So cute...

Here is just a random picture of Samantha from today. This is the first time I put something in her hair and I think it is just too cute!!!

Sylvia Jo Sima

Samantha's BFF was born on Friday June 26th, 2009. Amanda and Neil Sima are my good friends from High School and we just happened to end up pregnant at the same time. So our girls are only 2 weeks and 1 day apart! Sylvia Jo Sima was 8 lbs and 15 oz and 20 1/2 inches long. She has dark hair like Samantha. We have gotten to visit with them twice now. They came home from the hospital today. So I was able to just drive up the street to hang out them...I have a feeling we will be doing this a lot over the summer. Here is our first picture as a foursome!

~Lauren

How much sleep do you really need?

As Lauren stated, last night was a little rough. Samantha just did not want to sleep. I got up with her around 11pm and we were up together until around 3am. Weekends are my job to do all the "non boob related" work so I was ready to do my share. It's hard to get upset when you look down at this beautiful human being staring up at you with the biggest blue eyes...even if it is 2:30am and your eyes feel like they weigh a couple tons! :)
Back to work tomorrow and Lauren always tries to do all she can to take care of Sam during the work week so I can get some sleep before work. I am looking forward as this will be a short work week. I am taking Thursday afternoon off as Samantha has her appt. @ Children's to try to identify what is going on w/ her kidney / ureter. I am off on Friday due to Independence Day. Saturday will be filled with a lot of family, fun and food as we have cookouts planning both at Lauren's Mom's house and my sister Tonia who lives in Marysville, OH. Going to Marysville is always fun as we play baseball, kickball, ride 4 wheelers, go fishing and just have a lot of fun all being together.

Sleepless nights...

So Samantha is normally a pretty good sleeper. We can usually count on her for 3 hour blocks of time in between diaper changes and feeding. But last night was not the norm. We all went to bed at 10:30 PM but by 11 PM Samantha wanted to hang out with her daddy. So from 11 PM until about 3 AM Samantha and Jeff rotated from her bassinet, rocking in the rocking chair, laying on his chest and watching Sports Center downstairs. I was able to sleep thru all this. Finally she went to sleep at 3:00 AM and Jeff was able to get some sleep. Then at 3:45 she was up and ready to be changed and eat again...ahhh the life! So I got up with her at 3:45 AM, changed her diaper. Mid diaper changed she peed all over me, her, the changing table and her sleep gown, so I changed her again. The I fed her, which is my favorite part since she is so content and happy when she is eating (I am not sure where she gets that from:) Then during her feeding she pooped! So after diaper change number 3 we got back to bed. Over all it was about an hour for the whole process. Then she slept from 4 AM until 7 AM, just awake long enought for a little snack and back to bed until about 9:30 AM. At which point we had to get up and get ready for church. We surprised Jeff's parents and went to their church at South Columbus Freewill Baptist Church; where Samantha got to meet her Great-Grandparents, Pa and Granny, for the first time!

~Lauren

Life with Samantha

I have to admit that I love my daughter more and more every day. I just commented to Lauren yesterday that regardless how tired I am at 5am when I hear her "talking", I love walking over to her bassinet and looking down at her first thing and saying "good morning!". Picking her up, holding her close to me, smelling her... is so precious.
I really hope I can be the father she deserves.
Lauren is amazing with her and I could not be any more blessed to have her as the mother of my children. God has blessed me beyond measure and my family is without a doubt the most important thing in my life. I love my girls so much!!

Samantha is 2 weeks old today!

There are a ton of pictures from my childhood similar to the one here. I figured I would keep the tradition alive with a sign with the date for each milestone in Samantha's life. (Each Birthday, First day of school, First Christmas, ETC.) Here she has one eye slightly open...trying to figure out what her parents are up to! You cannot see the details on her bracelet, but it has her initials on it. Mandy had one made for me too with her whole name spelled out. So we match!

Happy First Father's Day Jeff!

Jeff on his first Father's Day and Samantha and I before her first day at church.

Jeff as a father...

Since Jeff has done a lot of posting about me and Samantha I thought it would only be fair if I returned the favor. :) The second Samantha was born Jeff has not been able to take his eyes off her; I cannot say that I blame him since she is so beautiful. But more than that he has taken a VERY active role in her love and care. When she was in the NICU he always offered to change her diaper and I always let him. If you haven't heard, when you go to change her diaper the open air on her girly parts makes her have to go to the bathroom again! So in the middle of most diaper changes she ends up going either #1 or #2 or both! In the beginning we would go thru 5 diapers per diaper change....we have since gotten much better. But this never stopped Jeff from jumping in there and changing her diaper. And when we got home from the hospital he has taken care of EVERYTHING! It has been so nice for me to only have to worry about taking care of our beautiful daughter. I always knew that Jeff would be an amazing father, but until he actually became one I didn't realize how great he would actually be. He has totally exceeded my expectations and I don't think that I could have picked a better man for a husband or a better father for my daughter. I truly feel like God has made me a beautiful family, I couldn't be more blessed.

~Lauren

Samantha's First Bath..at home!

Here is a picture of Samantha's first bath...what you cannot see is that she took this opportunity to pee all over the towel she was being bathed on!!! The joys of parenthood :)

~Lauren

Just another update

I swear I will punch the next person who says “having a baby sure will change your life”. Really? Do you think I don’t know that? I understand it will change my life…for the better! I know people usually mean well but for some reason I think people get this sick pleasure of pointing out how little sleep you might get and how much you will have to sacrifice. Maybe I am naïve but I fully realize that having a child means you will be sacrificing. Loving someone means wanting to put their needs ahead of yours. Yes, I am sure there will be times I will be grumpy about not getting much sleep but I fully understand that my beautiful daughter needs me way more than I need my sleep. That is all part of the deal. People who go on and on about how hard it is to give, and not get to do what they want to do maybe should have given the whole thing a second thought.

Today, Sam is a week old. Time has flown by. I guess part of it has gone so fast because she was 3 days old before we ever came home. Being at home has been fun but I have to admit, I do feel like I haven’t been pulling my share in relation to taking care of Samantha. We got home Sunday and immediately had to organize some things around the house as we knew we would be receiving a lot of visitors. Monday, I woke up and cut the grass and did other misc things around the house. Tuesday was an all cleaning day for me. I knew I was returning to work on Wednesday and wanted to make sure Lauren didn’t need to lift a finger. I wanted her to only concentrate on Samantha and recovering / feeling better (Lauren did however do a great job yesterday cleaning up some stuff upstairs yesterday…I love clean!). Both of these days I spent more time doing house work than holding / changing diapers / misc stuff. Lauren is so great w/ Samantha. Samantha is so calm w/ her and I know she loves Lauren so much already. I don’t seem to have the same calming effect on Sam however. Sunday night and Monday night Sam slept really well; 2 separate 4 hour blocks. We were very pleased. Tuesday night (night before my return to work) Sam didn’t sleep all that well. She was up every hour it seemed. And, Lauren did a great job of taking care of her every time. Last night was pretty much the same deal. I try to help but Lauren definitely does the lions share. Lauren says that I am being helpful but I just want to make sure I contribute as much as I can and I don’t want to disappoint her (Lauren that is).
It is a challenge to make sure you allocate your time wisely to ensure you can fit in time w/ your family and accomplishing simple everyday tasks you need to accomplish. For example tonight, I need to find a way to “dogproof” our backyard as our dog Buckeye (picture a football, only a little fatter) has been escaping daily. I joke w/ Lauren that maybe one day I’ll get lucky and we wont find him.

Back to the parenting thing… I sincerely want to be a great father. I think it’s responsibility to be a role model for my family and be someone they can all be proud of. I fear some will disagree but I think the proof of a good parent is more of a cumulative measurement. Yes, you could find the most well behaved 5 year old and think their parents are doing it all right. Those are the kids that also grow up and do many things they shouldn’t do and live dead end lives. It may not be fair to blame the parents but good, bad or indifferent…I do. I think it’s possible for good parents to have kids who grow up and stray from the things their parents taught them but I don’t think that is the norm. Teaching your children responsibility, morals, values, work ethic are things that are not easily measured until they are adults. I may be dead before my children put into practice and live all of the things I want to teach them.

More about Samantha

So, Sam was born at 4:23 am and Lauren and I were taken to our hospital room around 6am. The nurse said they needed to clean the baby and do some tests and it would take about 2 hours and asked if we wanted that done in our room, or in the nursery. We had both been awake for about 24 hours so saying we were exhausted was an understatement. We decided to have them take Samantha to the nursery so we could get a little nap. We woke up around 7:30ish and Tina and Bob (Lauren's Dad) were in the room visiting us. Around 8 my parents came to visit. We knew we should get Sam back into our room any moment.
I decided to walk my parents down to the nursery so they could see their new granddaughter. As we walked up, I noticed the nurse giving her some oxygen. A few minutes later the nurse came out, asked me if I was Dad and proceeded to tell me that Samantha was breathing too rapidly and they weren't sure why it was happening. They told me they requested a Dr. come from Children's for a consult and they would keep us advised. My heart immediately dropped! The last thing you want to see is your new baby be in pain or discomfort. Not to mention hearing someone say she may have a cardiac issue but just were not sure.
I walked back to the room and my heart was beating out of my chest. I told Lauren the news and she was obviously upset and concerned.
We all walk backed to the nursery and just looked at her through the glass as the Doctors examined her. A few minutes later the nurse came out and said the Dr. arrived and directed us to a conference room where they would share with us what they thought was happening.
Lauren and I are both doing all we can to hold back our tears (we were not successful at that). We're in the room just waiting for the Dr. to come in. Finally, the Dr. came in and said her breathing is just too quick and they are not sure why. They were sending her down to the NICU to run some tests (Chest X-Ray, Bloodwork, Ultrasound). They bring Samantha in one more time for us to say goodbye before they took her away.
Fast forward about an hour and Lauren and I are in NICU waiting for the Dr. and we're standing by Samantha's bed. Lauren had a fever during labor and the Dr. said the most likely explanation was an infection passed onto the baby. They said it would take 48 hours to get the bloodwork back. They ran an X Ray and said her chest was a little hazy and thought pneumonia was also possible. Seeing our daughter that was about 6 hours old laying there with an IV and oxygen was absolutely heart breaking.
Fast forward more...we would visit Samantha and every time we were there, she would be doing better. Eventually they lowered her oxygen needed and then finally removed all together. They couldn't find an infection and couldn't find any other real problems. Her breathing had resolved itself on it's own. I know God heard everyones prayers and He definitely had our little angel in His hands and took care of her.
Right when we think things are finally looking up, we are told she is becoming jaundice. I know this is very common in babies and the actual diagnosis wasn't concerning but when we found out she more than likely wouldn't be able to come home with us when Lauren was discharged was devastating. To summarize the events, her jaundice levels rose and she needed light therapy and would not be released when Lauren was going to be (Saturday).
This feels like getting punched in the stomach. We know we have to leave but cannot take our baby girl home with us. We leave the hospital around 5pm and come home, shower, eat, and head right back. We spent the night in her room while she had her light therapy. She didn't like it at all. She cried and was only consolable when she was being touched or caressed. We were also not allowed to pick her up.
Lauren and I were on an emotional roller coaster. We had a total of about 8 hours of sleep in the last 4 days.
We were eagerly awaiting the results of her last jaundice test that we would receive on Sunday around 2pm. This is when we would find out if she would be leaving with us. Thankfully, we received that good news and around 2pm on Sunday we ALL left the hospital and heading home ready to start our life.

Random funny interaction

Don't worry, I know I still need to finish the first story; have no fear, I will.

Lauren and I are sitting in the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) watching Sam (will have to check back later for the explanation) and we're talking about her having to "pump"...aka get milk from her boobies! We then began to barter on the tasks involved in this process...
(Marriage involves compromises. Examples are: let me watch football for 30 minutes and you can watch TLC for an hour later. I will cook dinner if you cleanup.)
So, the last couple of days in the hospital, Lauren pumps and then I clean all the components. This is a pain. Not because I don't like to be helpful, or I don't want to do my part but because it's something that is tedious and boring. We're sitting here and I ask her if when we get home if she will need to clean the components. She said yes, I think so. "I can do all the pumping and you can do all the cleaning" she says. Well, I don't know how hard you think you're working sitting around holding two funnels to your nipples for 15 minutes. I mean, seriously...does that sound like a lot of work? I said she can hold the funnels to my nipples and SHE can clean the components. (I have nipples Greg, can you milk me?).
We had a good laugh about that and laughing was definitely what we needed at this point in the day. I guess you just had to be there...

Our first Post...

I am doing this to chronicle the birth of my daughter; Samantha Mae Hauser and the life of my family.

My name is Jeff Hauser and my wife Lauren and I are brand new parents. I will fast forward through the whole "this is how we met" and just say that we were married 9/07. Lauren is without a doubt the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have to admit that our relationship is better than I ever thought was possible to have. While yes, we are deeply in love and have a great marriage, (while this is cliche) she is my best friend. We have a way of interacting with each other that is effortless. We have great fun together and she is the most important person in my life.

Sam was born today, about 16 hours ago at 4:23am. She was 8.4 #, and was 20 inches long.

This was a very long and exhausting process. We originally thought Lauren was going into labor Tuesday (6/9) afternoon. This tended to be a false alarm and we woke up Wednesday (yesterday, 6/10) not really expecting much. I know Lauren wasn't felling well Wednesday but I really didn't think anything was wrong. I thought she was suffering from the general "I am sick of being pregnant" feeling. We went about our business Wednesday and went to work. I had a meeting Wednesday morning and returned to my office around 11am and Lauren said she wasn't feeling well and was leaving work at 11:30. Again, at this point I had no clue labor was soon (to be interrupted lightly). Lauren calls me at 11:30 crying, saying she felt terrible and was sitting in my company parking lot as she didn't want to drive home. I run outside to her car and she is on hold w/ her Dr. I went back to work to button up a few things to be prepared to jet out. She called me 5 mins later saying "We have to go to the hospital now!".

Fast forward an hour later and we are at Riverside and they tell us "you will be having a baby today...12-16 hours from now". Now, since everyone tells you there is plenty of time once labor starts to get to hospital, we had none of our stuff we needed. Laurens Mom Tina came to hospital to sit w/ Lauren while I ran home to get our hospital gear and drop one of our dogs off to Nick and Mandy's (Laurens Brother and Sister in Law).

Keep in mind, this is Wednesday 6/10 at 3:30pm and I am thinking this baby is coming out NOW!!!

I get back to the hospital in a panic and finally start to relax. The nurse comes in and breaks Lauren's water and she is doing really well at this point. Not in too much pain and in very good spirits. Lauren continues to labor slowly and is managing the pain well. However, due to Sam's heart dipping occasionally, Lauren cannot get out of bed and walk around, be active etc to help speed up this process.

It was about 6pm when Lauren started to get really uncomfortable and asked for the epidural. Lauren was super tough during the procedure and took it really well. Once that kicked in, that is where the real fun began.

Here's an important note...woman in labor, LOVE epidurals. She was laughing and joking and we had a lot of fun just hanging out as weird as that sounds. We continued to talk and just hang out. My parents, Tina and Mandy were in the labor room with us. I know this may sound weird, but Lauren was just laying in bed, no pushing had begun so it was like a little party.

Every 2 hours the nurse would come in and check Lauren and she would slightly increase in dilation. Finally, at 2am we got the green light to start pushing.

2:25 am - Active Labor begins and Lauren starts pushing. The nurse said, "this kid has a lot of hair...". At one point, I got behind the nurse and just saw a head full of black hair getting ready to peak out... I said it looked like a magic 8 ball was logged somewhere it didn't belong...:) More pushing, more Lauren being a real champ and more anticipation of meeting our baby girl.

Samantha was born at 4:23 am on 6/11. So, quick summary...Lauren and I have been awake for 22 hours at this point, we're exhausted but have this beautiful baby girl now.