Cold turkey

Sorry not to put up any posts today. I know that a few of you had been reading the blog very often the prior two days. At least one person I know says they are in withdrawals. As you might imagine, I've been busy.

Stephanie and I are staying in a maternity ward at the hospital, just one floor up from labor and delivery. The room has a bed for Stephanie (the patient) and a cot for me. Ariela is sleeping in a crib in our room. We have the option to leaver her overnight with the nursing staff in the nursery, but that doesn't feel like the right thing to do. So we have an cute little alarm clock in the room with us -- that is my problem tonight because mom still has trouble moving around due to the the surgery. We will be here until Sunday evening.

It is interesting to me that this hospital seems not to have that many fathers. I've seen only three other men who appeared to be fathers since we got here last night, but I've seen at least a dozen mothers. I guess if there are older kids in the family then dad might be at home with them. Still, I think there are a lot of single moms here. Perhaps as a result, they are a little confused about what to do with me. No one has enforced it, but I'm considered a visitor, and I'm supposed to get a new visitor's pass each day I'm here. I realize I'm not a patient, but it seems like there should be a special status for dads to distinguish them from other visitors. No harm done, but it sends a funny message.

We had a huge number of visitors today. Also lots of medical visits from doctors and the like. I filled the forms for the birth certificate. Someone came to get blood for state mandated genetic testing, I think for PKU and other rare stuff. I'm not worried. Some of our friends were unlucky and came just at the wrong time, I felt bad about that. Stephanie was pretty run down and doped up, especially in the morning. In the afternoon her stomach was very upset. The pain seems surprisingly manageable for her after she turned a corner at about 4 pm this afternoon. All the visits and phone calls and emails were really appreciated. They almost completely consumed the time I had been spending writing blog entries. All out friends and colleagues have been really kind and generous and we appreciate deeply, even though our responses to the attention might not always be what people expect. We are still pretty tired.

Stephanie's parents will be here tomorrow (assuming the snow storm doesn't close the airport). We expect 4-8 inches in the next 24 hours. It will start any minute now and continue until 6 pm tomorrow. Bummer for people who don't live full time in a hospital.

I have posted this video! I'm told that a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't know the conversion is for a video, but I suggest the following: we multiply 1,000 by the frame rate (frames/sec) times the number of seconds. I don't know the frames per second, but this video is a minute long and must be at lest 4 fps (maybe 30?), which would imply that this video has more information that all the rest of my blog combined. Unlikely to be true, but I challenge my readers to identify the error in my calculus.