But this is the good hurt. Spent the last hour and a half walking and pacing with The Master (the boy's nickname) trying to give mum some sleep time. He calmed down and slept as I walked for a bit. It's so very nice to be loved.

But now it's my turn to try and sleep for an hour or so...

Well, we happy four, but we haven't gone home to the monster yet.

Anyway we're here, and doing well.

Seriously. All the email, all the lj commentary, all the facebook chatter, thank you!

Been nice to have friends nearby and the phone kept quiet.

And I still like lemon-rind Stilton!

Just a quick update:

1:38 p.m.
7lbs 11oz
boy.

1:21 p.m.
The nurses (who are awesome) and the doctor (who is equally awesome) keep telling us "any minute now" an have been for about an hour. The epidural is starting to wear off, and the baby is getting lower and lower. There's still an amount of effacement that needs to occur. They've been shifting her over from side to side, and while it has been helping, it hasn't been bringing that last needed change.

Things are moving at their own speed.

12:27 p.m.
She's feeling okay, but the contractions seem to be petering out a bit (sorry Pete).
She may eed a bit of pitocin if she doesn't completely efface (google it if you don't know).
Still spirits are high (Dad's getting hungry though...)


6:50 a.m.
Epidural in after some crazy contractions.
She's feeling a lot calmer, a lot less pain.
(7cm)

4:20 a.m.
Stuff is starting.
She's getting an IV, just had a shower.
It all started to get underway at about 4:20 a.m.

So, first of all, I'm sorry.

That rampage of youtube videos.... that was bad. I promise that I didn't try and post them all at once. It's just that youtube somehow delayed a whole bunch of them. So I've cleaned it up a bit.

Although, truth be told, that Catherine Tate and David Tennant one was worth watching three times. To me at least!


Well folks today is my daughter's birthday. The Heyes family rule is that you get to have whatever you want for breakfast on your birthday. Typically me and Mum have ice cream. Julie wants to go out, so we're going to go out to the best little local place Kristina's (I know, opinion's vary on that place).

I got a very nice letter from church, some nice folks offering to bring some meals over while we get settled. I have to make the calls to my side of the family today, or at least the emails.

A Dad's work is never begundone.

awesome.

(try two)
This is posted for Becky's benefit.

I know, two videos in one day.
But seriously, The Dark Knight is THAT good.
Best. Movie. Evar.

It matters.

Just not today.
Going Sunday.
More as the story develops.

Okay, seriously, there's nothing more that we can do to encourage the baby. I mean we've done everything except prod the little bastard bundle of joy with a tazer (Don't taz me Dad!"). So in the meantime I started Julie on the path of bike riding. She's pretty good until she realizes that I've stopped holding on, then WUMP! right to the ground. But she was a real trooper though.

Just finished a few hours of sorting through old papers, old manuals, and tons of heavy paper that I've been moving around since I graduated from college. Kind of heart breaking, but also very liberating.

Understand that there are things I could be doing, should be doing, but I just couldn't get my mind to focus on abstract things like writing a photographer's bio, writing out game mechanics and game theory, or even working on the discrete game I want to run. Nope, instead I needed something concrete to do to keep my mind shut down a bit as we wait for the baby.

Fortunately, if the baby doesn't come tomorrow, there's a few more boxes of stuff that need to be sorted! Yay.

More as this story develops.

What can I say? I like 'em. I hear they taste good too. (Sorry Frank)

Today's the big day, according to the great vision of the prognostication machine. I think we're going to do a very small shop (Ice Cream is on sale &1.99 for a half gallon), maybe take the little monster to the beach. With all the rain we've had this summer we're all sick of being indoors. Still, it seems like I've caught my wife's sleepiness. Today we all got out of bed at 9:45. That's ridiculous for me! Even worse, that's starting to become the normal time to wake up.

But, the wife was feeling - well she was feeling something - and she decided to make chocolate chip waffles. Pretty yummy, if not terribly nutritious.

Anyway, no real developments yet on the baby front.

Until next time...

That picture there, just to the let a bit, that's where I'd like to be right now; at peace.

I spent yesterday and the day before in high alert freak out. I dunno, but I think it's the weather that's getting to me. But so far it's sunny today. I had a very solid night's sleep, and it was cold and not in anyway humid upon waking. All a very good start to the day.

This morning the mail was here about two hours earlier than usual and we had a great care package from our friends in Newton (Holla).

Anyway time for some tea.

Well, nothing yet. No I have the oh so fun duty of deciding whether or not to go to work, or to stay home. Basically I have to figure out whether it would be better to stay home and have nothing happen, or to go to work and be unable to leave work until 11 a.m. or possibly (but not likely) 7 a.m.

I mean on the one hand it's not the most critical decision in the world, and yet on the other hand... it is.

Sheesh.

So today we've hit the one week mark. She is 39 weeks today, and is due next week.

Driving home last night I tried to remember what it was like seven years ago when the monster was born. I can't really remember much of it to tell you the truth. The wife tells me that she had a cooler packed with sandwiches and food, and that her Mum showed up with candy and sweets the day after. What I remember is holding her legs up and coaching her to push in rhythm with her contractions. I remember that it was easier to watch her contractions than to wait for the readout sheet that spilled out of the machine like some evil scientist's computer in the 1950s.

I hadn't gotten my license yet. I remember driving home with the two of them in the car, going about fifteen miles an hour the whole way home. I don't remember putting them in the house, I don't remember much of the next week and a half. I know we were visited by many friends and family. I know our workplace (We both had part time jobs at a local super market) sent us flowers, and that totally impressed me for some reason.

Fortunately I have a couple of photo albums from those days - my pre digi cam days. Some friends from those days are far away or passed on, some are still near by. I've made new friends since then, some of whom I'm sure will want to stop by at some point and bounce the baby in their arms.

Now a days the birthing room has wifi, we both have laptops, and we have tow digi cams. Great big plastic pieces of the here-and-now that will trap some memories for us. The boy will baptized as an infant, rather than as a small child. He will come into a family with a sibling already here. He has cousins now, and family friends he has yet to meet. Hell he has a larger family to be a part of now that the family Heyes is talking again. Which reminds me, I ought to send notice out to the English this week. Do I call or write?

In the meantime my Mum-in-law kindly brought us some fruit and other foodstuffs for our sadly deficient larder, so I'm going to go eat.

Be well.

I managed to get a full night's sleep last night. At about 8:00 p.m. we gave in and put the air-conditioner on. By about 9:00 p.m. the house was tolerably less humid, although still warm. I'd just about had it with being awake. I listened to another hour of this great Doctor Who radioshow/podcast: Doctor Who Time Tales on iTunes. But I went to sleep finally at 11:00, and the wife too.

This morning the wife had about an hour of Braxton-Hicks contractions, and once again I thought we were going to be off to hospital. This is not at all like what we went through with the first one, but that experience had its own surreal qualities.

Today begins my work week, and I feel just as distracted as I did last week about work. My mind is mostly at home, and in the time that the baby will come. I know, not very zen of me right? Of course it's better to be distracted by work than by the work itself. Today I'm going to cram through dinner at 3:00 p.m. so that I can get one of the guys in the shower and out of the house for a couple of hours. The dinner will be for two other folks in the house, my guy will either eat when we get back or eat while we are out - that depends on a couple of issues. Mainly the point is that today I'm not going to participate in my coworkers delusions about what needs to get done and how at work. I'm going to do my portion on my terms, not his. How dramatic.

Finally in other news we put ourselves on a waiting list for a local farm share, one that will accept new shares in August. We haven't decided whether or not to do half or whole share. I'm leaning towards half. As it stands we have a lot of vegetation in the house today. In a little while I'm going to make a big old salad for myself to bring to work. It will be for me because it will have three kinds of radishes in it, and no one but me likes 'em.

That, dear readers, was your daily slice of Dave.

Broken sleep makes me feel very bad. The last week or so has been nothing but broken sleep. You start to get used to it, you know. You start to anticipate waking up in the middle of the night, even when there's nothing in particular to wake up for. You start to hear everything more crisply, more clearly when the lights are off.

I'm very tired today, and I'm giving in to that dark Arabic temptress whose bitter kiss I recently excused myself from. A little coffee, a little milk, a little ice.

I'm going to drag myself through some dishes.

Is it six p.m.? Is it even noon?
My sleepy body couldn't say, and my pissy mind doesn't care.
Time for some coffee, time for some dishes.

Come on kid, let's get this thing going.

Last night I was having this really great dream. It was something like a mix between being an attendant at a dragon senate and watching a Red Sox game. I don't really remember more than that. At that magical hour of 3:00 a.m. I heard this metallic whine and bolted up out of bed. I reached over to make sure the wife was in bed, but couldn't find her. A flood of "Did she fall?" "Did she go without me?" "WTF?" thoughts washed over me in less than a second. Then I heard her moaning at the edge of the bed. Then the thoughts to turned into "Can I actually drive at 3:00 a.m.?!?" But it was a false alarm. For about ten minutes we both thought it was time to get over to the hospital, but then she fell back asleep.

I didn't know we could be on an even higher alert!

But she says that the baby "dropped", which I guess is a good thing.

More as this story develops.

Oi. Waiting waiting waiting. I know, he'll be here on his own good time, but as we approach the 10th of August we're all feeling the weight of the impending birth - some of us more than others of course.

Anyway, few picture from the last few days.

( Read more... )

We went down to a farm share this weekend, courtesy of a vacationing friend. It was almost a real blast. We weren't really prepared for the picking part - no bags, no water, no hats, no head rags - but it was still a lot of fun. The place was mobbed and so it was ahrd to take photos. Some people were clearly unhappy that I was there with a camera, but plenty others didn't mind. I tried to make it obvious that I'd stear clear of the uncomfortable folks, but frankly it wasn't the peeps I was after.

Had a rough day at work yesterday, came home steaming mad. Still, the wife fixed me two fingers of a nice single malt I've been nursing this year, and add a two hour long spree of watching Catherine Tate on youtube, and I was a happy man. She plays a much better companion than Billie Piper - although Billie Piper is pretty awesome.

At this point youtube has caught me watching so much BBC that when I got to youtube, I am automatically directed to uk.youtube.com. Fancy that.

Well, enough from the house of Heyes, carry on about your business then.