6 month check in

Man, so much for posting all the time. Anyway, here are some recent updates - mainly so that Nisha and I don't forget...

He finally slept through the night! That first time was on May 31, 2008. We put him to bed at the usual time, between 7:30 and 8 and then we woke up at 6:30am... and realized that was the first time he has woken up all night! Whoowhoo!

He got his 6 month shots.. cried, but soon forget about it when daddy said "lets go outside!".. he loves the outside! He got a 100.5 fever, but that's about it other than being tired and a little lethargic the next night.

2 month check-in

So it's been a little over 2 months since Kieran was born and I haven't had a chance to do much updating on this blog. I'm thinking I'm going to keep these entries brief and be more of a monthly update as he gets older. You tend to forget a lot of things as the days whirl by so at least this site can be used to capture these before they're long forgotten. So let me start more recently and then think backwards through time. On Tuesday, Mom and I took Kieran to the doctor for his first shots! For the record, I was chicken and wanted Nisha to go, but she wouldn't go without me. So anyway, long story short is that he was given four shots.. yes, four, two in each leg! Of course he cried and cried but after 5 minutes he stopped! What a relief that was.. Other vital stats - he's now 10 lbs 2 oz. and 23 inches long. So we went home and he slept for 4 1/2 hours, one of his longest stretches ever - probably because he was tired of screaming and was cozy in his car seat. Yeah, he loves the carseat now and doesn't object to going in there.

He's also been going longer in his feeding routines. What was a consistent 2 hour schedule is now down to about 3 hours, although he sometimes gets hungry at 2 1/2. Overall, it's going much better in this arena. Nisha is great feeding him and he really CHOWS down when he's hungry, I can hear him on the lower level! He has a specific hungry cry and we know exactly when he's hungry, even if he's not supposed to be hungry. Yes, Nish and I had some "disagreements" about his feeding schedule and her favorite line was "but he's not supposed to be hungry!". We both now know that Kieran doesn't know the words "supposed to be".. he's hungry when he's hungry and knows how to communicate it! He's mostly breast-feeding, but sometimes I'm alone with him and need to give him formula and if I'm not prepared, man, what a nightmare that is. I start off holding him in one hand while I try to get the milk ready, which doesn't work. So I have to put him down in the living room, run back to the kitchen and get the milk ready, all the while he's screaming louder and louder. Stressful to say the least. Then when I finally give him the milk, mind you only 2 minutes have gone by, he sucks away and gives me the meanest look like "why the hell did you make me wait??" Very cute..!

A couple weeks ago he started smiling for the first time! He was smiling before that, but it was in his sleep and not intentional, but now he smiles constantly. He's actually started laughing just the other day (limited laughing of course, kinda like giggling). And he LOVES to be talked to. I put him down and he will stare up at me forever, just listening to me talk to him. He puts in his coos and ahhs, so we have a little conversation going. This really started about a week or so ago and he loves it. My mom was here until Saturday (2/2) and she really noticed it also, he loves to play and talk to himself and listen to you. So cute!

Kieran is born!

Arriving into this world at a small but potent 5 lbs 10 oz, Kieran (originally spelled Kiran) arrived on Planet Earth at 11:43am December 2, 2007! As you can tell, this update is way late but we've been busy. For history's sake, here is how it unfolded:

11:50 pm 12/1/07 - Nisha says to Faz just as they were going to bed after a long day of shopping and setting up christmas decorations, "uh, I think my water just broke"

12:45 am 12/2/07 - We (Nisha, her mom, and I) checked in at Shady Grove hospital and were admitted. Nisha's labor pains were non-existent.

2 am - We're moved to the delivery room and made comfortable... well, at least Nisha was. Her mom and I shared a bench for the next few hours.

4:30 am - Nisha's pains begin in but still are relatively light. She's given a little medicine to help calm her and help her relax. Nisha's mom goes out to the waiting room so that Faz can get some sleep on the padded bench. Sorry aunty!

7:00 am - Nisha's pain are now full steam ahead and she's about 3-4 cm dilated. Where is the epidural??!

7:30 am - Epidural guy (anesthesiologist) arrives and relieves Nish. ahhh....

8:45 am - First signs of problem occur when the fetal heart rate, which had been galloping along between 130-160, drops for a few seconds to around 100. The nurse pulls out the oxygen for her. Fetal heart comes back up.

9:30 am - She's still not dilating too much, it's now only about 4 cm.

10:30 am - The baby is still "high" and has not really dropped. Fetal heart rate drops again for about 20-25 seconds, the oxygen mask is pulled out again. At this point, these things begin to get a little nerve racking. Another nurse comes in here to check where the baby is and confirms what the first nurse said. The Dr. finally shows up... and to our dismay (we already knew though) it's not Dr. Tran. Dr. Gierdian puts in an internal fetal heart rate monitor to make sure they pick up the baby's heart rate and not Nisha's.

11:35 am - All of a sudden, the fetal rate drops from 140 to 120 to 110... the nurse moves Nisha to her side to see if that helps.. the rate continues to drop down to 100.... other nurses arrive and help her reposition Nish... heart rate doesn't come back up.... Dr. Gierdian briskly walks in and checks... the looks of worry on everyone's face sends some chills up my spine and MY heart rate rapidly increases... Dr. Gierdian utters, "this baby has to come out NOW..." nurses rush to start unplug various electrical connectors and tubes... Nish looks over to me with a look of fear and tears in her eyes... I was no help because there were tears in my eyes; it was that scary... Molly, one of the nurses tells me that I can go into the room in a minute, as soon as I am "prepped".. "she's going in for a c-section"... "everything is going to be ok.." - yeah right, that's what they all say and why do you look so scared?? But I played and changed into the scrubs..

11:44 am - I walk into the operating room and hear the wonderful cries of a newborn! I'm told to avert my eyes and look at only Nisha's face... oh, what a relief!

12:10 pm - So now I head up with the baby to the 'newborn baby' check up. Kieran is doing great and super alert. He's looking around and happy.. until they poke him with a needle to give him his Vitamin K shot! Ouch!

So that's the play by play.. what a day it was! And everything was great... until about 6 hours later when they took Kieran away to the NICU! Oh man.. another stress filled 12 hours! To make a long story short, he had a PDA (which means one of his baby arteries that's supposed to close right after birth, didn't fully close) so his blood-oxygen level was a little low in the lower half of his body. But after a few days at the NICU, we brought Kieran home! Ok, that's enough for now...

Thanksgiving Dinner 2007

I know this isn't really Baby1.0, but here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner. I thought I took more picts, but looks like I didn't so here are a few of family:






If you want to see more pics and videos, go here: Faz's Online Picture Album

So the Baby1.0 should be here any day now. Mom is doing pretty well now. For the past month, we've been able to sleep pretty well which is a big relief from waking up 2-3 times a night like she was a month ago. Went out to dinner yesterday and then dessert at Cheesecake Factory, so things are like they've always been.. might as well live it up while we can, right? The nursery is almost done... I will take some pics and some videos and post them tomorrow. Grandma (nisha's mom) has been staying with us for the past week and will be here until mid December. Because of her, we've been enjoying good food and a clean house and Nisha now has plenty of time to watch more of her General Hospital...

A Yellow Room

So we've finally finished painting, putting the crib together, and getting our dresser. Three big steps... about 30 more to go. We're thinking blue accents around the room, pictures, and other 'stuff'. "Stuff" is like the big giraffe we ordered for a corner which should be here on Tuesday. Yes, we have a ton of stuff to do.. but in the meantime, here's something to give you an idea on the room:

Video of the little yellow room

(unfortunately, the video is more than 100mb, so I couldn't put it directly into this page.) Stay tuned for the latest update to the cost of Baby1.0.. I was going to update it now, but it's late and I'll get to it tomorrow..

Wow, it's been a while!

Sorry everyone for not keeping up. It's now down to 4 weeks! December 3rd is right around the corner and we have tons to do. We've done some shopping and I will be updating the total costs of baby1.0 in the next day or so, but the main things remaining are the dresser and the glider/recliner/rocking chair (whatever you want to call it). Omar and I put the crib together yesterday and Jean and Joe put the closet together last week. Here are some pics:

More shopping...

So we finally picked out our crib. It is a Natart drop down crib, pecan color. We decided on a drop down crib instead of the rapidly increasing popularity of the convertible cribs. Our decision was based on the fact that Mom3.o is not the tallest woman on the planet and she was having problems reaching across and into the convertible cribs. Plus, they looked a bit too bulky for us and we didn't really see ourselves keeping the furniture for more than a few years. You know our tastes and you know that we are never satisfied with what we have.. case in point our sofa, which we wanted to get rid of and replace with a sectional 6 months after we bought it.

Mom3.0 has also been having problems sleeping, so we bought a body pillow. However, sleeping with it is worse than without it, so it's going back. There are different kinds and I think she's going to go try the full size pillow that takes up 1/2 of our queen size bed. Oh well... Whatever makes Mom3.0 more comfortable so she can stop waking me up 4 times a night is fine with me! There are plenty of th0se nights coming!

Crib - $493

Cost of Baby1.0 = $795

Baby shopping begins in earnest

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've visited, sorry for being out of touch. Anyway, things are moving along well. We've really started narrowing down baby names.. it's a secret for now, but maybe we'll reveal it one of these days. We've also been visiting Buy Buy Baby a bunch of times to figure out our registry and all that good stuff. A great baby book resource is Baby Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields. It's more of a reference book and as we look at different items, it's a great way to get reviews and more information on everything. (Cost of the book $12). I will be writing more in the next few days with all the stuff we're thinking of... right now I'm tired and going to bed..

Cost of Baby1.0 - $302

Back from vacation and Mom3.0 feels the baby kicking!

Hi everyone. We just got back from our Mediterrerean cruise the other day and it was an awesome trip. We visited Venice, Dubrovnik (Croatia), Athens, Santorini, Rome, Naples, Florence, Nice and ended in Barcelona. Some of the sample pics are below but there are way too many to add (600+). During the trip, Mom3.0 was amazing! We were getting up at 7am, going out to all the touristy spots, and not getting back to the ship until after 6pm on most days. We climbed ancient walls and dusty hills, we shopped for hours, and stood in lines for subways, trains, taxis, and gondolas. Through all that, Nish didn't complain once even though she was 5 1/2 - 6 months pregnant. Even with 100 degree Athens heat, she climbed to the top of the Acropolis! And sometime during those two weeks, she finally started feeling Baby1.0 start to move! We were getting a bit worried since she wasn't feeling anything (even though the last ultrasound showed baby1.0 jumping and tumbling around all over the place) but now she feels him move around every day. Very cool.

Also, Mom3.0 has been updating her wardrobe to fit her expanding waist (in this case, that's not a bad thing! :) ). So it's finally time to update what baby1.0 is costing us.

Maternity clothes - $200 7/15/07 - 8/15/07

Total Baby1.0 - $289

If you want to see more pics of our cruise, go here: Faz's Albums

It's a.......... BOY!!

Sorry for taking forever to get the word out, but it's a BOY! After 20 short weeks (time is flying by) we now know we'll be having MiniDad3.0 in 16 more! Dad3.0 is definitely psych'd and Mom3.0 is, well, happy to finally know what it is! She was hoping for a girl so that she can dress her up in cute stuff, but hey, overalls are just as cute! So now the hard part - coming up with a little boy's name... we had some good girls names lined up (sorry Suraiya, you'll have to keep waiting.. :) but we won't need them until the next round.

Mom3.0 and I celebrating my last MBA class EVER! (Thanks Amy for taking the pic).

Another pic of us after finding out it's a BOY! (Thanks Nikhil)

(Why does Dad3.0 look like he's already been up all night with the baby??)

Girl or Boy? Tomorrow is the big day!

Stay tuned... tomorrow the waiting is over and the question will be answered, is it a boy or girl??!

A growing baby

Not so much a "bump" anymore! Almost 20 weeks, so here is a pic:

July 4th!

It's been a while, hello folks! Spring has warped into summer and it's already July 5th. Baby1.0 is now 19 weeks, so 21 more to go! We really need to get moving on the nursery and come up with our theme. We're thinking jungle theme and something girly for a girl. We haven't come up with anything yet. I think when we find out if it's a boy or girl, we'll get the kick to really start figuring things out and that big day is July 19th! Keep that day on your calendars! Here are some pictures from last night. They were taken on my iPhone without a flash in a relatively dark room, so they're not too bad.





I don't know how to rotate this pic...(sorry Rana)

Buy Buy Baby

We visited Buy Buy Baby for the first time the other day. Actually we've been there before, but it was the first time we've been there for ourselves. I actually felt like an idiot when I went in! Usually I know all about the things I'm looking for... well, most of those items are things you PLUG in, but anyway... in this case, I felt clueless. Apparently they have these new type of convertible crib-beds where they are higher quality pieces of furniture that you can use for years even after the baby grows up. We need to decide on one of those types or just the traditional cribs... I'll post some pictures of each of them soon.

We also visited Dr. Tran for our monthly checkup. It was a good time because Mom3.0 has recently been feeling some stomach discomfort. In fact the other day, there there was some stomach pain and "pinching" sensations. Good news though, Baby1.0 is fine. The pinching and stretching sensations are from ligaments and muscles being stretched as the baby grows. What a relief!

Baby1.0 is now 17 weeks!

Books, Books and more Books

People have been giving us baby books so we (ok, mom3.0) has been reading more. Right now Nish is reading The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregrancy by Vicki Iovine which she is really enjoying since it validates a lot of the stuff she's thinking and feeling. Thank God because how many times can I tell her that the red dots on her face will go away!?? For me, finding time to read all this stuff is hard... although we always seem to have spare time to do other stuff... like watch movies. Last night we watched Rambo and Superman (the original from 1978) until 2am. Yes, GUY night... with mom3.0 and myself! Can you believe she's never seen either movie??! "They were such boy movies when we were growing up" True...