A cousin and best friend for Baby McDaid

At a approximately 9:45pm yesterday, March 27th, my sister-in-law had her c-section and we welcomed baby Ezrah into our family. Vital stats are 7lbs 9oz and about 20.5" long.

Both mother and baby are doing extremely well and Hubby and I managed to sneak-in this morning to be the very first visitors to get cuddles.

Ezrah is extremely chill (barely a murmur out of him the whole time we were there) and looks a little more McDaid and a little less Ting than his older sister, Adah, did at this time. But babies change, as we all know, so who knows who he'll look most like a week from now? My mother-in-law commented to me on the phone this evening that he looks a lot like Hubby when he was born, which is difficult to verify since I have NEVER seen a picture of my husband any younger than about 3 years old - being the last of 3 kids, I think the novelty had worn off by the time he came along!

If course, the freakiest thing of all was that, assuming our ultrasound technician wasn't on drugs, the baby in my belly was actually about this size 2 weeks ago and is probably a few ounces bigger by now. Umm... can you say YIKES!? It was really weird holding Ezrah and thinking that there's something in my stomach of an equal size. No wonder those feet in my ribs hurt like hell!!!!!

On the way into the hospital I gave baby McDaid a little talking to and mentioned that we were going to see his/her cousin and that he/she was going to get to grow up and be great friends with him. It's going to be so fun to see if that's true!

We went to visit Ezrah first thing this morning at the new Kaiser newborn unit in Roseville and let me tell you, that place is NO JOKE when it comes to security.

First of all, fun anecdote, we walk into the lobby and the security guard asked "Checking in?" and Hubby (oblivious to his meaning) said "Yes!". It took me to speak up and point out that we were just visiting the frequent flyers, not actually getting on the plane today.

Then, when it was clearly established that this bun was going to stay in the oven for now, we got to apply for our visitor's badges. It's all very modern and high-tech. One of the four security guards on duty (the other three were horsing around - very efficient) asked us for our photo ID, then scanned it against this screen which took our picture and name from the ID and plopped it onto a very fancy visitor's badge. (If you don't have a driver's license/ID, like if you're a kid, they have a camera that takes your pic there and then!) Then, when we got to the 3rd floor where the patient rooms are, we had to approach a high-tech buzzer and hold our IDs/visitor badges up to the screen so the nurse could see them clearly, just to get through the door. This all worked fine and dandy at 9:30am but when my mother-in-law arrived later in the day, she had to wait in line for 30 minutes just to get her badge! And this is all with the 176 room unit not even 1/4 full right now. Methinks this system is going to have to be rethunk in months to come.

Another fun anecdote from our visit.. Hubby got some weird hairs up his ass and decided it would be fun to steal surgical gloves and a hospital barf bag. Aparently he thought the gloves would be perfect for painting, and the barf bag would work well in his car for emergencies. He put the barf bag back after he saw the exasperated look on my face, however. I mean, seriously, SURGICAL GLOVES AND A BARF BAG???? The man can be just weird sometimes.

As for me, today was harsh. I think the climbing temperatures are coming at entirely the wrong time for me. Although I had a ton of energy, my feet have been swollen and itchy all day, as have my hands. I can barely stand for 10 minutes before I have to sit down and put my feet up again. It was brutal to feel energetic but be physically incapable of actually doing anything for any length of time, except for sitting of course. I'm so glad I can count the time left in mere days now.