Rookie Papa

On the way into the hospital, I made Chelsea take one picture. The only real picture of her being completely pregnant. Figured even though she didn’t want to have it taken, I did. So here she is, at 41 weeks. Walking into the hospital to be induced.

Once we got in the room, I agreed to radio silence, minus one late night tweet about being induced and all the labor she was preparing for (that was for the people).

Now we come to the good stuff: after around 24 hours of laboring, Chelsea opted for a C-section, based on the fact that she hadn’t eaten since Wednesday morning (McDonald’s breakfast - not all that filling to begin with), and also because her epidural was not put in the correct way (a fact she later found out from another anesthesiologist who said she was basically doing natural labor for a good bit of that time).

So after a 30-minute procedure, Henry was here. And this was the first photo I grabbed of him:

Isn’t he cute?

Next, I got one of the nurses to take our picture together as a family.

They whisked him away to the nursery, with me in tow, and we discovered what originally had been thought to be either a 10-pound, 1 ounce baby (later reduced to a 9-5 baby), was actually only 8-pounds, 14 ounces. What I like to call “Our Little Chunker”. 

(He’s lost weight since he’s been born, and I believe it was the pure liquid-based diet.)

Now I found myself learning all the tricks, while Chelsea was still being cleaned up and getting comfortable in our room. Once she was ready, our came to the room with our little bundle of joy for some quality time together.

Once they got acquainted with each other, we had family come in and hang out.

First, here’s Grandma and Grandpa Schneider:

Next, Uncle Danny:

Meme was there, but I didn’t get to get a photo. Jeff, Chelsea’s dad, is going to email me one soon.

Then came Ra-Ra and Granddaddy Kirk:

And of course, Aunt Jenn:

We sneaked Henry’s cousins, Grady and Alexis, back into the room. Turns out Community only allows siblings if they are younger children back there. But they had traveled all the way from Texas (God bless my parents, sister and her children - especially my dad for driving if not all, most of the way, and making it in one day).

So I snapped this of Lexi as she was checking out her newest cousin:

I’ll be posting as much as I can soon. As you can see, I’m posting at 10:45 at night. It’s not because I can’t sleep. It’s in the anticipation of him waking up and wanting to hang out for a few hours soon.