Home With Baby

At long last, we were able to come home with Nolan today. The Nurses and Doctors were satisfied enough with his 4% weight gain on Monday that they felt comfortable letting us go home. That's where it all begins.

I know deep down that this is one of the happiest times of my life right now. There is nothing I like more than sitting with Nolan while he's asleep or while he's awake taking in the world around him, but I can't help but have these thoughts of horror. I worry constantly that he's not eating enough, or that we're feeding him too much, or the wrong way. This poor guy has absolutely no way to communicate with us other than cry.

Ever since I can remember, I've always felt and acted very grown up. I always pictured myself getting married, buying a house and having kids, etc..., but I never really understood what a daunting task that raising a child really is.

I found myself on one of the first nights absolutely distraught over something that had happened with Nolan and all I could do was cry. I'm trying my best to be there in every way for Natasha, but there are times when I wish I could be somewhere else being someone else.

Please don't read this and think that I'm going off the deep end here. This is something that we will surely get through and most assuredly look back and laugh at.

Yesterday we finally figured out a system of feeding him. It didn't always work to perfection, but it rarely strayed too far from the plan. We got him home this afternoon and started a feed shortly thereafter, everything went fine. The second time we tried to feed, he started giving us problems and we could not figure out what the cause was.

He eventually calmed down and ate for a short amount of time. These are the type of feeds that scare me, the ones that seem to be going so well just to come to a short and unexpected end. I begin stressing immediately about his food intake and start picturing in my head the nights when he wasn't getting any food at all and all we could do was cry with him because we didn't know what to do.

The only thing that seems to stay with me is the overwhelming thought that if I don't make the right choices I could ruin him forever, that is what I think scares me the most. There is such an emotional high and low when it comes to being a parent. I feel completely helpless when he cries and I can't figure out why, but on the flip side, I feel such a sense of relief when Natasha tells me that he has a good latch and is feeding well. It's sometimes almost too much to deal with at once.

I love Natasha and Nolan with all of my heart, I've even found some heart I didn't know I had and loved them with that too. I am just in total fear of causing irreparable harm.

This is truly one of the scariest and happiest moments in my life.

Sleepless in Hamilton

So, it has been 3 days since Nolan was born and we haven't had a great night's sleep yet. This isn't anything unexpected as far as sleep goes, we were expecting some interrupted nights. What we weren't counting on is him staying up ALL night. We didn't get any sleep at all on Saturday night, we were up the whole time. Last night was a little bit better, but we still only managed a couple of hours each.

What I have been doing the last couple of days is having Diane (Natasha's Mom) come down in the morning to look after Nolan so I can go home and get some shut-eye and at the same time, Natasha doesn't have to worry about him, so she can sleep too.

The problem with this is that I feel like such a heel when I leave.

I can handle a lot of things in a lot of different circumstances, but for whatever reason, I can't seem to focus on being positive with Natasha & Nolan when I'm exhausted. I try my best to keep my absences to a minimum amount of time, I really do want to be there for Natasha.

The other upsetting thing that we are dealing with is Nolan's constant weight loss. To date, he has lost 10.3% of this birth weight and the Hospital will not let us go home until he can at the very least maintain or even gain some weight.

This would be an easier task if it were not for a couple of problems. First, Natasha delivered via C-Section, this means that her body didn't get a chance to secrete all of the necessary hormones that signal the breastmilk to start flowing. Secondly, Nolan is absolutely miserable to try and feed late at night. He gets really restless and does little else, but cry.

We are hoping and praying that when the Nurses weigh him tomorrow morning that he will have stopped and hopefully even reversed his weight loss so we can take him home. And hopefully Natasha can start producing more breastmilk today so we can have him eating more frequently and therefore theoretically gain some weight.

I hope that the next blog I write is one telling you that he gained a bunch of weight and that he's safe and sound at home. We'll see.

Finally

Well, it finally happened. After 41 weeks of waiting, yesterday at 8:34am a 7lb 11oz young man came into our lives and changed them forever. Nolan Dennis Chester Cleroux is a beautiful baby that is loved by everyone he knows (and even ones he doesn't yet), especially his Mommy and Daddy.

His Daddy though is absolutely terrified. I am not the type that is easily intimidated by anyone, except Nolan. I have never really had someone that was totally and completely dependent on me for everything. About 45 minutes after he was born, the L&D Nurse got us to start breastfeeding, that went alright for the first try I guess. After we got into the Maternity Ward we had to feed again, this was a total disaster.

Nolan was not able to latch correctly which was upsetting him quite a bit which in turn was upsetting us. He did nothing but cry and cry and cry and all we could do was try to get him to latch on and eat something. After the ordeal, I went for a bit of a walk as I had not seen daylight since 4:30 yesterday morning (I guess there isn't daylight at 4:30 so technically I hadn't seen it at all). When I got back up to the room the Nurse had taken Nolan to the Nursery so Natasha could get some rest. I took advantage of this time as well.

Although Natasha could sleep, every baby in that Ward sounded like Nolan to me so every time one would cry, I would jolt me out of whatever pre-sleep I was in. Every time I heard a cry I felt the need to go into the Nursery and check on him. Every time I went though, he was happy as a clam sleeping the afternoon away.

We had a ton of visitors yesterday, just bout everyone from either side made their way in at one time or another. Nolan was surprisingly calm for newborn being passed around countless times in a very short period of time.

Before I left for the evening, Natasha decided that she needed to get up and walk around a bit. She had just gotten a C-Section less than 12 hours ago and she is already itching to get up and walk around? I guess. So, I took Nolan to the Nursery so we could do some walking in the room without disturbing him. We walked back and forth for about 45 minutes, practiced getting onto and out of a chair, into and out of bed and such.

I left the hospital around 8:30 and went home to go to bed, I was exhausted. I went to bed after sending a quick E-Mail to all of my friends and family to officially announce the birth. I was asleep before I even hit the pillow.

I got up this morning and Matt (who stayed over last night) yelled down that Natasha had texted him that she needed me 'right now'. I called her in a panic thinking the worst. She said that she just wanted me to bring a few things from home and that she wanted me to help her shower. Apparently Nolan threw up last night, but is doing OK now. So, here I go for Day #2 of fatherhood.

Wish me luck.

Baby Name

We finally did it, we agreed on a suitable name for the baby. His name will be Nolan Dennis Albert Cleroux. He will be named after both of our Grandfathers. We're excited that we've moved through this crucial step in the process and can now focus on getting everything ready for Nolan when he arrives in late June/early July. That's all for now.

Roller Coaster

So, things are going pretty well for me right now. I just keep getting these days when I feel like I have become nothing but a complete failure in life. I look at the people around me that have finished school and have gone on to work at their dream job somewhere, and feel like I'm just sitting here watching life pass me by.

Now, I don't feel like hanging myself off of the shower bar if that's the impression I'm giving, I just feel down sometimes, that's all. My wife has been incredible through all of this, she's been really patient and understanding when I just need some time to myself.

Hopefully, things will turn around and something will happen. I guess I just need to go out and make it happen.

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover

Have you seen it yet? On the UK version of 'America's Got Talent', Simon Cowel is one of the Judges, and he's as harsh to the Brits as he is to Americans.

An older lady waled onto the stage looking as out of place as anything and exclaimed that she was there to become a star. Simon, and both other Judges for that matter, laughed and joked that because she looked the way she did, there's no way that she could sound like a star.

Apparently she's never been kissed, never had a boyfriend or anything like that.

Simon 'allowed' her to sing anyways, and when she did, they kept the camera on Simon and you could actually see his mouth drop as she began to sing. She was absolutely amazing!

When she was done, the crowd roared in approval of her performance and something strange happened, every single one of the Judges apologized profusely for their preconceived notions of what she was going to sound like...even Simon. It was even funny that when the Judges were giving their apologies, they still kept the camera on Simon, he had this look on his face of sheer disbelief, that's the only way to describe it. Although he put his own little twist on it, it did seem heartfelt.

I've included the link to the video below, watch it and see for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg

Finally...

It has happened, after 5 years of plugging away in this business, I have finally been rewarded with my own store.

Effective this coming Monday, I will take control of the Burlington North location. Now, it's a relatively new store, so it poses some real pros and cons.

First the Pros:

It's a newer store, nicely finished.
It's a relatively young staff.
The previous Manager sucked, a low threshold of success
With the growing volume being put out, that means lots of bonuses
More money

Now the Cons:

The staff have been notoriously lazy
They're a relatively low volume store, only about $1,200,000
It's a complete unknown (the people and the area)

Other than those few things, I think that this is going to be a really exciting time for me. I've worked long and hard for this and I've finally made it. Now it's time to start looking for that District Manager job. There's no rest for the wicked I guess.

Pro Wrestling, A New Career?

So, I've decided to join a gym to get into better shape. I found this gym that offers Pro Wrestling training. My best friend Steve and I are wrestling fans so I figured that it might be a good way for us to get into shape. The first class was on Saturday night, the evening progressed as follows:

First, it was next to impossible to find the damn place, it was set back behind some warehouses just off of Barton St. I finally figure out how to get into this place and when I got inside, I discovered that it was a storage room for old manufacturing equipment. Half of it was filled with crap, and on the other side stood a wrestling ring.

I got changed and jumped into the ring with three other rookies (all smaller than me) along with the trainer (also smaller than me).

He started us off easy, teaching us how to take a proper 'bump' also known as a fall. This was pretty easy as it was the same as the karate training we got when we were kids. He started us off sitting, just to get the motions right. We were supposed to just fall back with our arms spread out. That was the easiest part of the night.

The trainer then told us to stand up and try falling from our knees, again, not too bad.

Next we all got a turn in the middle of the ring to fall backwards from our feet. That started to hurt.

I feel the need to explain what exactly I was falling onto. A wrestling ring is a solid metal structure with a plywood floor covered in 3/4" foam for 'support'. The middle of the ring is also supported by a spring, so the whole floor moves up and down.

After we perfected the art of falling, he then taught us how to 'hit the ropes'. Basically we would run back and forth in the ring bouncing off of the ropes. Before we started he explained to us that the ropes weren't actually rope, they were 1" steel cable wrapped in electrical tape. I have a 1" wide bruise all across my back from the 'ropes'.

He then decided that we needed to learn how to clothesline someone. A clothesline is just that, you run at a guy and stick your arm out straight and knock him over with it. The trainer decided that he was going to use me as the victim for this demonstration.

He told me that he was going to run at me and that when I felt his arm touch my chest that I was supposed to 'bump', a.k.a. fall as realistically as possible. Keep in mind, he's a real Pro Wrestler, so clearly he went on auto pilot at this very moment.

He hit the ropes and ran at me looking like he thought I just punched his mother in the face. Now, a normal person would just move out of the way if someone came at you like this, I tried.

I 'bumped' early and instead of his arm hitting my chest, it hit me square in he chin. Now, when you 'bump' properly, you're supposed to tuck your chin into your chest so that you don't hit the back of your head on the mat when you drop. Because he hit me in the chin, my head was arched backwards and it was the first thing to hit the ground.

He then asked me if I was OK, I said yes. He then said, "...did you see what you did wrong there?" The whole time I was thinking, "...yeah, I walked in the door."

So, here I sit, 48 hours removed from one of the most horrific experiences of my life. I hurt in places that I didn't even know I had...my new career as a Professional Wrestler up in smoke, and all my loving, supportive mother can do is laugh her butt off as I'm telling this story to her.

I need some Advil.