I can't get enough of this little guy! He is so tiny and sweet.

Our precious friends showered us with gifts and prayers. It was a wonderful, emotional time for me! Dean wasn't supposed to be here yet when we planned the shower, but people were excited that they knew to buy for a boy. I was so glad that all my sisters, mom and mother-in-law were able to come celebrate with us. Dean stayed home with his Daddy, but I took a photo slide show to share with everyone.

Why, oh, why did someone not warn us about the hospital provided baby photos! The NICU nurses asked a few days ago if we wanted Dean's picture made for the hospital website. We thought that it would be a simple one-picture deal where they brought in a polaroid, so we agreed. We managed to dress Dean up in a cute outift despite all of his wires poking out... We finally got him all fixed up and waited patiently for the photographer to show up. A few minutes passed, and to our surprise, in walks a chubby little mexican midget (ok so she wasn't really a midget per say, but she couldn't have been a centimeter over 4 feet tall. She was so short, she had to request a step stool just to be able to see into Dean's crib). She had a massive cart decked out with a computer and photo equipment. She was sort of soft spoken and had the communication skills of a shy 3rd grader. If her communication skills weren't lacking enough, her computer skills definately made up the difference (we'll get to that later).

Here's the scenario. We're in the NICU with dozens of premature babies and we're waiting on the doctor to arrive at any minute to perform a cicrumcision on our son. We're already a little on edge because of what's about to happen with Dean, so we think that this midget chick will realize what's going on and snap her picture for the hospital website and get the heck out of everyone's way. If only it could have been that easy...

The midget grabs her step stool and reaches up on her cart to get her camera. So the shoot begins... almost. She attempts to snap the first picture but nothing happens. Turns out she had accidentally left the camera on at her last shoot and run the batteries down. Strike ONE!

So we sit and wait for her battery to charge for a few minutes. Our midget finally gets it charged and begins what would turn out to be an hour long photo shoot. She took a ridiculous amount of pictures of all sorts and put Dean in just about every conceivable pose known to man. (Keep in mind that Dean needs all the sleep he can get right now in between feedings. The last thing he needs is having his body contorted into photographic poses and bright lights flashing in his eyes.) Just when we thought we were nearing the end, she decides that she wants us in a few pictures with Dean. Strike TWO!

You should know at this point that we had no idea that this photo shoot would even be happening today and weren't looking too photogenic. I hadn't shaven in a few days and had on a cammo baseball cap. I pretty much looked like a serial killer who had been living out in the woods for a few weeks. While Jess was beautiful as ever, she hadn't gone to great lengths with her wardrobe selection either. Fashion is usually low on the priority list for most women who have just pushed another human being out of their "lady business". So off we go with MORE pictures. At this point our midget photographer even begins to drag the nurses into the shoot and makes them hold up white sheets as a backdrop to complete her shots. And boy am I glad they did! No one should be without a picture that makes their newborn appear to be lying dead in a casket. He was completey wiped out and lying lifeless in a stark white padded box, surrounded by pillowy white sheets. Just the sort of thing you dream of framing and hanging over the fireplace mantle. Seriously, I'll have to find the pic and post it here. It was awful!

Now, at this point we realize that the midget is going to try and sell us a package of her photos. Strike THREE! Jess quickly piped up and told her we're weren't interested and wouldn't be purchasing anything, so you would think at this point that our midget would get a clue and start wrapping things up. But, oh no, we're just getting started!

About this time, the doctor shows up to perform the circumcision. He's standing there waiting for our midget to finish up, but she is clueless. The thought never crossed her mind that this guy has a pretty tight schedule to keep and that her photos ,that we weren't even interested in, were the last thing we all wanted to be messing with. Finally, she snaps the last picture and the doctor whisks Dean off to a back room to "clean up his manhood".

The midget then begins with her sales pitch again. She whips out the catalog and shows us every product that they have available. It wasn't good enough for her to just show us the pictures in the catalog either; she had to read the catalog line for line in a torturous fashion. At the end of each product description, she would stop and ask if we would like to buy that particular thing and ask if we had any questions. Let me remind you that Jess has already told her in no uncertain terms that we don't want to buy anything. Apparently, this mexican midget was deaf too! She just kept plowing through her product list. About this time, we begin to hear blood curdling screams from our son in the back room. If we were ever at the end of our rope, it was now.

So, over the sound of Dean screaming bloody murder, our mexican midget moves to the computer. (I told you earlier that we'd be getting to the subject of our midget's computer skills.) To put it in perspective... Have you ever been in line at the grocery store or at Lowes and gotten up to the checkout counter to find that the person checking you out had no clue how to operate the register? A task that should easily take a matter of seconds, ends up taking 20 minutes. While the line behind you begins to stack up, everyone gets frustrated and you want to just rip the keyboard from the checker's hands and just do it yourself... I think we've all been there at some point. Well... that pales in comparison to what were about to experience.

As our chubby little gal sits at the computer, she begins to pull up the photos she has taken. Out of the myriad of pictures, she tells us to pick eight. We have no clue what we're picking them for; we've already told her that we're not buying anything. But she insists that we pick eight. So here we go picking eight pictures, of which we like like zero of them. She loads up all the pictures into her photo editor to find that every single one of them is upside down. Puzzled, she begins to edit every single picture and rotate them back to the proper angle. I wish I could accurately describe the agonizingly slow pace at which she attempted to complete this task, but words simply fall short. For most people, the scroll function on a computer window is a simple task. I wasn't even aware that there are still people on the planet who think you have to click directly on the little up and down arrows over and over to get to the top and bottom of a page. Apparently, I was sorely mistaken. As our midget "hen pecked" her way around the keyboard with her chubby little index fingers, we sat in utter awe at what we were witnessing. At one point, I even began to laugh out loud and had to use Jess as a human shield to hide my laughter. At last, she finishes editing the photos and puts up two pictures at a time and asks us to pick which one we like better. It's was exactly like being at the eye doctor when they do the whole "which one is better" thing. So photo one and two are on the screen and she asks us which one we like better, to which we answer, "Neither." For the next ten minutes we sat there through the torture of "which is better, one or two?" until we whittled the list down to eight pictures. Now it was time for our little midget friend to attempt to use the printer to print us off a proof sheet of eight of the crappiest photographs I have ever laid eyes on. On her way out, she gave us her final sales pitch and gave us an order form that we could use in the event we ever changed our minds. I just looked at Jess with a "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!" look on my face and rolled my eyes. As soon as the midget had left the room, Jess swore to me that what we had just experienced was 100 times worse than the pain of labor. She said that had she known our photo shoot was going to be so painful, she would have asked the nurse for an epidural.

Word to the wise... always decline the hospital photos and should you ever encounter a mexican midget, RUN!!!! (You may be a slow runner, but your legs are longer theirs, so you should be fine...)

(Disclaimer: The writers of this blog are not responsible for any midgets that were offended by this blog entry. And yes, we know that the politically correct term for midget is "little people", but midget just sounds funnier.)

Well, we finally got Dean home today (actually it was yesterday... it's about 1:00am now...)! Jess and Dean are sound asleep right now, but so far our first night at home as a family has been great. At around 9:00 tonight Dean decided to wake up and check out his new surroundings (At least we think they're new to him. Jess brought up a good point tonight. She wondered if Dean would remember the sounds of our house from when he was in her tummy. You know, regularly occuring familiar sounds like running a bath or watching an episode of 24. I still wonder if he will find comfort in the commercial break sound effects on 24 when the clock ticks down. We watched 5 seasons of 24 on DVD while he was in the womb so he has to remember that sound.)

He was really alert tonight and just stared at us forever. He ate forever too. He just kept chugging his milk. We didn't think he was going to stop. If he keeps up at this rate, we're gonna have a little fatty on our hands.

Up until tonight, he has pretty much just slept and been groggy most of the time, but tonight it was like a light switch flipped on in his little head. It was cool to have some eye to eye interaction with him. It's like he's a different person when he opens his eyes. He a whole lot cuter with them open too. Here are a couple of little video clips from earlier this evening...

Dean is going home tomorrow!!! The neanatologist came to talk to us today. Since Dean has had no problems in his stay at the NICU, the doctor asked us today what we would think of taking him home a couple of days early. We were wondering what took them so long to come to that conclusion.

It's been hard watching our perfectly healthy son hang out in the NICU for almost two weeks when he could have easily been at home with no issues. We know that the staff there just wants to play it safe and we understand that, but it's gotten really hard the past few days to just sit and be patient. Jess and I came to a point last night where we were ready to start pushing the staff hard for them to discharge Dean. At this point it just seems like a waste of time and money for him to stay here (As of the 16th, his stay has racked up a whopping $33,000! Of course insurance will cover it, but gimme a break!!!!) What seems silly at this point is that he's not receiving any out-of-the-ordinary care that he couldn't get at home.

Long story short, Jess and I prayed last night that the doctors would let Dean come home early (especially since we have more bad weather coming this weekend). So we showed up this morning really anxious to get Dean out of there. We brought the car seat and everything as if we were taking him home. Sure enough, late this morning the doctor came and asked if we'd like to take him home early (as if they had to ask!). So... sometime tomorrow we should finally be home with the Deanster. Pray for us that nothing will hinder that process...

On a side note. We have had some wonderful nurses at the NICU. They make us feel comfortable and keep us well informed. They are very caring and don't treat us like moron first parents. Today we had an exceptional nurse who went above and beyond. It was really nice to know that Dean was in competent hands. That goes for all of the nurses... except for two of them... For the night shift this evening, Dean has one of those two "special" nurses (one of those irritating people you just want to hide from every time you see them). She is very negative and talks down to us like we don't know anything. She has yet to say one positive thing to us about Dean. Everything that comes out of her mouth is condescening and negative. She is very by the book and doesn't like to stray from the procedure manual. Tonight Dean didn't eat very well. He was circumcised this afternoon (OUCH!!! that's a whole other blog entry) and hasn't had much of an appetite, which is to be expected according to the doctor. Well... tonight Dean didn't eat his required amount and our "special" nurse wasn't happy. Jess explained why he wasn't eating much and told her that the doctor said it was ok and that he would regain his appetite later. Right after Jess told her that, the nurse huffed up and walked straight over to Dean's chart and checked it to make sure that Jess wasn't lying about what the doctor said. She did it as if to make a statement. Very rude and annoying... At one point while I was feeding Dean tonight, his respiratory monitor starting freaking out. I've watched it enough at this point to know when it is accurate and when it is malfunctioning. In the middle of the feeding, it starting malfunctioning and I said to Jess, "How can that be right, the monitor just jumped from 80 to 98 instantly." Once again, our "special" nurse chimed in. I need to add that she was sort of lurking around my back checking up on me (Jess has appropriately nicknamed her "Lurch"). Jess and I were just doing our own thing and Lurch wasn't really a part of what was going on at this point. Jess and I were having a conversation that Lurch wasn't invited to, but Lurch overheard me make that comment to Jess about the monitor and smarted off and told me it was beeping because Dean wasn't breathing. She said it with a tone in her voice as to say, "Duh, you idiot, are you stupid!" The machine was obviously malfunctioning and she was clearly wrong. Everything in me wanted to slap her across her bony pale face. But, being the hard core confrontational guy that I am, I just sat there and acted like I didn't hear her. At yet another point in the evening, Lurch smarted off to Jess again because Jess was holding Dean and the nurse was upset because she needed to take Dean's temperature. She was worried that it would affect his temp reading, as if simply holding a baby that's wrapped in 5 blankets could affect his temperature reading.... This Lurch chick is just rude and annoying and hovers around us and watches our every move waiting for us to make a mistake. Jess and I both are very uncomfortable around this lady and cringe when we see her coming. I could elaborate more, but you probably get the picture of what we're dealing with here.

So tonight we are sort of upset that Dean has to spend his last night in the NICU with the worst nurse on staff. (side note: I've developed a theory that they pair the best nurses with the sickest babies and the worst nurses with the healthiest babies. I also think that Lurch ranks pretty low on the totem pole to have the graveyard shift on a Friday night. I would think the good nurses get their pick of shift times... but I digress). Tonight, we're worried that Lurch will give Dean a bad report to the doctor that would possibly keep him from coming home tomorrow. We're also concerned that we'll show up in the morning and he'll be hooked back up to the IV and have a feeding tube down his throat. We know we're overreacting and letting this chick get to us, but we're both just tired and ready to get our little boy home. I just keep telling Jess and telling myself that God is big enough to handle it. If He was big enough to create Dean, he's big enough to take care of him. It's a comforting fact to know that God loves Dean more than even we do. This is just the first of many steps of faith we will have to take in trusting God to take care of our little boy. We understand that ultimately we don't have much control over the circumstances of Dean's life, but we know the One who does. We know that in the grand scheme of things a crappy nurse is no big deal, but I guess God is just starting us off on this journey of parenthood with a good first lesson. So tonight we're just trusting God to take care of little Dean in spite of the fact that he is in the hands of someone we wouldn't have chosen. We know that from here on out the challenges will just get bigger the further down the path we go, so we'll just begin to trust him in the "little" things and work our way up. It's funny how everything always comes back to our faith and trust in God. Without faith in our God and the truth of His sovereignty, how could we survive one day on this earth without losing our sanity. It's just good to know that He is in on the throne and in complete control of everything in heaven and on earth.

You probably just logged on to the blog to see the latest pics of Dean... Sorry you got an earful.

JR & JR

Today's Highlights:

• Dean's nursing better each time he eats. He's switching back and forth from bottle to breast very well. He's breastfeeding at all feedings except for his late nights.
• (fyi... this is Jess typing now) Speaking of late nights... we survived our night in Hotel NICU last night. It was great to get to spend the whole night with Dean in the room. Jess got to feed him for every feeding and he did great (except for the midnight feeding where he wanted to just keep sleeping). It was really nice to be able to stay out of the weather and get a feel for what it would be like when he comes home. I didn't have a great time trying to sleep on the twin mattress...at least I got SOME sleep though...Jess was up a lot with the feedings and pumpings. She is pretty incredible and I should brag on her more in this blog.
  
• (John typing again) Dean got to see his Uncle Hack and Aunt Jamie for a few minutes today (pics attached). I especially enjoyed the hot tamales candy they brought for their visit. I'm overdosing on them as I type. I'm breaking a sweat, but I don't care. I can't get enough of the cinnamon goodness...

• We finally got a discharge date of Monday! We keep thinking it might be earlier, but we should be outta here by Monday at the latest. We're really getting sick of this place. He's getting great care and everyone (with the exception of one nurse we're not too fond of) has been great, we're just tired of driving back and forth and the whole routine. We're ready to be home.

We woke up this morning to snow and extremely icy roads. This is about the third one of these that has hit this winter. I think it is funny because the news networks stop regular programming and report on the weather all day long. It is nonstop action of weather and traffic accidents. My favorite is when the news reporters start using words like "treacherous" and "frightful". You would think a nuclear bomb went off outside by the way they warn people to stay at home and off the roads.

We decided to ignore the reports this morning and brave the roads to Lewisville. Since Dean is on an all breast milk diet now, we didn't want to miss a feeding. So we hit I35 at about 8:20 this morning. Traffic was pretty bad and we did slip around a bit on the side roads (just the road into our subdivision), but it was nothing as devastating as the news played it up to be. The Lake Lewisville bridge wasn't bad at all and that was supposed to be the worst place to be. Usually it takes us about 8 minutes to get to the hospital, but this morning it took about 40. No big deal though. We still got there in time to make Dean's feeding time.

Right now we are at the NICU. When we got here this morning, we got great reports from the doctors and nurses. He is still doing really well. He just needs to pack on a few pounds (well... more like ounces). The nurses have been really nice to us today. They hooked us up with a special room here that's sort of like a hotel room in the NICU. Since Jess is needing to feed Dean so often and the weather is so bad, they offered for us to just stay here today and tonight. We get to have Dean in the room with us so it's really nice. It saves us from having to find somewhere to hang out every 3 hours.


The neonatologist gave us a projected discharge date this morning! She said that he is doing really well and would probably be able to go home now, but the NICU just isn't comfortable sending a baby home until it is at least 35 weeks along. While it isn't likely at this point, he is still at risk for apnea and other complications that go along with prematurity. So, bottom line, he should be coming home sometime on Monday, the 22nd!

We'll check back later... Here's a little video clip of Dean today.

Just got back from the hospital. We've been there all day long. Dean had a great day today. As of now, he doesn't have any more tubes in him. The feeding tube was the last one to go and it came out today.

Jess attempted to breastfeed again today and met with the lactation consultant (or as I like to call her "the boobie milking chick"). Anyway, Jess met with her at noon to feed Dean. The lactation consultant wasn't really expecting much from Dean. She thought that he would sort of latch on a little and not really do anything. So she put Dean's little head up to Jess and that little sucker took off. For the next 20 minutes he chugged like college kid at a keg party. The "boobie milking chick" starting freaking out and getting really excited. She was blown away that a baby that little could do so well. She referred to him as an "overacheiver". It made our day. So she went off bragging to all of the nurses and doctors. After that, they all decided to do away with his tube feedings and go with all oral feedings (breast or bottle).

We are pretty tired from all of the feedings at the NICU and being away from home. When we finally got home tonight we had some presents waiting for us on our doorsteps and presents always make things better! We'll check back in the morning...)

(Disclaimer: The writers of this blog will not be held personally responsible for any lactation consultants that were offended by the content of this post)

Ice Dancing

We just got home from the hospital a little while ago. We weren't able to go for Dean's 9am bottle feeding because of the icy roads, but we were able to make his noon tube feeding. He was pretty out of it and sleepy so we just stayed for a few minutes and then ran to grab some Red, Hot, and Blue (the "all in" burger was srumptiouuuulescent!) After lunch we headed back to the hospital for his 3:00 feeding. It was dad's turn to feed him. They've gradually been upping his quantity of milk and he's now up to 40 or 42ml. Today he was HUNGRY! He chugged it down quick and then promptly konked out for a little nap. He was making some pretty funny faces for us that we thought were pretty cute. We caught a couple of smiles on camera. They say it's probably just gas... but I was telling him jokes though. He probably just thinks his daddy is funny.

As of last night, he's off of the phototherapy blanket and his jaundice is gone. Hopefully it will stay that way. He also got rid of his IV yesterday evening and is getting all of his nutrients through his eating. All he has left hooked up to him is his feeding tube and his heart monitor and lung monitor nodes. It's good to see the other wires coming off.

We asked the nurses how much longer he's going to be in the NICU. They can't ever give a concrete answer but from what we gather it looks like he may be home by the end of the week. We'll keep hoping!

This pic is from our visit to the NICU today. So far this is our favorite pic that we've snapped of little Dean. We are now home, but Dean has to remain in the NICU for a little while longer. Before being discharged from the NICU Dean will need to be able to breath well on his own, maintatin his temperature, and have a fully developed "suck/swallow" relfex for eating. So far he's whipped the breathing and temperature requirements. He's beginning to eat well from a bottle and is getting better by the day. They have a phototherapy blanket on him now to take away the touch of jandice that he develped last night, but his bilirubin levels are low which is good. His jaundice should be gone in a day or two.

We can't wait to get him home, but we know that he's in good hands and growing strong at the NICU. Hopefully his stay won't be much longer. According to his progress so far, we hope that he will be home by the end of next weekend. Time will tell though. Until then, we are visiting him 2 to 3 times a day for his bottle feedings (right now he is on the bottle every other feeding and on a tube for the others). We are having a great time just holding him and loving on him when we get to see him. We are thankful that he's doing as great as he is. We just want him to be home with us for good. We'll keep you posted!!

Here is a link to our photo album on photobucket.com. Since this is a private blog, we'll go ahead and give out the password here. It's "DMR".

Our little baby boy is finally here! On Monday evening 1/8/07 Jessica started having some pretty strong Braxton Hicks contractions. They were becoming a little more uncomfortable for her than the ones she had experienced before. They were coming pretty regularly but we did't think much of it because she still had about 7 weeks to go. The next night Jess was really getting worried because her "Braxton Hicks" were coming on really strong. Being the genius husband I am, I told her that it was probably nothing and she shouldn't worry. I told her to wait a little bit and if they were still coming we would call the doctor and see what he had to say about it. One of the books we read said that if you have more than 4 Braxton Hicks in an hour that you should call the doctor. While I was goofing around on the internet in the other room not giving much concern to Jess' Braxton Hics, she began to time them. A little while later she showed me her timing chart she had been working on over the past couple of hours. When I saw that she had timed 13 contractions in a single hour, I started getting scared. Jess called the doctor and told him what was happening and he sent us to the hospital. I still didn't think she was in labor because she still had 7 weeks to go, but I was a bit worried that something may be wrong with the baby.

So we headed for the hospital. We got there and the nurses did a test to tell if she was in labor or not. They took the sample that they needed and left to get the results. In my mind, I was convinced that it was a false alarm. After all, we had a trip planned for the weeked to visit our friends in Houston. Needless to say that trip never happened. The nurse quickly returned with the test results. I was floored when they told us that Jess was in labor and was already dilated to a 4!

So we were off to the races... sort of. At this point is was around 10:30pm. Over the next 20 or so hours, the doctors and nurses did everything in their power to slow down the labor. They said that the longer the baby is in the mommy the better off it would be. Their plan was to administer two steroid shots to Jess so that it would aid in the development of the baby's lungs. The shots would need to be given about 24 hours apart. They also gave her drugs to attempt to stop her labor. By the next morning though, Jess was already dilated to a 9. After a full day of waiting, the doctors finally decided that it was of no use to contiue to try and slow the labor. They had done their best to postpone the inevitable. At around 5:30pm Dr. Fliedner broke Jessica's water. Jess pushed through four or five contractions and our little boy was here! It all happened in a matter of minutes. It was insane!

Dean Maxwell Rolf was born on 1/10/07 at 6:05pm in Lewisville, TX. He weighed 5lb 8oz and was 18.5 inches long. He was 33 weeks and 2 days gestation when he was born, making him about 7 weeks premature. The included pic is from Dean's first day outside the womb.