A good milestone of growth...

Last night (Monday) we gave Addelynn her first bath since coming home from the hospital. Granted it not really much of a bath; more of a gloried wipe down, but apparently its suppose to be a 'big event'.

Yesterday we also received a call from the Allina Hospital to see if we wanted to schedule a home visit (fortunately, I do believe this is standard practice, versus them considering us at risk parents requiring an assessment). Apparently both of our health plans fully cover this home visit, so we figured it couldn't hurt. The RN said she would be by sometime mid afternoon. Around 2pm we just gotten Addelynn up from her nap and she had a little eye goober in her left eye. Stupidly, we tried to wipe the stubborn thing out. No sooner than, we had it done, Addelynn exploded, and the doorbell rang 30 seconds later. So we started our home visit with a hysterical child for first 10 minutes. Perfect.

The good news is both Lana and Addelynn check out great. The nurse answered a couple of questions that we had. Before she left, she wanted to weigh Addelynn to see how she was progressing with weight loss with the goal to be back upto birth weight by two weeks. She was 6 lbs 11 oz at birth and had dropped to 6 lbs 3.5 oz when we left the hospital on Sunday morning. Today she weighed back in at 6 lbs 11 oz... so apparently she is already back to her birth weight within 5 days. Apparently, Lana and Addelynn are making a pretty good feeding/eating machine. No wonder I have changed some many diapers....

On a side not, today I also called to get Addelynn officially added to my insurance plan. The exciting thing I learned is I can also increase my FSA (Flexible Saving Account) for tax-deductible health care expense. Since we didn't know if and when we'd get pregnant last fall, we only put back the typically amount for the two of us and had been kicking myself for not putting back more after we found out we were pregnant. So I was super pumped that I can increase it. That's like a 40% savings... not bad. Now I just need to figure out how much this hospital trip is going to run us.

Tomorrow the only notable planned events are 1) our first appointment with our chosen pediatrician and 2) Mark kicking Lana out of the house for at least 1 hour following a feeding (currently I think she is leaning towards heading to the library)
1st pic - is after the bath. 2nd pic - Addelynn and Titus napping while we ate lunch. 3rd - Trying to take a picture of Lana and Addelynn in the basement, and Titus decided to join them.(note: Titus is mainly in the pictures, because he is more concerned with being close to Lana, not Addelynn)

A hint of normalcy

Today, our first full day at home, was mainly spent catching up, and doing odd tasks like finalizing our pediatrician choice and scheduling an appointment. But the exciting thing was a sense of normalcy. It's really refreshing how everything has completely changed, yet nothing has changed at all. It was good to feel settled at home and many of our normal routines continue (with Addelynn in tow).

We took a short walk this afternoon to the park to throw the ball for Titus for about 10 minutes. It got slightly chilly, so we closed in the stroller as you can see. We also had several of Lana's fellow teachers come over an hour and half tonight. It was good to see them and they brought good Lasagna too. :)

Addelynn has also taking to hanging out in the swing that Grandma & Grandpa Sprunger got for her. We've also had a great time listening to some toons & singing along. (I'm trying to indoctrinate her with some good taste, before Lana makes her listen to Ozzy or Bon Jovi). Overall our daughter has been an incredibly good baby. She eats well, goes down easy, sleeps soundly, and really isn't very fuzzy. I am just skeptical on how long this will last and when the nightmare will set in.


It's been amazing to hear how many people have actually been reading this thing. We're glad to hear you've been enjoying it. Thanks for caring. As you can see above, this is how most of the blogging happens. Addelynn napping on my chest and me awkwardly trying to type. I am also getting decent at typing with one hand. That's all for now... - The Rohrer's

Lana's 2nd Meltdown... of a different kind...

So today we experienced Lana's second meltdown, again while I was out running errands (mental note: minimize running errands)... but this one was slightly different than before.

First of all, we couldn't buy a pump from the lactation department at the hospital this weekend since they were putting down new flooring where they store them. But we wanted to buy it from the hospital since they are a lot cheaper (hospital sells them at cost with no markup). Last night I ended up buying one at Target just in case Lana needed one, before we could get one from the hospital.

Monday morning, Lana hit the point where Addelynn wasn't able to keep up and she needed to pump. So I made arrangements to pick one up from the hospital at 1pm. Since it turned out to be the exact same package as the one from Target, I called Lana on the way home to tell her to use the one I bought last night and I'd return the new one to Target.

Since Lana was in a lot of pain, she rapidly tried to prep/sanitize the new pump. She inserted the hoses in a provided steam cleaning bag and proceed to microwave it for 3 minutes. I happened to call and check in to see if I should pickup lunch on the way home. About this time, there was ~17 seconds left, but the microwave was flickering, crackling, and smoking a little. It really smelt too. Granted Lana didn't care at this point, she was just concerned if the tubes for her pump were okay.

Our microwave is only 2 years old, but it now appears to be totally fried. It may be random coincidence, but the only thing I can think of is all the excess steam went back through the vents and was enough to aid some arcing between components. At least that's what it sounded like when I tried it again before even the clock failed.

So needless to say, our adventure of the day was Lana melting down the microwave (note: the picture above is just off the net, ours still looks completely normal)

The 1st Encounter with the Big Brown Furry Thing...

Sunday around 1pm, Steve and Liz brought Titus back over. They had graciously been keeping him the past few days. Apparently he decided it was fun to dig a bunch holes in their backyard. Which is a little odd since he hasn't dug a hole in our yard in almost 2 years. Ironically, their dog Maggie tends to dig holes in our yard (and chew on rocks) when she stays here, but not when she is home... go figure.

Just as fair warning, this story is fairly anticlimactic, but people have been asking how Titus has responded. Anyway, when Titus first came in the house I was was holding Addelynn in one of the recliners. Titus just keep running back between Lana and I really excited to see us. I'm not sure he even realized Addelynn was there for the first 5 minutes, until one of the trips over to visit me he gave her two quick sniffs and went on about his business.

A little while after Steve and Liz left, we tried to formally introduce them. As you can see in the video, Titus really doesn't care too much. Beforehand I told people that Titus would not be shocked at all to have a baby in the house. He's been around our friends kids and the nieces/nephews plenty and he is really good with them. The real question is "what will he think when he realizes this one doesn't leave".





He has started laying by her sometimes when she is in her swing, but other than that not really too attached at this point. Grandma Rohrer sent a really cute book called "The Other Dog". It's written from a couple's dog's perspective as they brought home a newborn. It has some entertaining perspectives of 'why is the new dog different'. Anyway, its kinda funny.

Heading Home

It's good to be home. We had the option of leaving earlier and heading home yesterday, but decided to stay for a 2nd night just in case we needed anything. I must say, I really am not going to miss that chair/bed. I think my thermorest on the floor might have been more comfortable.

The night went really well. Fed at 12, 3, 6, 8; Addelynn was completely knocked out and slept really soundly in between until we would wake her up to eat (without the pacifier no less, see previous post). Lana and Addelynn appear to really be getting the hang of things. Lana's milk already appears to be coming in and Addelynn is getting a full belly. This seem to make both of them really happy.

Around 8am we began to pack up to head out. We requested to try to leave around 9am as we were anxious to get home and didn't want to get got in the mass exodus around 11am. Mark enjoyed dressing Addelynn in her real clothes that mom had picked out for the ride home.

When we got home, there was a fun sign on the door from two of our neighbor kids, Caleb and Kathryn, welcoming us home. (This is the same neighbors who most graciously gave us tons of their baby stuff saving us a ton).

We didn't pick up Titus on the way home as planned, since it was getting close to Addelynn's next feeding time. Steve and Liz are bringing him over as we speak. So that should be interesting. We'll let you know how it goes. Here are some more pictures from today.

Lana's first meltdown

Lana had her first emotional meltdown tonight. Addelynn is rapidly developed an obsession with sucking whenever she is awake (even after being well fed). She'll constantly try to suck on anything available... her hand, my bicep, the blanket, your finger etc... Tonight she entered a mode where she was hysterical if there was nothing to suck on, even though she had just ate. In the picture to the right, she was cranking hard on my pinky for 15 minutes, now can really see why Lana is a little sore.

Anyway, Addelynn was in the nursery for about an hour and half for her normal daily checkup and to hang out while the two of us attended the Departure Class. (story for another time, but let's just say everyone in the class was sleeping at some point during it). When Addelynn returned, one of the nurses had given her a pacifier to understandably make her stop crying,

We weren't upset, but not too sure we wanted to continue to use one much. Especially this early on. Later that night around 7pm, I ran out get dinner from bw3's while Lana finished nursing since the food here is horrible. When I returned, Addelynn was peacefully sleeping, but with a pacifier in her mouth and my wife burst into tears with feelings of guilt... that this would create issues with breast feeding, and long term dependence with sleeping. Basically second guessing herself on if this is a battle worth fighting; potentially long term effects or intentionally choosing to let her new born be miserable.

Quite frankly, I am a little frustrate around this whole, "what you need to do for breast feeding" thing; I swear no two people say the same thing and everyone states their opinions as fact. We're told conflicting information all the time: "You should definitely do X", then later "whatever you do, never do X". This is insane. With my wife's general tendency to 2nd guess herself, this is not helpful. No matter what she does, she feels like its wrong. Luckily we had a new nurse just come on shift and check in as Lana was venting to me. She did a great job meeting Lana where she was at and talking her through it.

Boiler Up!

Purdue played Notre Dame today. Luckily, not only did Addelynn decide to be born a day before the game, she was gracious enough to watch it with me.

We had some good bonding time as Addelynn slept on my chest while I watched the game. She's not very good a cheering yet, but we'll work on that. Really she just slept minus the few times she was startled by my cheers. Hopefully this is something we can enjoy together for years to come.

My Boilers played fairly well in the 1st half, but imploded in the second. Oh well... Ironically, one of the Purdue t-shirts got packed for the hospital, so Lana thought it was appropriate and funny to drape my shirt over Addelynn as a blanket while we watched the game. At any rate, at least we are starting Adde's life off right by teaching her the important stuff on day 2. Boiler Up little miss Addelynn... Boiler Up...

Morning of Day 2

I think this is the last subject we need to complete so the blog is finally up to date.

However, I am tired, so just leaving some notes and will update it tomorrow.
- time with Dad while Mommy in class
- Jones coming to visit

I am posting some more pictures for you to see in the meantime.

Maternity Photo's

One of Lana's former co-workers and her husband are working on starting a photography business. They have done some really cool work for weddings and senior pictures, but haven't really done any maternity work.

Since they apparently aren't into the typical "nude / half nude"maternity shots, they asked us if we'd be willing to let them practice on us to find other non-nude options that work. Conveniently we aren't into the nude thing either, so this worked out well.

Luckily, we did it right in time... only 6 days before Addelynn's birth.

You can see a few more of the photos here on their blog site.

The potentially treacherous 1st night....

In all honesty, it wasn't treacherous at all, if all future nights go like this then we're golden. Lana fed Addelynn around 11pm and she went down for a solid 4 hours until 3am. Not bad at all. However, during the feeding at 3am Addelynn kept falling asleep and would stop nursing, that is until you took her away, then she wanted to restart.

After about 30 minutes, we thought she was down. She settled down at first, but about 15 minutes later was spitting mad. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to console her but to no avail. Every time you'd get her calm, she'd start suckling the air to find food, then explode. As it was apparently she was hungry, but had just nursed (Lana milk hasn't come in yet as is customary), and since Mommy was sore, we decided to supplement once with a bottle of formula. While she had been getting some colostrum each time, cumulative hunger had caught up with us. She downed it and was instantly content.

Addelynn slept for another 4 hours. Mark ended up holding her for 1 1/2 hours of it as while digesting she'd occasionally jerk herself awake, but 2 quick bounces and she was back out. We were able to keep her in our room the entire night (didn't have to take advantage of the nursery) and both still got some sleep too!

Addelynn's 1st Day

We were pleasantly surprised with how alert and responsive Addelynn was in 6 hours after birth. Her eyes were wide open and it was wonderful just to stare into them. It's was also relieving how content and easy going she was given that she screamed for the first 20 minutes straight of her life. Just over an hour after birth Lana and Addelynn had their first breast feeding session. Overall it went fairly well, just a little difficult to get Addelynn to open her tiny little month wide enough so as to not hurt mommy. After that we spent the next few hours calling our families and just hanging out. Then after the second feeding session, around 9am all three of us finally crashed for some much needed rest. We spent most of the day rotating feeding, hanging out, and catching up on sleep.

Apparently, the email updates kept most family members up way past their bedtime to check email every 10 minutes. Kinda makes us laugh, but we definitely appreciate it. Here's a note that Jenne Sprunger sent on about 4am on Kit's naming preferences for her cousin.
Just incase you were wavering on her name, Kit's choice of names today are:
Choice#1 Tinkerbell
Choice#2 Tinkerbell

Overall, Addelynn slept quite beautifully with very little fussing and fairly easy to calm. Later in the afternoon, Addelynn's 1st visitors arrive. Steve and Liz came by and brought Lana a beautiful vase of flowers. It was really good to see them and fun to see their excitement. Currently, they are also doing us a huge favor by keeping our crazy dog, even though Steve's parents are in town and they have a ton people over tomorrow to celebrate Will's 1st birthday (which is also Sept 26th). So we won't be going to his party, but I have an inkling that their may be a joint birthday party next year.

It's a little crazy to realize that we are parents now and responsible for this little life.... Let's all just hope we don't screw it up. :)

Double Click Images to see them full size.

She's Here!!!!!!!!!!

We have a beautiful & healthy baby girl!
(Which btw is a good thing that they were right. Otherwise we would have had a boy with 1) no name and 2) either a 'pink' identity crisis requiring consoling in future years or requires us to go on a major shopping spree)

Lana pushed so well that our daughter came much more quickly then expected. I think she only pushed for total of 35 minutes. It was truly an amazing experience. Here's an excerpt from the email we sent out with all the basic info.

So someone decided to come a week and a half early... but we're excited to have her. Things went really smoothly. Lana did incredible and handled everything like a champ. We're just thankful to have everyone healthy and welcome the new addition to our family.

Addelynn Marie Rohrer
Born: Sept 26, 3:18am
Weight: 6 lbs 11 oz
Length: 17 1/2"

Here's photo's from labor and Addelynn's 1st hour of life...
You can see the pictures larger here: Picasa Web
(including some captions)

Long Process Update #4

It's two hours after the epidural. Both of us have caught about two 45 minute sections of sleep which was wonderful. Well wonderful minus the chair/pull-out bed that's not exactly the worlds most comfortable bed. In fact, I think one of Titus dog mats may have been better.

Lana is now 100% complete entirely on her own with no potossen. The nurse wants us to just hang out for another hour and "labor down" before we start to push. Crazy to think that shortly our child is going to enter this world...

Long Process - Update #3.5

Contractions are fairly frequent now and building in intensity. She needs to concentrate on breathing to get through them and is starting to consider drugs for the pain...

Okay.... sorry about that... so far this email has taken me two hours to write as the breaks in between Lana needing me only allow for me to type 2-3 words (so I gave up). Contractions were very frequent and long, but she performing like a champ with the pain. I apologize for the lack of updates. thanks again for all the notes you all keep sending.

Lana got a epidural about 25 minutes ago.... and is trying to get some rest I think she is 7cm now... Seems like the epidural is doing her good. (actually it appears to be doing good for both of us), hence I am actually able to update you all. We are both actually going to try to sleep for a hour until the nurse comes back to check on us.

The picture above is about 30 minutes after the epidural. Much more relaxed than before.

Long Process... Update #3

Thanks for all the email replies. It's good to hear from everyone.

So since the last update we walked up and down the same halls for long enough to make your head spin. During the walking the contractions picked up and were strong enough that Lana needed to stop and stand still. This was the first time where you could visibly see it bother her. Then Lana soaked in a warm bath for 40 minutes. She lost quite a bit of the rest of her bag of waters after when she got out.

The Doctor checked her about 30 minutes ago. She is now 5cm, +1 position, and 100%; Overall they are pleased enough with her progress that they have held off on the potossen and decided let her progress naturally. So that's a good sign. The doctor definitely thinks that this baby will be here before the end of his shift at 7:30.

One funny story... we decided it was a good time for me to go down and get something to eat before things got more intense and I wouldn't be able to leave. So I took the elevator down to raid the vending machines on the 1st floor. When I got there, the elevator doors opened about 6 inches and stop. I pushed on them and they didn't move. Thinking "unbelievable, you have to be kidding me", so I got pissed and jacked the doors pretty hard and they open right up. Anyway it just left me shaking my head and thinking about taking the stairs to the 4th floor from that point on. Needless to say, I didn't use the same elevator on the way back up.

Interesting Coincidence

Email from our good friends with their 1 yr old tank William. Unfortunately, we will miss Will's 1st birthday party on Saturday.

From: Liz Powell

I am SOOOOO excited!!!! If baby is born tomorrow, Jimmy suggested that Will and baby Rohrer get married on Sept 26th too so they have only 1 date to remember :)

hang in there-we love you!

The Powell's

Long Process... Update #2

We moved to the final birthing room around 7pm since apparently it's a bit crazy tonight here. Lana is busy working on the laptop requesting her sub for tomorrow and is to in too much pain. It's been fairly boring and uneventful so far. She's now 3 cm, 90% effaced, and 0 position. Mostly likely going to start potossen soon if things don't start progressing faster.

That's about it for now. Not suppose to talk on the cell, so we'll keep emailing.

Let the slow process begin...

6:30am - Lana's water breaks but she isn't quite sure, so she proceeds to go to school and teach for the day.

2pm - Lana's decides something definitely is not right and is having some contractions so she called the hospital to check in. Apparently its a crazy day for giving birth, so they ask Lana to wait and come in at 3pm

3:30pm - Water broken is confirmed; Lana is 2.5 cm dilated and hospital is keeping us until kiddo is here. All normal rooms are full, so we are place in one of the small triage rooms. Called Mark again to confirm and have him get stuff from home, dump off the dog, and pick up some dinner.

4:40pm - Mark arrives and walking the halls begins.

6pm - Still waiting and hoping to move to a real room shortly

I'll try to send out an update every few hours instead of calling

We are betting on the eta. Lana's betting on 5 am and mark on 9:30 am tomorrow

Mark & L ana

Ultrasound Pictures

Here are a few of the ultrasound pics of our baby girl.

Full size photos can be found here: Picasa Web

Our announcement (old)

This photo is a little old, but probably worth including for historical perspective. Titus's shirt which states "Big Brother... I'm the babysitter". After guilting both of our parents into coming out to visit last March, we went out to eat at Culver's. I stepped out early, claiming to need to go help Steve, but headed home. When Lana arrived home with our parents, I sent Titus out to greet them. Everyone was a little slow, but Grandma Rohrer was actually the first to figure it out. (I think Grandpa Sprunger was the last).

Initial Post

This post was to first test out the blog and see if it was even anything that we were interested in doing.

To the side you can see the nursery for our soon to be here baby. Grandma Rohrer, Jen, & Kimmer helped paint and decorate it during their trip up north over the 4th of July.