble sitting straight up (which was due to the aforementioned medication). Then he f’ed up the epidural. After it was obvious that the epidural was ineffective (several hours with noticable lack of pain relief), he then insisted that the epidural catheter was properly placed (which it wasn’t) and decided not to re-do it. Several nurses and the nurse anesthetist were witness to it and said they would put in a complaint. Prior to being discharged from the hospital, Malin retold the story to the midwife, who was sure to get the doctor’s name to put in another complaint. (He may not have a job at the hospital for long…)

What followed was a heroic endurance of labor pain on Malin’s part. At 5:44am, the doctor showed up just in time to catch the baby as he was finally ejected from the womb. Ewan was free at last.

Mercifully, Malin’s medication-less labor was at its end - the product of which was a healthy-sized 9 lb. 3.2 oz. baby boy that measured 21.5 inches long.

The nurses cleaned him up and gave him the usual quick inspection:

And then they handed him to mom and dad:

The nurses took Ewan up to the nursery to give him a bath. Shortly after that, he started to breath faster than newborns usually do. After a few hours, his respiration appeared to slow to normal and his oxygen-saturation was okay, so the nurses decided he could finally leave the nursery and come to our room in the hospital.

While Grandma and Grandpa Humphries were hanging out with Will at grandparent’s day, Ewan’s other grandmother, Annie, came over for a visit:

And shortly after that, the other grandparents made it over:

Ann returned with Will in tow, and he seemed to take to his new little brother pretty well:

Will, hamming it up as usual:

Will was a little bit sheepish at first, as he often is. When Ewan cried for the first time, Will got scared, covered his ears, and ran for the door to get away!

After everyone left, Malin, Ewan, and I tried to take a nap. During this time, we noticed Ewan’s breathing seemed to be labored. He was breathing very quickly and heavily, and his nostrils were flaring. We called the nurse, who took him to the nursery to examine him.

Unfortunately, he was then sent to the NICU because his oxygen saturation was lower than they like to see. All sorts of scary possibilities were presented; but, even early on, the doctor thought it was probably bad reflux: stomach acid made it far enough up Ewan’s esophagus to get into his lungs and cause the distressed respiration.

We had been through the NICU experience before with Will. This time was a little easier because the symptoms were not nearly as severe as Will’s extremely low platelet count. Nevertheless, it was not easy to have to visit the NICU in order to see the new boy and to see him hooked up to to so much (machines that monitored his breathing, pulse, and oxygen saturation; oxygen supplied to his nostrils; and an IV drip to provide him fluids).

Luckily, some of the scarier sounding possibilities (like cardiac/heart condition and pneumonia) were slowly stricken from the list as results from tests rolled in. Ewan’s breathing was quite intense and difficult during his first night as he recovered from his earlier breathing troubles. He also got a little bit of congestion in his nose and sinuses, which doesn’t help at all since newborn’s only know how to breath through their nose (except when they are crying).

After that, he seemed to recover quickly. The nurses and the doctor continued to see signs of severe reflux though. The NICU doctor is great - very thorough and extremely protective of all of the babies that end up in his care. But apparently Malin and I seemed like a responsible couple, so he made a deal with us: we follow all of his instructions to the letter, and he would let Ewan go home. We finally left the hospital with Ewan on Wednesday, 4/22.

We have been struggling to follow the doctor’s orders because they require putting Ewan on a strict feeding schedule that is timed compatibly with his medication times. We are still figuring it out. Ewan occasionally appears to have reflux symptoms - wincing and swallowing an hour or so after feeding - but there have been no severe episodes, and hopefully there will be none. His medicines, Reglan and Zantac, seem to be helping.

So we’re finally all at home, and there is a great measure of comfort for all of us in that. Thanks to everyone for all of the well wishes during these past few days. We will no doubt be getting even more pictures of the little guy and will post them here soon!

Just thought I would drop in and let everyone know we are still waiting around for this baby. He seems to be pretty happy where he is even though I have issued an eviction notice.

Yesterday we did eggs and bunny baskets. Will got a HUGE bag of gummy worms and completely freaked out. You would have thought it was Christmas.  He was on a sugar high most of the day and ended up crashing pretty hard last night.

In other news, I think Will is official an in-doors kids after these past few weeks: he has been attacked by ants resulting in about 13 bites on his hands, and on Friday he got a tick. Josh pulled it out, but part of the head broke off and was stuck. I had no idea how important it was to remove the head immediately until I google’d it, and we had fun getting it out last night before bed. I was just glad he did not throw up from getting all worked up.

Tomorrow I go for what will hopefully be my last OB visit. Wednesday is the due date, so hopefully we can get this show on the road soon.

Spring break is over for us. Will’s last day of Spring Break was Sunday; he returned to school on Monday, April 6^th.

We’ve had a lot of other stuff going on lately, too.

My mother-in-law got re-married to a very nice guy. She’s just got a buyer for her house, and tomorrow will be a fun day of moving furniture. Luckily not for me. Movers will be picking stuff up from her house and moving some of it in with us and the rest in her new house where she lives with her new husband. Malin will be dealing with that since she knows where all of the furniture is going, and I have to work…

Malin is still pregnant - but just barely. She’s about to burst, so she’s not likely to be in this state for very long. Due date is in one week. I will be taking three weeks off from work when the new one arrives. I am kind of looking forward to that since my current project at work has been up and down and a little high stress lately.

We’ve had all sorts of fun dealing with unreliable contractors lately. The roofers finally put a new roof on the house - before Malin went into labor luckily. Crummy weather for the past several weeks did not help this effort. They were supposed to be back tomorrow to put up the new siding but called today to let us know they may not be able to find a match for our type of siding. If they can’t, they’ll have to work with insurance to potentially re-side the entire house (!?!?!) so that we don’t have one exterior wall of the house that looks different from the rest… Soon our hail damage saga will be behind us. I can’t wait for that day.

I’ve been brewing like mad (3 batches in 3.5 weeks). I have to get it out of my system since I may not have an opportunity to do so for a while after the baby comes.

That’s about all that’s been shaking ’round these parts since I last posted (about a month ago). Hopefully I’ll be prompt with pictures after the new guy arrives.

I noticed that I have, laying around the hard drive on this computer, several scanned menus from some amazing (foodie heaven) meals that Malin and I have eaten. Take a gander and then try to tell me you’re not jealous. Great experiences every one of them:

• The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, 12/24/2004. This was our first experience of this kind - a chef’s tasting menu at a very highly-rated restaurant. We were addicted.
• Quinones, 07/29/2006. Our first experience at Quinones (the best restaurant in Atlanta).
• Quinones, 12/16/2006
• The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, 12/22/2007
• Quinones, 07/26/2008

In July of 2005, we had a fine meal at Seeger’s (which has since closed), but failed to get a copy of the menu…

In June 2006 we took a weekend trip to New York to eat our way around the big apple. The most memorable food experiences were at Le Bernadin (though not as great as we had hoped) and Babbo (un-freakin-believable). Unfortunately, we didn’t think to snag copies of the menus there either…

We did get a few photos from this trip though:

La Pizza Martha at Luzzo’s:

My college friend and New York local, Bob:

Malin during lunch at Les Halles:

Also on the list that weekend were visits to Pommes Frites (dozens of interesting condiments available including curries and flavored mayos) and the Brooklyn Brewery.

The other week, our little town of Tyrone was hit by a wicked hail storm. We had lots and lots of golf-ball sized hail stones, and several stones that were even bigger!

You can see the dogs, curiously sniffing what appear to be alien space rocks:

And here are the two really big hail stones that Malin and Will decided to save:

We still have them in our freezer today, although the defrost cycle in there has shrunk them down a bit.

So we had to make a home-owner’s claim because we have dings in our roof and a lot of cracks and pops in the siding. Lovely. And wouldn’t you know it: the day the adjustor comes to inspect everything is the day after a wintry blizzard, so there is nothing they can do until later in the week (after the snow melts).

I don’t have any pictures of the snow unfortunately. We got a heck of a lot, and had lots of accumulation - even on the asphalt. I worked from home Monday because I could see patches of black ice on the road around my house and the traffic report on the news indicated several ice-related accidents: a patch of ice on GA-400 causing problems and all lanes of I-20 closed due to a jack-knifed tractor trailer. I decided it was wiser to wait until everything melted away, which it did that day. All that was left this morning consisted of small patches of snow in the yard that were shaded, protected from the sun’s rays.

If you want to see pictures of what it looked like, you can use the pictures from last year to get a decent idea.

I have had a few questions from youz guyz about cloth diapering, so I thought I would take a few minutes to type out what we have decided to do. First we are starting with these. They’re called pre-folds. These are not to be confused with the kind that come from Babies’R'Us or Wal*Mart.  These are much more absorbent and way softer. They also last longer.  We are keeping them on the wee one’s body with Snappi’s, I am a little scared of diaper pins and Snappi’s are all plastic and easy to use. Later I think we will try these - which are more of an all-in-one diaper, but I want to get comfortable with cloth before I venture out into uncharted territory. Also I don’t want to buy 20 all-in-ones and have him grow like a weed like Will did and then be out of newborn diapers in three weeks.

For covers, we are using wool soakers - plastic pants don’t  breathe very well, and I worry about smell and rash. I have knitted and crocheted several pairs in different sizes in 100% wool.  Wool soakers are anti-microbial, water resistant, and breathable. They do need to be washed in wool wash and lanolized though.  Also I have sewn up some soakers made from felted sweaters. You really only need three soakers as you do not change them with every diaper change.

Wipes: they do have cloth wipes, but I am not ready to go there just yet (though I may get a pack of these to try out to test the waters). For now I am either getting a bunch of these or the natural ones they have at the B’R'U.

After potty-training Will, I am pretty un-phased by poop, goop, or anything else for that matter.  My only real concern is having enough to rotate around so we always have some clean.  Getting a system down is really where the work will be. We did have cloth night-time pants for Will for about six months, so I am familiar with how to wash cloths that have been peed on so as it does not give rashes or smell.

Okay, that is the rundown. I hope it was informative.

Will’s Birthday

Will turned four on Sunday, January 11^th. My parents were here, so we were also able to wish my dad a happy birthday that same day. My dad drove all the way down here to Fayette county to have a Darth Vader cake for his birthday.

Will had been asking for Darth Vader on a cake for quite some time. His patience was finally rewarded. Okay, just kidding - he really has no patience.

On his actual birthday, we just threw a very small party for him - immediate family only. He received a few cool gifts: two DVDs (Horton Hears a Hoo and Kung-Fu Panda) and a voice-activated R2-D2 robot:

R2 is about 18 inches tall and responds to the sound of your voice… usually. He occasionally acts up (i.e. stops working properly), but can usually brought back into shape (worst case: hard reboot is necessary). Will likes to have R2 watch him play Wii. R2 has motion detectors so he can actually follow objects with his “eye”, so it can be a little surreal to see R2 watching him and turning from the TV to Will and back as if he’s actually paying attention.

Will’s Birthday Party

The following Saturday, the 17^th, we let Will have an actual party. He invited his friends from school to come out to Dixieland Fun Park:

The kids got to play for an hours in the “play maze” and then ride on a small indoor ferris wheel. After that, we were locked in a “party room” where we were forced to eat pizza.

After pizza was more Darth Vader cake. Due to a lame restriction of the venue, it could not be a homemade cake. So we brought a Publix cake that was decorated to be a Darth Vader cake:

And, of course, after cake it was time to open gifts. You can see that some of his friends were more than welcome to help open the packages:

Most of his friends (or friends’ parents at least) knew of his obsession with Star Wars, so he received several cool Star Wars-related gifts - like a sticker book and some little action figures. The coolest gift, however, was not Star Wars-related. I don’t think Will thinks it’s as cool as I do, but it is neato. It’s a magnifying digital video recorder. It magnifies up to 400x and records to a USB thumb drive. It is an inexpensive toy camera, but is still pretty cool for getting a look under the microscope so to speak - everything from denim to human skin all looks cooler blown up 400 times bigger than usual. The gift that he least understood at the time but has ultimately come to appreciate the most was a gift card for IKEA: we took him up there, and he picked out a new night light and a stuffed animal octopus that he now insists on sleeping with every night.

Charcuterie

One of the gifts that my mom bought my wife for Christmas was a really great cookbook on making charcuterie at home. We were so giddy about it that the first thing we did after getting the book was to buy a meat grinder and a sausage stuffer. We made a country paté for New Year’s Eve dinner:

Note, the off-color of the meat is from a bunch of parsley ground into it - nothing sinister here. This recipe was basically a fancy meatloaf: plenty of pork fat, salty, serve cold. The pink ground meat in the bottom of the bowl is coarsely ground pork shoulder (aka pork butt or Boston butt). Since most of the meat was only ground coarsely, the texture of the final forcemeat is not as smooth or refined - thus it is “country” paté.

The day after Will’s birthday party we found ourselves in Decatur and found a butcher shop there that sells “pink salt” (sodium nitrite) and natural sausage casings (hog casings at least). The following Saturday, the 24^th, we made knackwurst.

Here’s a pic of “water sausage” as I rinsed out the casings after soaking them for a bit in water:

And here is our wonderful finished product:

We’ve eaten some at various points over the past couple of weeks, most notably as hors d’œuvres on our Super Bowl evening.

Malin snapped a few shots of our mixer (aka meat grinder and sausage stuffer) afterwards. We call these Aftermath:

Auntie K and Uncle Cass

The day after we made the sausage, my sister and brother-in-law rolled into our neck of the woods. They had been on the east coast for the prior week, visiting family and friends all over. Since we lived relatively close to the airport, we were their final destination.

Usually Will prefers to ham things up in front of the camera, like so:

But lately he has been enjoying being behind the camera, too. Observe:

Kristie, a bit surprised by the wee photographer:

Cass, perhaps more prepared for portraiture:

Among other things, we dragged K and Cass up to our most recently-discovered chow-spot: The Porter Beer Bar in Little Five Points. Good times were had by all.

Lego Army

As mentioned above, Will has been making a habit of taking pictures lately. His favorite subject, by far, is his Lego army. I mentioned in a previous post how one of Will’s favorite hobbies is to mix and match all of the Lego-men pieces (heads, helmets, upper bodies, lower bodies) to build Frankenstein figures. Well, now his second favorite hobby is to photograph the fruits of this labor:

Here is a big panoramic shot. If it looks like several pictures all stitched together - well, that’s because it is. (If you bothered to notice little details like that, you have too much time on your hands!)

The title of this post was meant to be 100% sarcasm. We occasionally watch Georgia Tech play football on TV. We’ve even been present at the stadium to see our ‘Jackets play a few times. But that is about the extent of our sports-watching. We caught parts of the Olympics this past summer, but many would generally call most of the events there “athletic competitions”, not “sports” (subtle difference).

We never watch professional football except for the Super Bowl. Last year’s game was great. We were hoping for a repeat. For those that watched, they got to see another good game from what I hear. But we didn’t get to watch it all. Our cable provider lost all of the local channels half-way through the game for a good period of time. As we kept channel-hopping, trying to figure out when they’d have their act back together, we mused that this was pretty much the worst possible timing for such a catastrophe. They’ve likely lost a lot of customers to Satellite over this snafu. We weren’t too upset as we weren’t really rooting for either team.

We saw the first half, with Pittsburgh up by 10 being the last score we saw. We missed the action in the fourth quarter, the back-and-forth, the drama. We’ll survive. Heck, today I accidentally used the word “Pirates” when referring to the victors. I had not, in fact, mixed up my sports. It’s all those Ps and Ts in Pittsburg that threw me (yeah, that’s it!). I caught and corrected myself before anyone else pointed it out. But both the people I was talking with already know  that the Hump-House is, in fact, not very football. After all, we were much more excited about the home-made knackwurst hot dogs and barbecue chicken wings…