Brandon Gilbert

As Ryne gets bigger and bigger, I can’t help but notice that his feeding times are resembling less and less hunger and more and more addiction. I would even say that by the time he gets ready to eat, he is actually fiending for the next fix.

It used to be that he would wake up every few hours ready to eat and it would be a cry and we knew what it meant. Now he keeps his eyes closed and starts stretching his neck looking for a fix. He puckers his lips, searching for anything that will relieve his cravings.

As I’ve written before, Ryne figures out that the pacifier is only plastic pretty quick. It’s even worse when he’s searching for a hit of milk. He will get the pacifier in his mouth and suck so hard that you think he might actually get what he’s wanting. This lasts for about four sucks and then…boom! The pacifier goes flying and all his crying fury is unleashed upon the world.

I haven’t noticed it, but I am sure there are baby equivalents of the shakes and cold sweats going on as he cries (more like a yell). Then, we pick him up to feed him and his search for that fix kicks into high gear. He bobs his head back and forth looking for anything to feed the craving. Necks, shoulders, biceps, anything is fair game as he tries to get what he wants.

When his mommy finally starts to get him into position to feed, he gets even more impatient. He knows it’s there, and he can’t wait to get it. His efforts to get it as fast as he can actually result in delaying the good stuff. He tries to help pull it in, but this actually results in him pushing it out. He bobs his head and latches on to the wrong sides. Jamie has to actually physically restrain his arms to get him to feed.

Once he’s finally got what he wants, his whole body relaxes and he assumes his feeding position. He puts his right fist up by his temple and his left arm kind of holds on to mommy. Breast milk has a sleep-inducing effect, so he gets very calm and complacent as he finishes. Suddenly, all is right with the world. That is, until he needs his next fix.

Right after we found out Jamie was pregnant, they scheduled an ultrasound. Ryne was 8 weeks, 4 days along when we went in. He looked like this:

I immediately fell in love. Here was this tiny, tiny person in my wife’s tummy. I was beside myself to see that little peanut. Then, the ultrasound tech showed me something that is still one of the most astounding sites I had ever seen: a heartbeat. There was hardly any form to make out, but you could see his heartbeat clear as day. He was only 8 weeks into his tiny life, but that heart was beating, and it was beating strong. I’m not going to lie, I cried a little bit. It was beautiful site. I enjoyed taking our pictures and showing off our little peanut and telling the story to whomever would oblige me in listening. I was a proud dad already.

As amazing as that first ultrasound was, I couldn’t wait for the 20 week ultrasound. Jamie would be halfway through the pregnancy, we would find out if we were having a boy or a girl, and there would be video. I was especially excited for the video! If you haven’t seen it, here it is….with a little bit of my own personality added, of course:

This was just as exciting, if not more exciting than the first ultrasound. So many things stood out. You could see so many features in this one. You could see arms, legs, hands, feet, spine, head, facial features, and of course, boy parts…yep, we were having a boy. The ultrasound tech asked if were wanted to know the sex. We said we did, so she moved to take a picture. She said, “oh there it is.” And Jamie asked, “Where?” The tech said she would try to get it back for us to see so we could see for ourselves. When she got back to that spot, she said, “oh, nevermind, you can’t see because he’s playing with himself, it’s a boy.” Funny stuff. In the video, you can also see that he practices swallowing a couple of times….which is so cool to see in an ultrasound. We also got to hear his heartbeat for the first time. That is such a calming sound, I cannot even describe it in words.

I am also reminded of the verse in the Bible, Psalm 139:13, that says “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” There are so many things he does now that seem to have already taken shape before he was born. His profile at 20 weeks of pregnancy is the same as his profile now, almost 30 weeks later. At the end of the video, you can see him sucking on his hand, which he still does when he gets hungry. The position of his arms going up to his head is the same as it is now when he’s tired. It’s become so cliche to call it the “miracle of life,” but that’s what it is. As awesome as the ultrasounds were, it’s even better to have him here.

When Jamie and I found out she was pregnant, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what we would name the baby. We had names picked out from almost the outset of trying to get pregnant. The only real question about the name was would it be a boy or a girl? Once we went to the 20 week ultrasound and saw the extra appendage, his name was set in stone. The following is the story of how we got there.

There were several factors that went into Ryne’s name being what it is: devotion, love, tribute, and an extremely understanding and supportive wife. Ryne’s first name is from the great Chicago Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg. This is where the devotion and extremely understanding wife definitely come into play. I’ve been a Cubs fan since I was little. There were a few years where I included the Atlanta Braves into my rooting repertoire, but I have long ago corrected that “youthful indiscretion.” When I was growing up, Sandberg was easily the biggest name on those Cubs teams. When I would get home from school, they’d be on WGN. It’s like I grew up with them.

I wanted to take my devotion to my team and the things I remembered from my childhood and incorporate it into the love I knew I would have for my son. Jamie, to my surprise, really liked the name. This was regardless of how I arrived at the choice. She was very supportive. This also was a shock to me because I completely shot down her all-time favorite name choice in Xavier. I don’t know why, but I was never able to wrap my head around that name. Jamie didn’t hold it against me though, and Ryne’s first name was quickly decided.

Now for the middle name. Middle names are important, especially to those of us who go by our middle names. For a boy, at least our first born, I had had a middle name picked out in the back of my mind for a few years. Nathaniel is the name of Jamie’s oldest younger brother who was killed in a car crash a few years ago. I felt like it would be a great thing to pay tribute to him by naming our son, if we ever had one, after him. I also felt it would open doors to be able to talk to Ryne about his Uncle Nathan. So when he asked how we came up with his name, it would be easier to talk about the whole situation. Needless to say, I didn’t have to do too much persuading about his middle name. Besides, Ryne Nathaniel just rolls off your tongue so easily.

I’m sure you are curious about the girl’s name we have picked out. You’ll just have to wait to find that out if we ever have a girl. We don’t want anyone to take it from us. This lesson was learned from Seinfeld when George Costanza lets it slip that he wants to name his daughter “Seven” after Mickey Mantle’s jersey number. Other people take it away and his daughter (that anyone who ever watched the show could only assume that he never had) was no longer an original.

I’ve always thought that it’s so funny that one of the most important things in our lives, our names, are completely in the hands of someone else. Sure, you can change it when you get older, but most of the time you find out your parents were right on the money. Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammed Ali. Imagine his surprise when he found out his paternal ancestors were from Ireland. Who ever heard of a black Irishman named Muhammed? Or take musician Stephen Demetre Giorgiou. He decided Stephen and Demetre were just too run-of-the-mill. So he decided to name himself after the household pet and became Cat Stevens. Then several years later, he decided that wasn’t good enough and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. I think it takes a lot of guts to name yourself after a whole religion. I mean, there’s not a whole lot of Jerry Christianity’s or John Hinduism’s out there, but I guess he likes it.

Ryne has a pretty cool name….I know I wouldn’t change it if I had it, but then again, who knows? Maybe he’ll want to be called Xavier…

We were looking for a good way to tell our parents that they were going to be grandparents. We knew two things: 1) We wanted to tell them in person and 2) We could hardly wait. We wanted to do something special, but we didn’t really know what to do or when to do it. Luckily, a prime occasion came to allow us to go tell them in person without any pretense to let them know why we were coming…

On November 22, 2008, The University of Alabama football team had an off week with no game. This allowed us the perfect opportunity to tell them. Why, you ask? Well, it’s because they were off that my cousin Keri and her husband, Josh decided to get married. Josh is an Alabama Alum and our whole family (aside from a few orange and blue & maroon and white “black sheep”) are big Alabama fans. So this made for the perfect weekend for them to get married without anyone having to miss a football game.

It also meant we would have to travel down to Alabama for the wedding. So, even though we had ulterior motives for being there, we had our perfect excuse to go see the Grandparents-to-be. We decided that on our way to my parents’ house, we would stop along the way and tell Jamie’s parents. Now, we just had to find a cool way to tell them…

Our first stop along the way was in Trinity, AL to tell Jamie’s parents. We devised a way to tell them, and it worked better than we ever would have thought. We did our thing, and Jamie’s Mom says “oh, how cute,” Then the reality sets in of what we’d just given her. She cried a bit (happy tears, of course) and gave us both a big hug and so did her Dad. So, then they realized the responsibility of being told first. We told them that even though we had just given them some of the biggest news they’d ever received, they couldn’t tell a soul. We couldn’t take any chances on any phone calls, facebook messages, text messages, billboards or television commercials of congratulations before we were able to tell my parents. This was also just a drive-by bombing. We drove up, said “hey, we’re gonna have a kid,” and then drove off…so not too much celebrating to be had, but when we left, they were quite happy. On to my parents’ house…

We got to my parents’ house in Cordova, AL and told them the same way we told Jamie’s parents. We had a couple of gift bags, one for them Grandpa-to-be and one for the Grandma-to-be. We had been telling my Mom that Jamie and I wanted to start a project that we could work on together, with the implied meaning being a craft/home type project. That wasn’t actually the case, but anything to throw them off the trail So, we hand them both their respective bags and inside they find this:

If you can’t see the image very well, it has “I Heart my Grandpa” (there was one for Grandma as well) and inside it says: Coming July 2009. This was our cleverness at work! My Mom and Dad read it and then the reality of what it said and what it meant set in and my Mom screamed. I was a little scared. Then she hugged both of us, engulfing us in her gigantic grasp, all 5 feet of her. My Dad teared up quite a bit. He hugged us as well. His eyes were so misty, and I could tell the message behind the tears. With his eyes, he was saying “knowing one day that I would have grandchildren is the one thing that got me through all those years when you were a pain in our backside, and now that time is finally at hand.” Yes, it was quite a touching moment. In all seriousness, the reactions we got from them all were priceless, and we were very happy with how we decided to tell them.

Oh, and Keri and Josh got married and went to Hawaii for their honeymoon. They lived happily ever after…or happily  for 10 months…and counting.

I have decided to do a series of flashback posts because I realized I should have been doing this blog sooner. There’s lots of good stories from when Ryne was in his Mommy’s tummy. This is the first of the series.

Last year, Jamie and I had decided we had had enough of just each other and we were ready to try to bring a little one into the world. For some reason, we decided June would be a good time to start. Then, around that same time I left to go on a month long tour of the Southeast and Midwest…with a stop in New Jersey for good measure. I went out with 3 rock bands and a skateboarder. My life has never really been the same after that, but I digress. Seeing as how I was on the road so much, it doesn’t exactly play into God’s plan of procreation.

Fast forward to about 4 months later, and Jamie is frustrated because we still haven’t conceived. I was at work one day and Jamie was at home not feeling well (Sinus and allergy wise). When she’s sick, she usually likes to lay and bed and only wants to eat soup. So I told her I would fix her some soup for supper when I got home. She texted me and asked, “Do we have to have soup for Dinner?” I texted her back and asked what she would like. Her response was, “Zaxby’s? or Chick-Fil-A? I just want some good chicken.” This made my Spidy-Sense tingle. Jamie’s usually saying she doesn’t want chicken…mainly because I like it so much. Then, just a couple of minutes later, she texted me again. This time it read, “and some chocolate icecream, PLEASE!!” At that moment, I laughed and said out loud, to know one in particular, “I think my wife is pregnant.”

I got home, and brought her all the things she requested. I told her I thought that she was in the family way, and she thought she might be as well. We decided to wait a week and take a pregnancy test. We waited two days. I don’t know how we even made it that long. Jamie took it, and sure enough, it came up “Pregnant.” We didn’t waste time with one of those that does the plus or minus or 1 line vs. 2 lines. We had a false positive with one of those already and we didn’t want to take another chance with that. Here is the result, and yes, we thought we were being creative with the “Family” magazine in the background:

So, we found out and managed to not tell anyone for 2 whole weeks. Then we couldn’t wait any longer. I know there’s some kind of rule about waiting, but we decided to tell everyone so they could pray for us and the baby, so that nothing bad would happen. And…it didn’t.

It seems that lately a lot of things seem to be coming together for Ryne. He’s holding his head up alot better, keeping eye contact better, following us around the room with his eyes, reacting to his name. When he’s fed, he seems to know when it’s time to burp and take a break.

He’s also growing so fast. When we brought him home from the hospital, he was so tiny in his crib, he only spread out halfway across the mattress. Now he almost goes across the whole thing.

In order to engage his newfound awareness, we’ve been trying some new things. Last night I read him a story. It was Happy Birthday, Moon by Frank Asch. This is an important book to me because it’s the same book that my Mom read to me when I was little.  I loved that book.

Ryne was laying in his crib, freshly bathed, just fed, and ready for sleep. I started reading to him. He watched me as I read and it held his attention the whole time (luckily it’s a short book). I know he doesn’t understand any of it yet, but just sharing that moment with my son after remembering what it was like when I was read to as a child, it was just a really cool moment in life.

If you’ve never read the book, you should…it’s quite cute. So…leave some comments and let me know some of the memories you guys have of being young and cool stuff your parents did with you.

Ryne had to go to the Transitional Nursery in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. There wasn’t anything worng with him, they just have to do that when the mother has General Anesthesia. Up to this point when I got to meet Ryne, he was wrapped up in a little blanket into a ball. When we got to the transitional nursery, the nurse unwrapped him and put him on the scale…where I got quite a shock. 6 Lbs, 91/2 oz.

I am not a small guy, and Jamie and I both were over 8 lbs. at birth. Jamie kept measuring big (that is, her belly measurement was larger than usual) her whole pregnancy, and here this little guy comes out so tiny. I love it though. All his vitals were great, and all we had to do was let Jamie recover from her surgery before she could see him. He didn’t cry when he got his Vitamin K Shot or when they put the antibiotic goop in his eyes. He just kept looking around.

Jamie finally got out of recovery and was a little less foggy and I got to carry him to see her so she could hold him. It was really awesome to see her hold him for the first time. He was a few hours old before she got to do so. There’s something pretty special about a Mommy and Baby together…but, this blog is about Dad and Baby.

So Jamie’s water broke on its own…which was good because she was scared of them having to do it and whether or not it would hurt. I made calls to each set of grandparents to let them know there was a new development. Things were moving so fast. Jamie went from being dilated 2 centimeters to 5 in just an hour. Things were picking up really fast, all the grandparents made it back to the hospital and then the doctor came into have a check, and then…and then…more waiting.

I swear my son is just like his father. He’s a procrastinator. For 3 weeks leading up to his birth he kept giving signs that he wouldn’t make it to his due date. But yet, here it was, July 9th, the day he was due and we were still waiting. It’s a really good thing that someone scheduled him a day to come out or he might have waited forever.

I tried a bit more sleeping to take the edge off, but still there were people coming in and out and there of course was the non-stop barage of Guitar Hero screen shots scrolling through my head. When I finally dozed off, I was awaken by a nurse checking Jamie only to be told that within an hour she had gone from 5 centimeters to 9. The doctor was called at her office and we were told it wouldn’t be long until she could start pushing. They checked her again, and finally she had dilated to 10 centimeters. Eureka! I went and told the Grandparents in the waiting room and then I got some last minute things ready. The nurse came in and upped Jamie’s meds to make her contractions stronger and then Jamie had 3 good pushes and then…we waited some more.

Turns out all this attention that Ryne had been getting had given him a big head. Jamie tried pushing some more, but after3 more hours…it was evident that the little guy just wasn’t coming that way. Jamie’s Doctor told Jamie that she thought it was best she have a C-Section. Ryne Heart rate would drop a little every time Jamie had a contraction and they just wanted to be sure he was OK. Jamie really didn’t want to have a C-Section, but I knew she was exhausted when I heard those 9 magic words, “I DON’T CARE ANYMORE, I JUST WANT HIM OUT.”

Now, Jamie thinks this diminished her as Mom somehow…but I would totally disagree. First of all, I know for a fact I would not have the pain threshold to do what she was doing…even if I had the right parts to go with it. Second of all, she had been in labor for 20 hours, her epidural took 3 tries to get in, and then, at the height of her strongest contractions and pushing, the epidural wore off. If it would have been me, I would have just passed out and let them do what they wanted. Jamie was much stronger, though…she’s a champ!

So, we head back to the OR. Jamie had to go ahead, and I got dressed in scrubs and surgical gear in the hallway. When we get in there, they were doing a spinal block on Jamie so she could be awake, but she wouldn’t feel in anything. Well, the “not feeling anything” turned out to be more of a theory than an actuality, as in characteristic fashion, Jamie was the exception to the rule and could still feel everything.

This meant that she had to get general anesthesia for her C-Section. This also meant that I couldn’t be in the room with her. So they sent me out to this lonely chair in the hallway to…wait some more. This was the hardest waiting of the whole 2 days. I didn’t know how Jamie was doing, I didn’t know how Ryne was doing, and all I could do was sit there.
So I waited in that lonely chair for 10 whole minutes. That doesn’t seem like a lot when you write it out, but at the time it felt like I was waiting for a seed to grow into a redwood.

Then in a slow motion scene that played out like the sappiest of dramas, the nurse came out of the OR and handed Ryne to me like she had done this hundreds of times. I’d never held a newborn, much less one that was just a few minutes old. But I got to walk him about 40 yards down to the transitional nursery. The whole way I felt like I should be giving an acceptance speech for an award… “I would like to take this time to thank my Mom and Dad who made me, and Jamie’s Mom and Dad who made her. I would like to thank my awesome and beautiful wife for being hot… (and then in typical Gangsta rap fashion)…and I would like to throw one up to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ because He made all this possible” (Since I believe all the babies are little miracles and gifts from God, I am sincere…but I would say it gangsta rap style anyway…)

Then,  we arrived at the NICU transitional nursery.

…To Be Continued…

Today was the birth of my first child. We named him Ryne Nathaniel Gilbert. Ryne is after the Cub great Ryne Sandberg, and Nathaniel is after Jamie’s younger brother who passed away a few years ago. The Gilbert part is because that’s his Mom and Dad’s last name, and well, that’s how last names work. It’s really odd that one of the most important things in your life, your name, is decided by someone else and you have no control of how it turns out. I think we gave Ryne a good name and most people seem to like it. So I suppose he’s lucky. The same can’t be said of a certain Denny’s waitress outside of St Louis whose parents preferred to name her “Shithead” (pronounced Shith-Heed).

Today was also one of the longest days of my life. It’s a day that actually started at about 8:00 AM yesterday morning. I took Jamie out for a big breakfast at Shoney’s because I knew she couldn’t eat after 11:00 AM. We got up early so we took a little nap after we got home. Then I got up and prepared our bags (and then played Guitar Hero for a couple of hours…because I knew it may be a while before I played again). At 6:00 PM we headed to the hospital.

They told us to be at the hospital at 6:30 to fill out paperwork for Jamie’s induction at 7:00. We were there with bells on (later we were asked to take the bells off because it made the nurses angry). While it seems a noble cause to get there early, what they didn’t tell us was that we were arriving early so that we could hurry up and wait. 6:30-7:30 is nurse shift change. In Hospital-speak, this means that unless you are bleeding profusely or body parts are literally falling off…you will wait until the new shift of nurses gets in and settles into the realization that they will be dealing with several women in labor over the next 12 hours.

So… our 6:30 arrival time translates into Jamie getting into a bed at about 8:15. It wasn’t terribly long, but when you’re anticipating the arrival of your little bundle of joy, an hour and a half seems to be an eternity. The nurse immediately began the induction process, giving Jamie the meds she was supposed to have. Neither of us knew what to expect so we kind of just watched a little TV and played some games on my iPhone.

I tried to get a little sleep because I wanted to be refreshed as possible when Jamie had to start pushing and when Ryne was finally here. Aside from the uncomfortable couch I was sleeping on, there were two things going against me though: First, the monitors were really loud. There was a monitor that had Ryne’s heartbeat, which is actually quite soothing, but when anything weird happened with the rythmn, I immediately perked up to look and see what was going on. Second, all that Guitar Hero I played came back to haunt me as when I closed my eyes, all I saw were little colored dots scrolling through my head. After a night of dozing off just in time to wake back up wide awake, at 5:30 AM….Jamie’s water broke.

…to be continued