Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Welcome Noah George Ostermiller

After a completely insane week, Jennie and I are ecstatic to introduce to the world our newborn son, Noah George Ostermiller.

I'll explain everything that went down.

My grandfather, George Ostermiller, was admitted to the hospital on Sunday night with some fever and aches that he'd had all week. By Monday afternoon, he'd been diagnosed with Leukemia that should be treatable by medication. By Tuesday morning, the condition was labeled as acute progressive Leukemia that would take his life. At 3:15 am Thursday he was gone. I was able to enjoy a few tender moments with him on Wednesday night before he passed.

Wednesday, April 1, was our due date. I skipped a couple of my classes in order to go to our final doctor's appointment with my wife. During the appointment, the doctor told us that something just didn't feel quite right. So, we went in to do a sonogram and found out that Noah was breech. Not only was he breech, he was completely sideways in the womb. Instead of trying to do aversion, where they re-position the baby inside the womb, we decided to do a C-section the next day.

Jennie was happy because she would be able to play her concert that night and not have to worry about the baby. I spent some time at the hospital with my family for my grandpa.

The next morning, we woke up at 4:30 to get ready to be at the hospital at 5:30. When we got there, we prepped for surgery and entered the OR at about 7:40. At 7:54, Noah was born. He weighed 6 lbs 9 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long.

After spending the day with us and being visited by family and friends alike, our little guy was taken away from us by the on-call pediatrician to be taken down to the Special Care Nursery. He apparently wasn't eating well (which was amazing to me that they would think that), and they were concerned about his ability to gain weight.

I was furious. Both of us needed our baby to be there with us. Jennie didn't get to see him for nearly a full day because she was stuck in our suite on the other end of the hospital.

At any rate, we got Noah back after he proved that he could eat well enough. But there was a constant fear that they would come back and take him away again at the first sign of trouble. Needless to say, we were both a bit anxious about it.

Originally, we'd planned on naming him Noah Scott. But as soon as he was born, I knew what his name was. Given the date he was born and everything that we'd been through as a family, I knew his name was going to be Noah George Ostermiller.

Another reason we decided on the name was the message that he sent us soon after he was born. My grandfather had a certain mannerism about him where his lower lip was always out just a bit more than his upper lip. I'm certain that on the other side, Grandpa held our little boy and taught him a few things, including this thing with his lip. He hasn't really done it since, but it spoke to our Ostermiller side of the family as a sign from Grandpa saying that he was alright.

3 comments:

chokanson said...

YAY BABY OSTERMILLER! :D Awesome and super cute! We love you guys!

Halsey said...

That is so sweet! He is adorable!

Erika said...

Congrats on such a cute little boy! Glad he's doing well. He's very, very cute!