Wow. After reading this blog, I can see it was September when we last updated this. Well, I will say, we certainly will start doing better, in case anyone wants to keep track of Ella Jane and her parents.
Now, off to the good stuff. Most everyone knows about the birth, but I will provide a quick recap. Total labor time was 12 hours. Not to bad if you ask me. At least EJ let me get home from the Clemson football game before the labor started. She was already thinking about her daddy before she was born. It was a long night. It started at 4 that afternoon and lasted until 4 that morning. EJ was born at 4 a.m. on the dot 9/28. She never cried. She really did not do much of anything, but she did not cry. She just was hanging out (more on that later). 2 hours later she was knocking out 2 ounces of formula, and decided to sleep for 4 hours. We actually had to wake her to feed her again (much to the direction of the nurse). She was such a good baby from day one. We had visitors off and on all day and that night. It did not phase her a bit. She just slept and ate as she wanted to. It was almost like she was made to just hang out.
As far as Robyn goes, I have never been so proud of my wife in my life. She is something else. Now, she is the most scared of pain person I have ever met. And, she was so scared of, not motherhood, not being up all night....she was scared of the birth itself. That was the one and only fear she talked about the whole time she was pregnant. She handled the birth like a pro. Drugs help a lot also. But, overall, the went through the birth with few issues that night, and looked and acted like a million bucks as soon as Ella Jane was born. And yes, that instant love and connection with the child does exist. As soon as she was born, I was beside myself just looking at her. I was able to hold her about 10 minutes after she was born. They had to take her to the warming table as soon as she was born due to issues since she was as late as she was. About five minutes after that, Robyn was able to see and hold her. I know that before we had her that people talked about not having that instant connection and it took some time to get that feeling. Forget that. Get off of what you are on. Are you kidding me? How do you not get that feeling? That does not make any sense to me.
So, up to now, what has Ella Jane taught us? Yes, there is something about new borns that makes them great teachers. You can think you know everything and can be as confident as anyone (like I am), but there is something about coming home with a new born that has such as humbling spin on situations. I mean, we came home, put her down while she was sleeping, and looked at each other and said "now what?" Where were the instructions? What did we need to do next? Is there anything we could get done ahead of time? I often say that the first 2 weeks were the easiest physically and the hardest mentally. Every day was wake up, wash bottles, feed her, watch her sleep, watch TV, feed her some more, let her sleep, watch more TV, cook dinner, feer her, watch TV, go upstairs, feed to her, read to her, put her down to sleep for the night. I mean, physically, I really does not get much easier than that. But mentally, it was draining for me. There were no steps. There were no tasks to do when things went wrong. Just the mental drain of constantly watching her and thinking about her each and every second of every day was the toughest thing I have ever done. Every night she slept good was another day that I would worry that the next night was when it would all go wrong. I would get nervous when I was alone with her. Was I going to do the right thing?
Where was I going with this? Oh yea, the teaching. I started to learn to listen to the baby. Humans are creatures of habit and it starts from the very begining. Once I started to relax and tell myself to listen, watch, and pay attention to little EJ, you start to learn what she wants, what she does not want, like, dislikes. She can not tell me explicity what she wants, but it is awesome how she can tell me implicitly. And, now more than ever, she tells us everyday what she wants and how she feels. We now know, or think we know, her cries. She has a hungry cry, a my tummy hurts cry, and I am tired cry, a I need a change or scenery cry, you name. It seems to get just a little easier as the days click by.
As far as us a a family, I can not explain how much I love my wife and my child. That is the God's honest truth. My wife is an awesome mom and wife. I have never, yes, never heard her complain one time about Ella. She has never had any regret or never looked back one time. It is amazing how much she loves her little one. No matter how bad the day goes, she absolutely loves being a mom and you can tell she was born to be a mother. Ella Jane picked a good one.
As far as myself, nothing else matters in this world more than my wife and daughter. In fact, we are not a husband, wife, and daughter. I told Robyn this before EJ and as soon as she was born: We are one. We move and act as one. We are not a house of three people. We are a body of one and we are and stay as close to each other as we can. We do not make any decisions without thinking about and consulting the others. And, in every decision and action we make, our number one thought is Ella Jane. We constantly ask ourselves how is what we do during the day, week, year, and anything financially, impact Ella Jane. Have we rearranged our lives around Ella Jane? No. Is she our number one priority in our lives? Absolutely. Big difference.
As far as our lives, Robyn and I said that we would not change our lives once Ella Jane was born. In other words, we would simply absorb EJ into our lives, and pretty much just throw her in the deep end: either sink or swim. Either way Ella Jane, mommy and daddy are going to go to basketball games, football games, dinner on weekends, you name it, and you are going with us, whether you like it or not. We started that the first week home and have not looked back. That little Ella just tags along. She has already turned into a hang out baby. We do as we promised we would do, and that little Ella just loves to hang out with her mom and dad, whether we are at home, or we are running errands, or in Clemson all day, or staying . We don't miss a beat and Ella Jane doesn't either.
So, what does the future hold? Of course, who knows. But I will say this. We are raising her with this main principle in mind: Time. Time with her is the most important thing in our lives. I think of time like this. Robyn and I can work as much as we want and have the nicest cars, house, toys, vacations, you name it. But, the one thing about material things is that you can always get them if you want them bad enough or if you lose them. You can NEVER get time back. Every second of every minute of every day that goes by is gone forever. So, Robyn and I both understand the enormous value of time. Knowing that, we spend as much time as we can as a family and around her, even individually. And, it is not like we have to try to do so. We love her so much, we just don't want to be away from her. But also, we really don't drop her off to people while we go out. Again, we move as one and it is not a forced habit. It is just something we want to do. Robyn and I are so much on the same page that it is almost never a question of where we go or what we do together. Ella Jane just goes and plays with us. She certainy is a hang out baby
Ok, that's plenty for one post. Enough talking about this and that. We will certainly start posting more and more with updates on what she is up to and what we are up to. I am sure I will have random thoughts along the way as well. Picture will be coming soon as well.
Until next time...
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