1 ½ Months

6 Weeks ¤ 42 days ¤ 1008 hours ¤ 60,480 minutes ¤ 3,628,800 seconds

A million of anything is a lot, so I felt pretty comfortable with 3.6 million seconds to prepare myself for fatherhood. My procrastination techniques did not serve me too well. Monday night at our Lamaze class Britt was talking about some contractions that she was having, but she disregarded them as Braxton-Hicks contractions (for those of you who don’t know what Braxton-Hicks contractions are you are not alone I would like to compare them to the false start in the football game called pregnancy). So around Midnight she got up to sleep on the couch in the hopes of finding the right position, but each time she was about to doze off another contraction would hit making it impossible to sleep. This went on until 6:00 in the morning when we thought it might be best to call the doctor’s office. Britt, not wanting to be a ‘burdensome first-timer’ thought it better to wait until the office opened at 8:00 at which point they told her to take a bath and if it didn’t get better within the next couple hours to call and schedule an appointment. Ultimately things did not get better and at 11:00 she headed to the Doctor’s office. It seemed that the nurses were not too concerned about the situation and went on their merry way until the examination started and the commotion started. By 11:45 she was checked into the hospital with an IV. I arrived at 12:15 (after breaking most traffic laws known to man). My honed Lamaze skills came to play and at 1:30 Hannah Lynn Flammer decided it was time. Britt did great with labor and she had done so much of it at home that it didn’t take long. She went without the epidural, but I asked for one. I honestly believe I could have enjoyed the process a little more if I hadn’t been so worried about Hannah and what it was going to take to get her healthy. The 3 doctors in the room (along with 3 nurses) did a great job in keeping it light. When she was born they were pretty sure she was going to weigh around 4 or 5 pounds so they were really surprised when she was 6 pound and 4 ounces. Hannah got hauled away to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit and Britt got put in a room for recovery, I kind of went back and forth. I really didn’t want to spend too much time with Hannah due to the intimidation of all the machines she was hooked up to. Britt and I did get a chance to go down together and spend a little time with her. Hannah did great in the NICU and we were able to take her home 6 hours after Britt checked out. Taking Hannah off of the machines was a little nerve racking. As intimidating as the machines were and as much as I struggled holding her with all the cords I took a lot of comfort in being able to look at the machine to see that her heart was beating and that oxygen was being distributed. All in all I am not sure that the extra 3.6 million seconds would have done much to prepare me for fatherhood, but it was kind of nice living in ignorance before. I have been a dad for a total of 78 hours (4680 minutes, 280,800 seconds) but it is by far the most humbling thing I have ever done. This is just the beginning. As for the picture, don't let the blue fool you, it is just the outfit they have for laying on the tanning bed. I kind of think that was the real reason Hannah came early, she wanted to work on her tan and she figured between the bed and having all of July she would be sitting pretty.

This is us hanging with Hannah. It kind of gives you a good idea of what she was hooked up to. On her right hand is the IV and if you look at the monitor the top number is her heart beat, the middle is her breathing, and the bottom number is the oxygen monitor that is on her right foot.