June 2009 Archives

Maddison Marie Hill was born this morning (06/25) at 0327.  She weighed 8 lbs. 2 oz. and was 21 1/2".

I can't begin to describe the joy, excitement, elation, fear, pride, comfort, sense of purpose and all the other mixed bag of feelings that her birth has brought up in me.  I'm certainly not going to try to explain it on 2 hours of sleep in 30 something hours.  :-)

The best way I can think to explain it for now is in pictures:  http://www.personal.psu.edu/iyh3/maddison

TTFN!  Going to spend some more time with Maddison, Mommy and maybe try to get a wink or two of sleep between poopy diapers.  ;-)

We went back to the Dr. yesterday for a checkup.  Everything is still ok.  Michelle's BP is still elevated, but they don't believe she has preeclaampsia or anything serious.  They did a round of bloodwork as a base line and we went through a non-stress fetal monitoring test.  That was actually kind of cool....to be able to quantify the heartbeat and relationship to movements over time.  To actually see evidence of cyclic activity was just cool to me.  BTW, Maddison isn't even out of the womb yet and she's passing tests with flying colors.  They were looking for a minimum of 3 movements related to heartbeat cycle in 20 minutes.  They got 19.  ;-)

Well, here we are at 38 weeks.  Nursery, check.  Car seat installed and checked by police, check. Diapers, check.  Baby washing stuff, check.  Overnight bags, check.  Dog/Cat plans, check.  Checked, check.

Michelle has had a relatively easy time of it so far, as you've seen in the blog postings.  Well, she's still not having any major complications, but the swelling has gotten worse and she had a short spike in BP today (elevated beyond slightly after walking up a flight of stairs), so the doc told her no more work as of today.  She is to stay at home, drink lots of fluid and take it easy.  I actually prefer this from here on out.  Maddison is fine, heart beat sounds good, she's in a good position and all, so no worries there.

So, nothing much happening, but we're ready.....and waiting.....

A lot of you have been asking for more recent pics of Michelle, so here they are; posted with Michelle's permission, of course.  She says this is the only shot you get, so take advantage of it.  ;-)

They are at the bottom of the "Baby" album: http://www.personal.psu.edu/iyh3/baby/