Daniel Joel: Day Two

Whew! This parenting stuff is hard work! Since Daniel is singing me a lullaby (at least, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and call it that!), I want to take a moment to note a few of day two's highlights:

• The highlight of the day was calling China (yay Skpe!) to introduce Daniel to his namesake, Dan Kennedy. A very emotional call for everyone involved. And that's all I'll say for now, or I'll start crying and not mention anything else!
• Lots of phone calls and emails! Many thanks to those who called, emailed and left messages on here and Facebook. We so appreciate the love of our friends and family around the world!
• First non-family visitors. Our good friends, the Lipfords, visited today, along with our friends Fantasia and Star. An unexpected surprise was a visit from Sue, our first post-partum nurse. She felt bad about the long wait I endured while the pharmacy lost, messed up and otherwise delayed my pain meds for six hours yesterday. She brought an adorable dog rattle as a gift to apologize. Totally unneccessary, but absolutely appreciated.
• Flowers! My sweet hubby brought two dozen red roses. We also received a beautiful poinsetta plant from our church, as well as some pretty yellow and white flowers from the tech team (where Niels serves). Thank you all!
• I finally started to emerge from my drug-induced stupor! I'm still on Percocet for the pain, but I can mostly function on that.
• Mom helped me start to look like I'm emerging from my drug-induced stupor. I changed from the hospital gown to my own new blue nursing gown.
• The quest to nurse continues. For all their glory, the girls are lacking a bit on their nurse-friendliness. I'll leave out the specifics, but we'll just say that we appreciate your prayers that we'll be able to overcome this obstacle. We do have a plan in place, but it will take a little bit to see results. He is losing a bit of weight, which is normal, but so far, he's still in a healthy range.
• My newest medical trick...because if there's a complication or quirk, you know I will find it...I have a swollen uvula (the thing that hangs at the back of your throat). Since I had unplanned general anesthesia, I had to be intubated. I just had a sore throat yesterday, but this afternoon I started gagging and dry heaving. I went to bathroom to check things out and saw that my uvula is so big that it actually catches in my throat and blocks my air. Go figure. I've been downing water and popsicles like nobody's business, and finally got some numbing spray (that Pharmacist has it out for me, I think!). It's still quite annoying, but I'm hopeful that it'll shrink down tomorrow...I hope!
• I changed my first diaper. A lovely #2 from my boy! Many more of those to come I sure. Daddy's turn next!
• The final weight tally was a 6 pound gain from my starting weight. Thank you, Hyperemesis Gravidarium. Current weight difference after having an 8 pound 4 ounce baby: exactly ZERO. Thank you, pre-eclampsia!
• I slept for more than 20 minutes! This new system we're trying is quite time consuming, and I haven't had much opportunity to sleep. I finally broke down and sent DJ to the nursery for a feeding (we have to supplement with formula for the time being) and was able to sleep for almost 90 glorious minutes!
• More new pictures! We've added some pictures to the Picasa link and here is the link to the FaceBook album (even non-FB users should be able to see these).

Little guy is finally starting to doze off, so I'm going to try to get a few Zzz's myself before his next feeding in 90 minutes. Sigh....