Big Ol' Milk Belly!

Yes, this is the same little boy who two weeks ago would barely nurse and was down to 6lbs, 15ozs. Now weighing in over 8lbs, I noticed he's got a little gut hanging over his diaper these days:-)



















I, of course put the diaper cover on crooked. I can't seem to get them on as straight as Jeff can.

This short video has no real significance to the post, and Jude is not doing anything really exciting. I just thought that you might want to see him in "action."



We have our cardiologist appointment on November 25th. I'm sure if it seemed like a really big problem, they would have got him in sooner, but keep praying anyway.

The Jude Pose

If you are at our house at any given time, you will most likely see the same pose from our little Jude:










































Not that I am complaining, or anything. I mean, who doesn't love a baby that sleeps. It just makes it really hard to get nourishment into him. In his first four days he dropped a whole pound to 6lbs 16ozs. He's getting better about nursing now - he sort of resembles waking up to eat now. As of our doctor's appointment yesterday, he was up to 8 pounds!

Here is a rare awake picture. Those are our favorite cowboy jammies. They were about the only thing that fit him until this week as he was too small for newborn clothes and too long for premie clothes. He grew out of these jammies this week.















We do have an area where your prayers are coveted. The pediatrician heard a heart murmur yesterday. He explained the two types of heart murmurs. One of them 90+% of the time, the child outgrows by adulthood. The other type is the result of a shunt to bypass the lungs from the heart in utero that should have disappeared by now. If it is that type, we will be looking at medical treatment. We have an appointment with a neurologist at the children's hospital in the next couple of weeks. Pray for the self correcting one, please.

Intorducing Samuel Judah Roerdink

Jude decided that he did not want to wait until Election Day to make his grand entrance into this world. However, as it turns out, he is not 5 weeks early, but only two. The midwife that came to supervise could tell this by looking at the lines on his feet. The big one would have been much shorter, apparently, if he was five weeks early. So, here's the birth story:

Thursday early in the morning, I began to pass clots again. The first one was large and them several smaller ones throughout the day. I figured that since my midwife said it was just my cervix getting ready, it was no big deal. Around 3:00 am on Friday morning, I felt a pop in my pelvis. It felt like when your elbow pops. I thought, "man! That was a big kick!" but I knew that his feet were all jammed up in my diaphragm, but at three in the morning, who's thinking clearly?

Then the contractions started. Thinking it was just braxton hicks, I got up to sleep in the living room so I wouldn't wake Jeff. At 4:00, when they hadn't gone away I decided to take a bath, which woke Jeff up anyway. All the bath did was irritate me because the water didn't reach my belly unless I laid on my side. So, I got out and that's when things really started cooking.

Jeff began to time the contractions and around 5:00 am they were two minutes apart and a minute long. So, we called our midwife (hi Debi!), who it turns out, was on her first vacation in four years. At that point, I was really glad that I finally met her apprentice, Michelle, on Monday!

Michelle got lost (don't you love Mapquest) and by the time she got here, at 7:00ish, those contractions were right on top of each other. Every move I made would bring on another one (the pelvic exam was super fun, let me tell ya).

Jeff also called our dear friend Angel, who has done work as a doula, because we didn't have the towels, pads, newborn diapers, food, basically about half of the stuff we needed! And I thank the Lord that Angel stayed the whole time. She did dishs, let me pull on her hands, held a foot while I pushed, got us lunch, made us dinner, you name it! She certainly lived up to her name that (and many other) days.

It was probably around 8:00 when I felt like I had to push, but Michelle said I wasn't quite there. But by 8:30 I was definitely there and by 9:46 Jude made his entrance, with one arm up along side his head. Jeff said he came flying into the world like Superman.

We had Michelle's first birth without her supervising midwife. Another midwife drove up from Dallas, GA to supervise, but by the time she got here, our little man had already arrived. I was also Michelle's first stitches (my first stitches, too) thanks to that hand by his head.

So, our birth pool arrived today:-) Oh, well. I do not think I would have been able to get up off of the bed to get it because everything went so fast and the contractions were so intense. I have very little to complain about and not too many first time moms get to say that their labor from start to finish was around six hours.

So, he's here, weighing in at 7 lbs, 15 ozs and measuring 20.5 inches, a head full of dark hair and a score of 10 on both parts of the APGAR.

Praise God that His plans are better than ours. can you imagine how big he would have been if he WAS born on Nov. 4th? Now I can cancel my absentee ballot. I guess my son is in favor of his mom doing her civic duties:-)

Another One Bites the Dust

In one of my previous posts, I discussed all the factories that have been laying off or shutting down in this area. I sure hope that it encourages my former students and future students to pursue post-secondary training of some type (college, tech training, etc.). A lot of people around here used to just depend on going to work at the factory after they finished high school (or before), like their daddies did. Then there was this today in the Messenger. Mowhawk is one of the biggest factories here. I know that the Ft. Oglethorpe plant is smaller than the Dalton one, so thankfully Dalton is not shutting down, but it's still quite a blow to our work force. Unemployment in Walker County has risen by over 300% in the past couple of years - the highest hike in all of our surrounding counties.

I am really glad that Jeff works in an industry that can not be shut down (although one Atlanta county did close three fire stations last year, and then got in to really HOT water with Homeland Security for accepting a grant from them. Turns out, they used the grant money to build the fire stations. Not a good idea to shut them down with in a few years after taking gov't. money. And I am glad that when I was teaching, it was in a position that couldn't be eliminated.

I think things are going to get a lot worse here before they get better.