The whole truth, part 3, post-labor

Catch up on either of the two previous tales here, pre-labor and at-labor. Now for the finale, over a week and two days later.

September 4th, 2008 2:00pm - I had a chance to go and tell all of the proud grandparents he was born and did quite well at holding back tears of joy. It was especially tough when I hugged my own father, knowing that I myself was a dad. Pretty good moment. We had to wait a while as Katy wanted to feed him before he was whisked away to the nursery for some cleaning up and weighing.

2:30pm - After a successful feeding and (a term I am now way too familiar with) latching, the grandparents were all able to come in and see their 1st (for my folks) and 2nd (for Katy's) grandson.
This promptly led Nick having to go to the nursery for a Vitamin K shot (with a horse-sized needle), temperature reading, blood sugar reading, weighing, measuring, bath, and other stuff. All fairly traumatic, not for him, but for me. His blood sugar was a bit low so they ended up having to give him a tube of formula which, as I found out, they shoved down the back of his throat because babies don't have gag reflexes. Crazy huh? He didn't even flinch as they rammed the little piece of tubing down his esophagus. I gagged a little for him.


It was pretty sweet being in there with him, but bittersweet at the same time as I knew Katy was in another room being worked on. My dad and Katy's mom came with me but had to stay outside and look from the window, but, their cameras were only picking up the lines in the window so I ended up taking 3 cameras with me into the nursery to snap shots...of the same thing...three different times...in an age where we could have just shared the same SD card afterward but hey, I wasn't going to argue about it then.5:30pm - Katy got wheeled into a recovery room and we left a super nice towel she used for the shower in L&D and it mysteriously disappeared into the linen vacuum at Cottage. Sucky. Oh well, they got a towel, we got a kid. Fair trade I guess. Anyway, we initially got put into a four-person recovery room that had no pull out chair/bed for me and I would have had to go home had it not been for the super nice nurse that put up with both sets of parents saying, "What the crap??? Where's the private room?" Glad we don't live in urban Mexico. Katy's brother Brian arrived around this time which was awesome since he drove down from Vacaville to spend the weekend supporting us and visiting his 2nd nephew.
So about 3 hours later we were moved into a private room that some (our parents) said was small, but Katy and I thought it was perfect. Very cozy, enabling us to sleep in between Nick; Katy on her gurney, Nick in his bassinet, and me on my pull out chair/bed. It was awesome. He pretty much stayed with us the whole night except for a midnight check by the nurses. All in all, it was great being first time parents. Tiredness included. He did get a Billy Ribbon test which checks for jaundice, negative, and a genetic screening test which checks for all kinds of genetic stuff that we'll find out about later. Having a healthy baby boy is extremely precious and Katy and I felt truly blessed. One last thing. He pooped. It was awesome and gross at the same time, if at all possible. And me being me, I captured such an amazing incident on film. Here it is, check out the stickiness. I pulled the diaper apart so you could see the low viscosity levels found in what I now know as "marconium."September 5th, 2008 Day 2- Nick's life continued going on without a hitch. He was feeding well, all the folks came by during visiting hours, and he was well taken care of by his nurse Deb, a very sweet and knowledgeable lady.
Oh yeah, and an unfortunate incident took place which you can read about here. All I can say is, guys, don't ever even think about watching your son's get circumcised. Trust me. Katy's old bosses Laurie and Mark and their kids came by for a visit, the ones she nannied, which was very sweet. They brought some felt cardboard marker picture of butterflys for Nick. Also very sweet.Rest of the day and night went off without another hitch. Nick slept better, got checked out a few times by the nursing staff, and another day down.

September 6th, 2008 - My brother Jon and sister-in-law Natalie came up that night but we didn't get to see them until the morning. Very cool of them as well since they came on a whirlwind tour arriving at about 2am on Saturday morning and leaving early Sunday. It was also Natalie's first time on the central coast so they got to tour Santa Barbara for a while, so double bonus! And, knowing Jon who got me my first pair of Vans, they bought Nick a sweet little pair of Vans as well!
Jon already has one nephew, Natalie's brother's son, but this was his first blood nephew and, as far as I know, his first time holding a less than 3 day old baby. He was a little nervous at first, holding him pretty far away from his chest and as awkwardly as is humanly possible, but once he sat down he slipped right into holding him great! He even let Nick suck on his pinky to soothe him (Nick, not Jon) down a bit (well, maybe Jon too). I think it weirded him out at first, not really believing how hard Nick's mouth could work, but he seemed to think it was pretty cool too. Quite a proud moment for me, both as a father of Nick and brother of Jon. Very glad Nick has his Uncle Jon. A few hours later I took a picture of Katy, Nick and Dr. Nomeland as he came by to check on Katy. A birth certificate lady came by to get the appropriate paperwork and then put Nick's footprints on a birth announcement.
After all that, we finally got to take him home! Granted it was to a home filled with 4 grand parents, 2 uncles, 1 aunt, and 1 beagle, but home nonetheless!



So there's the story of Nick's birth. Long winded, true, but fairly complete and mostly accurate. Stay tuned for the rest of the updates as I try to write a story a day. I know, I know, quite the bar I'm setting, but I did say try!

Proud Dad

I have a story that I would like to share with you, and seeing that Rob likes to post all my stories I thought it only fair that this be my post. So, the day after Nick was born all 3 of us are in our hospital room, the nurse comes in and tells us that the pediatrician is available to circumcise Nick. I was not allowed in the nursery due to a bracelet that would not let me come within 2 feet of any baby but my own, so it was up to Rob to stay with our son. When he left the room I took advantage of the time by myself and before I knew it the door was opening and Nick was being wheeled in. Behind Nick I saw a wheel chair with a man sitting in it and a wet towel around his neck. Upon closer examination I realized that it was my loving husband. Apparently this tough CHP officer can handle seeing dead bodies but when it comes to his own son he can be a bit soft. The doc had finished the circumcision and the nurse was explaining what we should do to take care of it. She was all done explaining when Rob told her that he was feeling clammy and light headed, so the nurse recommended that he have a seat. Rob sat down in the nearest chair and the next thing he knew he was waking up on the floor with four other nurses standing over him one of which yelled out, "Cancel the code!" What happened was when he sat down in the chair he lost consciousness and the nurse pulled him to the ground where his tongue went to the back of his throat blocking his airway. One of the most interesting parts to this story is that Rob just got a new seargent at work and the wife of that seargent works in the nursry at cottage hospital. So, who do you think was standing over him when he woke up.

I'm sure there will be more stories to come like Nick pooping alll over his father (multiple times) but for now this one will have to hold you over. I have also not had much time to play with the pictures that I took of the aftermath of this insident. I'm sorry to say but my words will have to sufice for now.

The whole truth, part 2, at-labor

Now begins the second part of this tale. The gist: Nicholas born healthy, Katy just fine. Disclaimer: very long post, wait until you have enough time to read it all.

Thursday September 4, 2008 2:00am - The next 4 1/2 hours were filled with a lot of the same stuff, 20 minutes of either laying down or sitting on a yoga ball and rocking while connected to the fetal monitors, 40 minutes of walking around the hallways aimlessly. Probably the toughest battle Katy had to face was determining when she should get her epidural. The contractions were getting fairly consistent, around 4 minutes apart, and still lasting about a minute. She said she wasn't in a ton of pain but didn't want to miss the window of opportunity that she could still get the shot. Tough choices but she ultimately decided to wait a while longer.

6:30am - As we trudged back to LD6 Katy had to stop multiple times for contractions in order to breathe a little deeper through them and lean on me as we quietly danced in the hallways to no music but our own rhythm. Once back in the room, Nurse Emily came in for the 4th cervix check revealing Katy was now dilated 5cm. We found out the anesthesiologist had two cesareans to do that morning, one at 7, and one at around 8:30 which meant our best chance was to have the epidural in between the two. We were sad however when Emily went off her 12 hour shift and Nurse Sydney took over for the day shift. Sydney turned out to be awesome as well! Her first news wasn't so good though as she told us that although our doctor, Dr. Nomeland, was on call that day, the midwife for our medical group would be the one delivering. Well, Katy wasn't having that and "requested" Dr. Nomeland deliver our son. Request accepted. Good news for us!

7:45am - Katy was able to take a shower with some assistance and feel a little refreshment before the long haul. While taking a shower, we were pretty sure her water broke. Obviously hard to tell though. Finally, about an hour after the shower, Katy got her epidural. That was quite a trying experience. It was the first time in the process that I actually got worried. It's hard to see your wife in a pain that you can do nothing about. And that was just with the local anesthetic. But once it was all said and done, Katy didn't really feel a thing until she had to push. Let me tell you, after the epidural, she was feeling GOOOOD!!!
Half an hour after the epidural procedure, Nurse Sydney didn't want Katy moving around so she had to hook up a catheter so she could still go ya know. My dad showed up just afterward and I'm sure it creeped him out a little, but he handled it well, remaining composed, and taking some pictures of the two of us together.
Of course, he had to leave pretty quick as Katy had her 5th cervix check in 24 hours, showing her at 6-7cm dilated and revealed her bag of waters was pretty much gone. Good stuff, almost there.

9:30am - We got our first glimpse of Dr. Nomeland in LD6. He hooked up a tiny suction probe to the top of the baby's head to directly monitor his heart rate. He also checked her cervix for the 6th time. Katy was now 6cm dilated, 90% effaced, and at 0 station line. Closer and closer.

11:00am - Last cervix check before the push showed her at 8-9cm dilated, with no more bag of waters at all, and at +1 station line.

12:20pm - Katy was finally ready to start pushing. Her mom and dad, Gene and Robin, showed up just in time.
My mom just missed seeing us before the big push, making it about 10 minutes later. Katy was still in relatively little pain, even through most of the pushing. The contractions stayed almost exactly 4 minutes apart throughout the final phase, allowing Katy to push 4 times for 10 seconds during each contraction and giving her a lot of time to recoup after each one. Again, another blessing. Sydney did a great job setting her up for everything and it was just the three of us through most of the pushing. She did give Katy some Petosin (sp?) to help the contractions increase in intensity, duration, and frequency.

1:35pm - Dr. Nomeland showed up again for the final push and had a resident with him. Another nurse joined us who was sweet enough right after Nick was born to ask me if I had a camera we wanted her to take pictures with. So the ones right after were courtesy of her, unanimous nurse. Katy did awesome through the whole thing and said it didn't start to become really painful until just as he started crowning. Dr. Nomeland came in and changed up almost everything that Nurse Sydney had done, which didn't give us less confidence in Sydney as she had helped get Katy to where she was, but it did give us more confidence in Nomeland that he knew exactly what he we wanted, where he wanted it. He did have to use this crazy vacuum thing that looked like a baby plunger to aid in pulling Nick down and out. I guess it's like a new form of forceps, which is what they had to use on me. True story. Just ask my mom and look under my right eyebrow and right behind my left ear to prove it. Anyway, Katy pushed hard for a long time and Nick came out, perfectly healthy. For more details on what happened to Katy, see the previous post. As a side note, some may or may not know that I am a bit of a softy inside and have been known to cry at various important emotional occasions (brother graduating high school, various people's going away parties, engagement, wedding, etc.) so the answer to whether I did cry or not is no. I did not cry. I sobbed. Uncontrollably. Like a little baby. Actually, almost as hard as Nick did. And no. I'm not ashamed of it.

Nick's first picture, cheese and all

First family picture

A proud father and husband

If you look close enough, you can see some glistening eye shadow I decided to wear

One happy family

Continued in The whole truth, part 3, post-labor

You're gonna do what?!?!

Katy is an amazing woman. I definitely knew that before she gave birth to Nick, I definitely know that even more now. That being said, interject funny Katy story.

While sparing the horrific details, which can probably be read in The whole truth, part 2, at-labor, just as Nick was crowning our doctor, Dr. Nomeland, who if I don't say it later in part 2 was amazing throughout the whole pregnancy and post partem period, reached back towards his sterile table to grab an item. Once he turned around I heard Katy exclaim, "Those are some pretty big scissors doc," in a not-so-matter-of-fact-way, more in a, "What the crap do you think you are going to do with those things!!!!!" and also kind of a, "If you come anywhere near me I will use those on you the way you were going to use them on me!!!!!" sort of way. Quite funny now, but at the time I did my best to keep her from looking at what he was doing, close her eyes, and focus on her almost born son.

Tying into that tale, after Nick was born, he was sitting on Katy's belly and we were just smiling and staring at him lovingly. Katy happens to glance up again (I'm seeing a trend here in that glancing up as the mom giving birth can be a dangerous endeavor both for the mom and anyone else in the vicinity). Just as she does, she sees the doctor raise his right hand, I swear it seemed like 10 feet into the air, holding a sword with a thick thread of tug-o-war/bulwark-tying rope disappearing below Katy. She replies in kind, "How many stiches you gonna put down there doc?????" Again in the same tone of voice aforementioned.

Hilarity in Pain. My new motto for Katy.

The whole truth, part 1, pre-labor

Something crazy happened yesterday...God gave us our first child, our son, Nicholas Andrew Grindy, almost exactly 3 weeks early! 7 pounds, 0 ounces, 20 inches of a beautiful, healthy, Grindy hairball. Seriously. I know some of the hair sluffs off, but he's already got plenty of dome fur and a thick coat of back fuzz. Enough about how manly he already is, let me give you the run down. It will be in timeline format, of course, broken into three separate posts, pre-, at-, and post-labor. Only pre-labor tonight...I'm exhausted.

Oh, and as a courtesy, this will be kinda long so you could stop now and come back later since you got the gist. There are quite a few funny stories that will be posted as separate posts for posts sake (I know that doesn't make sense, but what good is it to give it all away now?!), but, I'll post one after each of the history posts described above, just to keep you interested!

Wednesday September 3, 2008 - 2:30pm - I had the day off, actually the previous 4 for some crazy required day off sequence and the next day as well for a nice 6 days off in a row. Katy had a doctor's appointment where her OBGYN checked her cervix for the first time which I always love going with her and can proudly say I've only missed one pre-natal appointment due to a court case running late. When we saw her doctor, Dr. Nomeland, he prefaced the visit by saying the stats of the check were not an indication of when she would go into labor, merely stats. That being said, she was 70% effaced, 2cm dilated, and -2/-1 station line. For what that means, check out WebMD or whattoexpect.com.

9:00pm - Katy, my dad Tim (who was visiting for a few days and planning on leaving in the morning, sort of a last ditch chance to see his son without his grandson, aka golf time), and I were all sitting in the living room watching X3 on FX, the world premiere. Katy got up and walked toward the bedroom, stopped in the hallway door, turned back toward the living room, and beckoned me into the bedroom. Feeling like I was about to get lucky, I quickly followed. Once in the bedroom, she shut the door behind me and I thought I really was going to get lucky. She looked at me seriously and said, "I think I'm going into labor." "Are you sure?" "Pretty sure, I'm having contractions and they're way more intense than Braxton Hicks (again, WebMD) contractions." "Ok, well let's start timing them and see how close together and long they are." I went back into the living room, with her blessing, and sat down and finished the last half hour of X3. Of course.

10:00pm - I went back to Katy to see how it was coming. Everything matched up with what the books were saying, 4-7 minutes in between contractions, all around a minute in length. So, I did what any grown up 27 year old about to have a son would do, I went and got my daddy. He said it did sound like labor and he did it with a Cheshire cat grin on his face. I began to pack (contrary to the picture), which we had kinda done already but not too seriously. While I took a shower my dad was awesome and kept counting the contractions with Katy while I did all that. Lucy however, just looked at us solemnly from the bed. We prayed with my dad and left for Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
11:30 pm - Some might be wondering what the trip to the hospital was like and I'll tell you how I thought it would be. I figured I'd be at work on the south end of Santa Barbara county, approximately 60 miles from our home in Buellton. I thought I'd drive at a buck thirty to the office, throw off my uniform, and drive a buck thirty home, pick up Katy, slow down and drive a buck twenty to the hospital, just in time to avoid having to deliver the baby myself on the side of US-101. Not quite what transcended. A lot safer and easier. I drove at 75-80, classical music station playing in the background to keep Katy calm, and we talked about how we thought it would probably be false labor. Definitely wasn't false since I'm looking at Nick as I write this. We even had time to swing by my office and grab some things I needed.

Thursday September 4, 2008 12:00pm - We parked in the parking structure and not at the front of the ER where a valet would have taken our Civic. This was because we had a bunch of stuff that we didn't want to take into the hospital if we were just going to be sent home again. We walked 3 blocks to the front of the ER where we were greeted by one of the nurses I know from going in there all the time for work named Jeremy. Jeremy grabbed a wheel chair for Katy which she thought was completely unnecessary as is evident by the photo. Jeremy got us in super quick and we were sent up to the labor and delivery floor of Cottage. The nurses there were awesome and really made us feel at home, right as they took over pushing Katy around. We couldn't have been more blessed with their hospitality. We even tried to apologize since we thought it was probably false labor. They said that was ridiculous and it was always better to be on the safe side and keep Katy's mind at ease.

12:15am - We settled in to a triage room, a little odd to be honest. Emily became our night shift nurse and was with us until 7am. She was awesome with Katy, same demeanor and personality, making it extremely easy for Katy to feel comfortable at home.
Emily did a cervix check and found out Katy was dilated 3cm, up 1cm since 2pm the day before. She hooked Katy up to a contraction and baby heart rate monitor for about 20 minutes, proving that Katy's documentation of her contractions earlier were pretty darn close, 4-6 minutes apart and all around 1 minute in length. We got up and walked for an hour around the hospital with the intention being to see if Katy was progressing.
1:30am - After discovering every corner of the 6 floor hospital, finding a baby's name for every letter of the alphabet on the handprint plaques outside the NICU unit, and getting $20 in $1 coins at the cafeteria, Katy came back to the triage for her 3rd cervix check in 12 hours and is at 4cm with the bag of waters significantly low. Basically...here comes baby. A different nurse hooked Katy up to an IV which for those who don't know, assuming most, Katy has a slight phobia of needles since she got spinal meningitis as a junior in high school and was poked a thousand times. So putting an IV into a pregnant lady who hates IV's, a scary proposition, but Katy and the nurse handled it like champs. After the IV we got moved into the room where we would deliver, LD 6. The call to our parents was interesting since they were all sleeping and somewhat in disbelief. I went and moved the car to the valet and grabbed all our stuff, hauling it all up to get settled in for the long haul. So, almost 12 hours exactly since her doctor's appointment the afternoon before, we were finally ready to really get started...
continued in The whole truth, part 2, at-labor

tacos and cheese

An interesting predicament took place in the Grindy household the other afternoon. I was just waking up around 4:30pm after working the night before and observed my beautiful pregnant wife walking glumly into the bedroom. The following conversation ensued:

R: What's wrong babe?
K: I had a bad day. (imagine cute downward smile)
R: Why? What happened?
K: It was just a very blue day. (code for extremely bad, and oh, tears forming too, Rob pulls Katy into a hug as he's been instructed to do, that's part of what "blue" is code for)
R: How can I help? (typical male response, fix everything right, well this time it succeeded)
K: (in between sobs) The dog was barking all day, I didn't get anything done, I've been lazy all day, and, and, and...
R: And what?
K: AND WE DON'T HAVE ANY CHEESE!!!!! (imagine extremely deep and raspy banshee howl)
R: (trying to stifle a smile) What?
K: WE DON'T HAVE ANY CHEESE FOR THE TACOS!!!! (same hilarious voice)
R: (bordering on peeing my pants to keep from cracking up) Well let's go to the store and we'll get some.
K: I DON'T WANNA!!!!! IT'S TOO FAR!!!!! (1/4 mile keep in mind)
R: That's ok babe, we can have tacos without cheese, don't we have sour cream, taco sauce, and other stuff?
K: IT'S NOT THE SAME! YOU CAN'T HAVE TACOS WITHOUT CHEESE!!!!!
R: (lost it at this point and shook my belly like a bowl full of jelly in laughter)

In light of this conversation, I decided to ask you our friends and family what you thought. We have a poll posted on the left side of our blog on whether you think you could never eat a taco without cheese (a pregnant point of view) or could do it without if you had too (a non-placenta bearing point of view)

I've loved Katy being pregnant. She glows and is the most beautiful I've ever seen her, and I'll definitely miss moments like this. Hopefully they'll be supplanted with hilarity from our son.

Sweet Little Reese

We've been trying for months to get down to Pasadena to visit our friends the Kostjuk's and their sweet little baby girl Reese. Reese has Emanuel Syndrome, a genetic condition where she has 47 chromosomes instead of the 46 that a human should have. That 47th is a combination of the 11th and 22nd so it makes her extremely mentally and physically handicapped. On top of that, Reese was born with a diaphragmatic hernia, essentially pushing a lot of her vital organs up and squishing them together, specifically her left lung. I'm no doctor, but here's a good post from their site on what all that means. Reese has been doing well as of late, kicking a fever for one, and we were able to see her on what Ashley and Todd called, "One of her good days." Todd was awesome and came out to see us and Reese during his lunch hour. It's been such a blessing to watch and read how the Kostjuk's have been coping with the situation their baby girl has been in for these past 7 months. What an example of faith-living and God-fearing people they are. One can only hope that being put in a similar situation that we could trust in the Lord and His sovereign plan half as much as they have. If you have time, read through some of their posts over the last 7 months. Their story and faith will inspire you.

Huntington Hospital in Pasadena

Katy in the outdoor hallway

Reese getting place in her seat

Reese Renee Kostjuk

Tiny little feet

Rob, Katy and Reese

Ashley Kostjuk, Katy and Reese

All done! (For now)

This past weekend Katy and I finally finished the nursery! We got the crib all repainted after the staining fiasco, white-trash wired a light to the ceiling by splicing an extension cord, changed all the outlets, added a dimmer switch, painted the hamper the same color as the crib, added some decorative clouds to the blue room, re-organized the closet with a few baskets, and a few other minor additions. All that's left is a couple of things for the walls and an area rug we've yet to find. Not too bad for our first redecorating project!