Two weeks and one day ago my wife gave birth to a healthy screaming 8lb 3oz girl. As everyone tells you, words can't describe the feelings you exerpience when you first see the results of your blood! I am a very un-emotional man, but i sure did feel some emotion on January 22, 2004.

Tamara was 2 weeks late and we went to her ob-gyn for a non-stress test on the baby. They put a monitor on the wife's tummy to record the heartbeats for an extended period of time. We were just sitting there and watching the rate. It was steady for a long while at 130 bpm but then dipped to about 80 and slowly came back up to the norm. Initially I thought that the baby had just moved and the monitor was picking up the wife's heartbeat, but that was not the case.

As a result of our daughter's heart rate dipping the doctor instruced us to go to the hosipital for a longer period of monitoring.

I met the wife at the hospital where our daughter's heart rate was being monitired. We both stayed the night adn during the night our daughter's heart rate once again dipped several times. Speculation was that she was grabbing her umbilical cord or it could be pressed between her head and the wife's cervix. Whatever the case doctors decided to induce labor the next morning.

She was given good doses of Pitocin to start labor. Her contractions got very strong pretty quickly and she was in real pain. Tamara was much releived to get the epidural in the early evening while she was dialated at about 3 cm.

Unfortunately the wife never progressed dialation past about 5 cm so the decision was made to have a C-section. It was the coolest thing I ever watched. Again, i can't describe how awesome and overwhelming it feels to see your childs head pop out of her home for the past 9 months! If you haven't been through it you will not understand. I strongly suggest it for any fit person.

We stayed in the hospital for a total of 4 days and we took the daughter home in the middle of a somewhat rare southern U.S. snow storm.

The last two weeks have been a lesson in absolute giving. The wife is breastfeeding and her milk didn't really "come in" until day 6 which is really late. As a result we had to supplement with formula which we really didn't want to do, but the daughter's weight had not crept back up enough.

We are now on a strategy of feeding approximately every 3 hours. There are some frustrations such as fussiness and periods of what seems to be inconsollable crying and there are big adjustments for me and the wife. The frustration comes when the daughter is crying and we don't know why. She often cries and shows no signs of being hungry. Many times after she feeds she seems to refuse to sleep. It is as if she is fighting it. We know that she is tired, but she just won't go to sleep. She just cries. Since she can't directly tell us what is wrong it causes frustration. Is it hunger? Is it gas? Is it something else?

It is also frustrating when she fights sleep after feeding during our bed time. I guess this is just part of being a new parent!