Skip to main content

Jan's Birth Story

 Happy Birthday to Jan! Here is Jan's birth story:

Based on an early ultrasound, Jan's due date was Dec. 19. But for other reasons, I thought maybe his due date was the beginning of December. It didn't help that I started having contractions and was dilated pretty early. So I got my hopes up, but he ended up being born right before his official due date.

I went into labor around 4am that morning, per my usual pattern of the middle of the night. I waited about an hour before I woke Scott up and we left for the hospital after our neighbor came over to stay with David. We lived in Wisconsin in graduate student housing at the time. 

At the hospital, I had dilated enough to start pushing and the doctor came in a rush. But it took me about an hour to push him out. He was facing up instead of down so that slowed things down a little. It felt like I was going to break every bone trying to push him out but finally he came at 7:30am. We had not known previously what gender he was because of our insurance rules not allowing that--remember this was the old days. I was expecting to have a girl but I was wrong! Jan was 8 lbs. 1 oz. and 20" long.


My hospital experience was not great. I had a very rude roommate who kept the TV on constantly and would talk about me as if I couldn't hear her through the curtain drawn between our beds. I finally told my nurse that I was going home if I couldn't move to a different room. So they moved me and thankfully my new roommate was much more considerate.

Right after Christmas, my mother came to help out for a week. It was nice to have her there. While she was visiting Scott gave him a blessing at church in a little tuxedo outfit somebody gave us.



Jan was a very hungry baby, my biggest eater. He gained weight very quickly--5 lbs. in his first 6 weeks--and weighed 18 lbs. at 4 months of age. He wanted to eat every 2 hours around the clock. After a few months, someone at church told me they just loved to come to church and see how much bigger Jan was. They wondered what I was feeding him--only breast milk--and called him the little cow.




 After several months of this, I was feeling a little frantic to get him on a more reasonable schedule and I can't remember if anything worked except the usual remedy of time. Eventually he could eat solids and he didn't feel quite so hungry all the time. But he has always enjoyed eating. He loved to go to the grocery store with me and see all the interesting foods we could get.

Jan has been a great member of our family and we are glad to have him!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visiting Susquehanna: The Priesthood Restoration Site

On our way home from Palmyra, we decided to go a couple of hours out of our way to visit the recently opened Priesthood Restoration Site along the Susquehanna River.  This is where we believe that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist which gave them the authority to baptize.  This site also has the restored Isaac and Elizabeth Hale home where Joseph and Emma lived for a year as well as the home where Joseph and Emma lived on their own. We spent a couple of hours there and I wouldn't have minded a few more minutes but we had a long way to go that night.  It's a beautiful setting, very much in rural Pennsylvania.  However, on the day we were there, cars at a racetrack nearby were detracting from the peace and quiet.  I'm guessing that's not as big of a problem on weekdays. The Hale Family was quite well-off for their day so their home was probably nicely decorated with wallpaper and carpet. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

This is a juvenile fiction book about a young girl named Melody with severe cerebral palsy.  Her body doesn't allow her to feed herself, speak, or do much at all.  She's very intelligent with a photographic memory but she can't really communicate.  Finally, in 5th grade, she gets a "Medi-Talker" which is a computer that speaks what she types in.  Finally she has a voice. This book explores what it is like to be severely physically disabled but not mentally disabled. It seems like one of the most frustrating of all scenarios.  She is completely aware of all the cruelty (subtle and otherwise) that her classmates inflict on her because they don't really want to include her in their activities.  One of the saddest moments in the book comes when she realizes that every one of her special ed classmates is kind, where the "normal" ones are not.  Who really has the worse disability? The book was a quick read and fairly enjoyable.  Wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hansen Family Plot in the Provo Cemetery

On Memorial Day this year, our family went to the Provo Cemetery, as we do almost every year. We spent some time at the Hansen Family plot which contains the grave of my 2nd great-grandparents, Peter and Mary Hansen. They both emigrated from Denmark with their spouses to Utah. My grandfather lost his first wife Ane to cholera on the plains outside of St. Joseph, Missouri, along with three of his little boys within a very short time--about one month. It's a sad story but it's also one of admirable resilience. He brought his one surviving son, Jorgen, to Utah. He married his second wife Maren (Anglicized to Mary) some 9 years later in Utah  She had been married before but lost her first husband at an unknown date. I wish I knew more about her but she left very few records, although I could do more research! Peter and Maren had 6 more children together. The youngest two were twins, Enoch and Ephraim. Ephraim is my great-grandfather and is buried in California. He is the father of ...
Post a Comment
Read more