Going Home!

Today we headed home from the hospital. It was a good stay and we got good treatment and A LOT of advice from the hospital staff. It was a good experience overall. But, we were ready to head home and have a little more space. We got discharged about noon and they sent us home with a frozen lasagna dinner...how nice of them...i wonder how much it cost our insurance for that meal ;-)

We headed home and were curious to see how Kona would react to the Blake, but she actually was really excited and we're not sure if she's realizes that he's here to stay yet, but she thought he was very interesting. She welcome him with a nice lick on the hands, so we're pretty sure she is ok with having him around. She's been around a lot of our friends kids and has been really nice and likes them, so hopefully she'll feel the same about Black (after he keeps her up half the night).

Last night Blake wanted to do quite a bit of feeding and that was tiring, but it wasn't too bad and being able to sleep in was nice. Hopefully we can get him on some sort of regular schedule sooner than later, but for now I guess the benefit is we get to see what it's like to be up at all hours of the night for the first time since the college days. (maybe we'll call Rachel if we're lonely since she was the only one that responded to the text i sent at 1am on Thursday morning when we went in to the hospital ;-) )

We posted a few more pictures...same link as before:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/BlakeMichael

Day 2 - Visitors

Well, day 2 Blake got his first fishing pole (thanks great-grandpa Houser!) and caught his first fish...well, kind of a whale if you look close. Things went well and so far he is excited to be in the world. We took it a little easier today and had quite a few visitors come by and say hi. It was nice to have everybody come by.

We did a video conference with Grandma and Grandpa Bankson this morning for in the hospital room. That was pretty fun and it was exciting to be able to introduce Blake to them. All the hospital staff were pretty fascinated by the video conference call...i guess not many people have done it here :-) It was fun and nice to be able to do that with them.

Rumor has it that the second night can be more difficult because they have had enough time to rest and are ready to FEED...all night. Well, i suppose we'll find out and hopefully he will sleep some ;-)

He had his 24 hour tests today and they checked out his hearing and everything checked out good. All in all he seems to be a pretty healthy good little guy. We're looking forward to taking him home and watching him grow. We sent a hat home yesterday for Kona to check out and get familiar with, so hopefully she will be as excited about him as we are. She has been pretty good about other people's kids and has been around them since she was a puppy, so we think she should adapt just fine.

We posted a few more pictures of Blake that we took today. You can see them at the same link as before:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/BlakeMichael

Blake Michael Bankson

Announcing the newest addition to the family: Blake Michael Bankson!!
He was born on August 29th and is 6lbs 6oz and 20 1/4 inches long

Well, it was a bit of a mid-night adventure with Abby's water breaking at 12:45am, but it was all worth it. I woke up to go use the bathroom at 12:45 and as i got out bed Abby said, 'Jaaaassseeennnn....i think my water just broke!' (imagine a nervous, wake up from a deep-sleep tone :-) ) That sprang us into action...we got her out of bed and then she started doubting whether it was really her water that broke or not and I was like, are you kidding? (it was like someone had dumped a bucket of water on the bed). Then she says, well, i'll call the hospital and see if they want us to come in...I said, ok, sounds good...i'll go load the bags into the car (knowing we're going in and this is the real deal)

So, we let Abby's grandparents know we were headed in (they have been with us since the c-section false alarm last week) and that sparked plenty of excitement. We took off to the hospital honking the horn to let the neighbors know we were on our way (at the request of some of the neighbors...they said the middle of the night trips were the best).

We got settled in at the hospital (which BTW is great...it's like a hotel...no real hurry to get out of here) and things started to get going. It started out pretty slow, so we both tried to get a little sleep while things weren't too intense. Not much happened for about the next 11.5 hours...just contractions and slow progress. He was 'sunny side up' (facing the front instead of the back) so Abby had a lot of back labor for a while, but then after she moved around a little he turned into the right position and from there it was a pretty quick process...about 30 minutes until he arrived. Things went smooth and into the world came Blake Michael Bankson. It's quite the experience seeing a baby born and realizing the miracle of it, it's tough to explain the excitement and things you feel when you become a parent. (i'm sure other parents out there can relate).

Here are some more pictures from the first couple hours of his life...
http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson

We'll be trying to blog more regularly and there should be more pictures to come soon, so check back.

Jasen