Getting back to normal

Hard to believe but young Chance Hedger is a month old now. The past month has been a whirlwind. We've been thrown back into the world of sleepless nights, poopy diapers and of course adorable baby coos.

Actually, after a brief period of having his days and nights completely turned around, he's doing much better now. Liz still has a mild case of Chance-itis (as we call it), but she too is adjusting as well.

Chance seems very mellow to us, but in recent days has shown that he too has Liz's firecracker personality. He just may not show it as often as her...give him time...

The five year age difference is good because Liz is able to communicate her anxieties about having another sibling better than a kid who might be only two or three and can't chat as well. Liz has asked us if we love her as much as we love him. We have spent extra time reassuring her of our love and have done some special things with her too.

I took Liz to the apple orchard, to lunch and the mall one Saturday for some munch-needed mommy & Liz time that also seemed to help.

She tries to "help" with her baby brother and is very proud of him, but if he's crying a lot, she won't hesitate to say: "Will someone please take care of this crying baby!"

School is going very well for her. Not surprisingly, her chatty behavior has caused a few problems at school but overall she's doing great. We were so worried about her meeting friends and so far that's not a problem at all. She's becoming good pals with another kindergartner across the street. Yesterday, two third-graders who live down the road came over and wanted to play with Liz. So, a bunch of kids played outside for quite some time, which was loads of fun for Liz. Then, she played inside with her friends from across the street.

Overall, this experience with Chance has been so different compared with Liz - mostly because we haven't been going to the doctor multiple times each week. The only medical concerns so far were his being jaundice (Liz never was), and his weight. Liz never had problems with her weight. Chance was below his birth weight for almost three weeks - which is longer than doctors want. They want children to be at birth-weight by two weeks old. At a month old, he's probably 9 pounds, which is great.

He was sleeping so much the first few weeks and I had to wake him up to feed him. Now, he's eating quite well.

Our big excitement during the delivery was Brian passing out. Right after Chance was born, Brian held the baby and suddenly began to feel very warm and hot. As soon as he said he wasn't feeling well, he handed the baby over to an intern, and I told him to put his head between his knees. In the span of 15 seconds, he was out cold. Luckily, he didn't hit his head on the floor. Whew!

When he came too, he even managed to crack a joke, saying he felt like Robin Williams in one of those bad movies (I think it was 9 Months). The medical team had him crawl out and called over the emergency team from nearby Northwestern Memorial. The nurses kept urging him to go to the hospital for more tests to make sure there were no major problems. Brian said he wanted to talk to me before making a decision. However, they wouldn't let him in the surgery room again (wise decision).

Keep in mind I'm still being operated on in the surgical room. All of a sudden, the anesthesiologist hands me his cell phone and says: "Your husband wants to talk to you." So, here I am completely cut open and now talking on the cell phone to Brian.

One of the doctors says in a surprised voice, "Lisa are you on a cell phone?" There's a curtain over me and the doctors couldn't see the cell phone, but could hear me talking.

That might have been one of the first times a patient who was undergoing surgery was talking on a cell phone. It was wild. I explained that the nurses wanted Brian to go to the ER for further testing. And it was funny because everyone in the surgical room all said that this happens all of the time and he should be fine. A turkey-sandwich seemed to be the only cure he needed.

Oddly enough, he hadn't seen any part of the surgery because of that big curtain. The issues contributing to the Great Pass Out - were a warm room, a warmer baby, plus the fact that he hadn't slept well the night before because he was nervous and he hadn't eaten anything.

He stayed out of the surgical room and was eating a turkey sandwich when Chance and I arrived in recovery!

Here are some pictures taken by a professional photographer at the hospital when he was two days old.













Here's some photos we've taken.

This was from the hospital:







He finally decided to keep those eyes open for a shot in the hospital...but only for a few minutes. Being a baby is obviously very hard work!



Here's big sis Liz holding her baby brother at home. She also did visit him at the hospital. He was three days old here.



The whole family



Here's a nice picture of Liz sleeping...just to show that Chance isn't the only one getting some mid-day naps!




Here's Chance at a month old:



Chance with Aunt Helen.



He's really alert now.