Ahh, spring has finally arrived in Calgary after many false starts. After our amazing weekend of 27C afternoons and sunny blue skies, it’s been raining for the last couple days and all the flowers are coming out.

Apple and cherry blossoms are out, which makes for some gorgeous views.

I haven’t really been talking about it too much but Mannie and I have been taking care of ourselves these days a lot better. The first thing we did was start to change our diet to include all the veggies and fruit we’re supposed to eat. These days we usually have fruit smoothies in the morning and we mix in our favorite veggies more often. It’s been pretty successful so far as we definitely feel better. Eating out less has also helped a lot.

My gym membership at Cardel Place ran up last month so I decided that (for the summer at least) I would try to get back into running. I’ve run a little before — when I lived in Edmonton in 2001 Jason and Eli got me out with them a number of times. I’ve also experimented with running here but I’ve never made a habit of it. This time, by the end of the summer I’m hoping to have developed running into a habit.

I started last Monday and today was the fifth day out. I started at a 2 km back-and-forth on an incline which just about did me in the first few days. Last Friday I attempted a 3 km run which took me down the hill, around Superstore and back up, which went really well. Today I decided to take the Coventry Hills Way, which is a big loop. The first kilometer is uphill (the same as the original 2km loop I did) and then it’s downhill around the loop. Once I got to the top, I said, “eh, it’s downhill, let’s try it…” and kept going. I got to the school at the bottom and jogged up a 5% incline for about 600 metres at which point the side splints kicked in and my legs were screaming. Realizing I may have overdid it, I slowly jogged the last 500 metres to the house. 32 minutes door-to-door.

I pulled up the route on Google Maps to see how I did — it looks like I went 4.3 km! I’ve never, ever, run this far in my entire life and I’m really proud of this accomplishment. 5 km doesn’t seem too far away and if I can do that then I will have reached a milestone in my running career. Now, all I need to do is lose that 30 pounds and I’ll be able to do it without my heart exploding!

If you remember my previous post about Kieran’s name, we were going to go with 祈倫. However, once Mannie’s aunt in Toronto got wind of that, she insisted that that’s not a good name — it’s way too passive and is irregular. This resulted in a discussion which resulted in having a Chinese name of:

The first character comes from the mythological creature’s name 麒麟 so this is pretty strong but not ridiculously so. I prefer this as well as it’s pretty awesome.

Cantonese: kei4 leun4
Mandarin: qi2 lun2
Japanese: キリン or kirin

So, um, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted any comments in approximately forever here on good ol’ Pocky.

That’s because I’ve been being a dad!

Let’s get the catch up over with, if you haven’t been following this all via other means (Internetty and otherwise):

February 4. 6 AM. Mannie and I are lying in bed on a snowy morning. Mannie had stomach pains all weekend, we thought it might be some mild irritable bowel or just sore muscles from the heft of the belly… Mannie stretches and

POP

“Dan… my water broke…!”

I’m pretty certain that the time elapsed between the sounds reaching my eardrums and the point at which I’m running around was, oh, 17 microseconds? In any case, totally unprepared we were off and driving to the Peter Lougheed Centre as our OBGYN, Dr. Tran, was based out of there. On the way we called our families and work while sitting in rush hour traffic on Deerfoot.

Once we arrived, we waited and eventually they got us a spot in the pregnancy triage, which is sort of like where you put cattle but with a lot more women going “Oh my gawd… it hurttttts!!!!” We got Mannie into a comfortable position, hooked the belly up to the machines and waited to see what happened.

Fortunately, Dr. Tran was actually on duty this morning so she came and checked on us. It turned out Mannie needed transferring to Foothills hospital across town since the Peter Lougheed didn’t have any beds… first, though, they wanted to see how far along Mannie was.

5 cm (!!!)

Well, Kieran was coming ASAP at this point, so across town Mannie went in an ambulance with a doctor (just in case) and by the time I caught up with her she was in a delivery room with a nice sunny view of Nose Hill. They monitored her condition as she got to 7,8,9 cm. It didn’t really occur to me that this room was, in fact, a delivery room — I imagined them like what you see in movies, more like an operating room. I was disabused of this notion when Mannie finally hit 10 cm and the delivery doctors and nurses started getting Mannie ready for the big push!

Did I mention our first birthing class started tomorrow?

My parents made it to Calgary and my mom came in to help and provide support. Mannie was totally freaking amazing for the next hour and a half as Keiran started coming to join us. I coached Mannie through her breathing as she pushed and helped motivate her near the end. Kieran’s purple noggin finally started to show itself but the last couple inches just weren’t happening and Mannie was totally exhausted. In the end, the doctors performed an episiotomy* and Kieran joined us, crying and breathing and pretty upset about the whole experience of birth! Basically in shock at this point, I followed Kieran as the code blue team wheeled him to the Neonatal ICU and cleaned him up and got him hooked up to heartbeat and oxygen monitors.

This part will sounds like a totally corny TV show or something, but initally I was like, “whoa — who’s this purple cone-headed thing?” but as soon as he opened one eye and looked at me I knew that he was my son.

From that point, our first two weeks of parenting were basically us going to the Foothills (and eventually back to the Peter Lougheed) every day to spend time with him as he grew. He was 5 pounds 6 ounces and was 32 weeks, 6 days old. During this time nurses taught us how to clean him, bathe him, take care of him. Mannie started pumping milk and eventually got him suckling. While in many ways we had the luxury of learning how to take care of Kieran at a slower pace and getting showed how to do all sorts of things (and also to get things straightened out at home), we really wanted to have him at home.

Eventually we were able to take him home and here he’s been ever since! The truth of parenting is that you are always needed, at any hour, to protect and love and take care of the needs of your little one… this sunk in quickly once he was waking us up four times a night.

As he’s grown older, though, we’ve found that it just keeps getting better and better — not only does he usually only wake up once or twice in the night, but his personality and love for us has developed. We love our son and we couldn’t be happier.

Almost four months later, he’s a thriving and happy baby. He’s 13 and a half pounds and has certainly caught up from his start as a premature baby. We’ve discovered that he likes being outside, he likes Joe Hisashi but dislikes Musicals. He likes Mario Kart better than Grand Theft Auto. I’m looking forward to knowing more about this little boy who has changed our lives in profound and awesome ways and I’m glad I can be his dad.

Well, it’s been a while since I last updated you all on our condition. Those who follow me and Mannie closely will know much of this already, but here’s the full update.

Mannie wrapped up her bed rest and has been allowed to leave the house for almost two weeks now. Over the six weeks she was on bed rest we didn’t have any problems or issues. No contractions, no change, nothing — which is awesome!

It wasn’t perfect though — Mannie did get diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes right before Christmas. Gestational Diabetes is a condition where your body’s ability to make insulin is cancelled out by the human growth hormone in her blood and causes blood sugar to spike. As a result, We’re trying to eat a much healthier diet but Mannie’s also taking insulin shots 4 times a day until the baby comes out — it’s very likely as soon as the baby comes out the condition will go away. Until then the goal is to manage the blood sugar levels so Kieran isn’t getting too much sugar in his blood and keeping his birth weight and size reasonable.

We met with our OBGYN last week and she told us that Mannie’s not allowed to go back to work until 34 weeks, and that they’ll induce Mannie at 38 weeks… which means that in approximately 8 weeks Kieran’s coming out!

In preparation, we’ve started all the dog training and started putting together the baby room. We bought a car seat/stroller system and put it together so Lizzie can get used to it. We picked up a baby doll and have been using it to train Lizzie on the idea that we’ll have this baby with us. We’re also going to install the car seat and get Lizzie to ride next to it, so she’s not completely weirded out when Kieran comes.

We also bought a crib and change table. The change table fit in our back seat but the crib box is entirely too large and won’t fit in any vehicles we own — anyone out there with an SUV or truck?

Essentially, we’re on the home stretch here — it’s a matter of just eating well, getting prepared (as much as possible) and waiting!

Thanks to everyone’s support over the last couple months. All our friends have been super supportive of us. Eli came and stayed with us for a few days before Christmas which was awesome; My parents and Jay and Jill came down over Christmas; Mancy and Mannie’s mom came down after Christmas and Mannie’s mom stayed and kept Mannie company until last week; Manuel and his girlfriend Angie came down and visited last weekend. To be honest we’re burnt out from all the company but really, it was great that everyone came and visited.

So yeah, that’s where we’re at for now. Thanks for reading my incredibly long post, and we’ll keep you all updated on our goings-on.