My first week

Hi, my name is Gabriel, but everyone calls me Gabe. I am writing this blog to help my family back East (a place my grandparents want me to visit this winter) keep up-to-date with all my new adventures.

To start, I decided to arrive early. Apparently this impatience comes from my mom, at least that is what my dad says. My parents were watching "Iron Chef America" Bobby Flay vs. Chef Bouche in the battle of Arctic Char. Right before the chefs presented their dishes to the judges, I decided to start my journey by popping the bag of water that surrounded me for all these months. Most babies (90%) like to wait until active labor has started to break the bag, but again, being impatient I decided to stat the process rather than waiting.

My parents were not ready (no bags packed!!! At least they had bought a car seat that evening). Since we had just moved to Palo Alto, my parents had decided to stay with the doctors in San Francisco where we used to live, but it is an hour away. So as my mom tried to figure out how to manage an hour car ride with a leaking bag of water, my dad tried to pack bags. They finally got their act together and headed off to the hospital.

Once my parents arrived at the hospital, they found out that almost every baby in San Francisco decided to arrive at the same time. We had to wait quite a while, first because the doctors had a hard time confirming that I had indeed broken the bag of water and because nearly every room was full.

We finally got into our room and I arrived just after 1 pm on September 5th, just 15 hours after I started the whole process. I was 7 lbs 3 oz., not bad for a baby who decided to arrive 2 weeks early.We left the hospital just 48 hours after I arrived. My mom was busy packing the morning we left when the docs stopped by to do our discharge. The docs thought it was funny that my mom was running around packing so soon after delivery. Apparently the drug free delivery left her buzzed with lots of endorphins so she had more energy than dad! Dad was holding me and on diaper duty while mom packed.

We got home, and I saw for the first time how much unpacking my parents had left to do. I heard about it, but did not believe it. My aunt had come out and helped unpack, so at least there was some stuff not in boxes.

I had my first doctors appointment Monday. My doctor is super nice - she likes to keep the number of shots to a minimum while making sure I get all the vaccinations that I need. I can live with that! The doctor said I was a little jaundiced, but by the end of the week it was pretty much all gone.

I am a really big eater. That means I also make a lot of dirty diapers. My parents are still figuring out how to change me as quickly as possible, which is important because I am very fussy and I have a tendency to spray if my diaper change takes too long.

Overall, I have been pretty low on the crying (lets see if that keeps up), but that is probably because I am eating most of the time I am awake. Well, over and out until next week.