0:00 In my family, a lot of the Italian stuff is not, is bastardized or it's not, it's not the, the proper terminology. What would you call your godmother and godfather? So we would, we would call them, there's a name. Is it Kumbhara? Kumbhara? Kumbhara. Yeah. That's what I was just trying to figure out what you say. But when you think about it, anybody who watches like the Sopranos thinks that that's a sidekick, right? But so we would call it Kumbhara, Kumbhara, Kumbhara, Kumbhara. Yeah. So, so I was wondering what, so you're going to be Kumbhara, Kumbhara Carlo.

0:48 This is the gray hair and daycare podcast with a combined age of 111 years and a combined IQ, right? In that same range, your hosts, Frank Sirio and Carlo Russo. Welcome back. So as always, I am Frank Sirio. I am 55 years old and my daughter is 13 days old. Yes, your daughter, baby Josie, baby Josie arrived. What a gorgeous, gorgeous baby. This has been, I've been struggling, honestly, thinking about, cause all I've been thinking about is this, of course, you have a beautiful baby, a beautiful wife.

1:34 I'm like, I'm not going to put this kid down so I can write my script. Uh, no, I've been struggling to think of, you know, what am I going to say? Right. What do I say about this experience? Because everybody says the same thing when they talk about it. It's like, it's life changing. It's indescribable. Yep. It's, there's no way to put it in words. And I, and I'm thinking all along, I'm going to, there's going to be something that I can, that I can sink my teeth into that. I can say, this is what this experience means to me. And what it is, is it's indescribable and life changing. And other, and there's really, there is no way, there's no way to explain how this little person sums up everything, everything that's important, everything that's important in just in, in one little six pound package.

2:28 It's, it's amazing. Um, like you said, this little human becomes the number one thing in your existence, keeping this child safe, alive, warm, happy, just overnight, overnight, or whenever you have that child, it becomes the number one thing. It should become the number one thing on your mind at all, all the time. The baby doesn't know your name, doesn't know how to speak, doesn't know, eyes are closed for the, you know, first and, and still you're just looking at it going, I have to, I, this is everything important to me is right here.

3:15 My wife, my child and our health now. And, and of course, and it all gets tied in with a beautiful bow of our faith. So without a doubt. Yeah. Through the whole experience. Cause it's, we look, there've been, everything is great. Our most literally early, just a few hours ago, we were at the pediatrician and you know, all babies lose a little weight after they're born. So baby Josie was six pounds, one ounce born on March 5th, right? March 5th at 7 0 8 AM, six pounds, one ounce. And then her lowest was about five pounds, five ounces, like a week ago.

4:02 And then a few days later, she was up to 5.8, five pounds, eight and a half ounces. Today she was six pounds, three and a half ounces. So over her, so she's back over her birth weight. She's all, all the feeding, the breastfeeding, all that stuff has gone very, very well. It's had some challenges, but so that's all good. You know, everything's been good, but yeah, it's just, it all happened so quickly. But the faith piece, yeah. Just realizing how, how fragile, how fragile life, life is in general, let alone this little brand new life and also trusting, you know, we've talked about through, through the podcast, my struggles with being afraid of stuff.

4:46 That's the only, it is only through faith that that stuff fades away. And you can, you are then allowed to experience just this incredible, indescribable joy of this little, little person. So, but so I want to catch you guys up on kind of everything that happened and how the birth went and all that stuff. And it kind of starts with that Monday. So two weeks ago, yesterday, we went in about five o'clock. We went up to St. Joe's and well, you know what? Before I, before I get into like the details of it, there's a few things. The first thing is I feel like this is like the best analogy I give is the baby is like being handed an Oscar, right?

5:34 So this is my acceptance speech, right? This is my acceptance because there are many people that I need to think, right? Because without them, this would not be possible, right? Our producer, our producer and my lovely wife, Kelly, I cannot. Yeah, there's nothing. I will gladly spend the rest of my life repaying what she did, what she went through, how strong she was. I can't tell you how unbelievably proud I am of how she faced everything step by step, even when things went wrong for her.

6:23 She was absolutely amazing. It was incredible. After the baby was born, there's a picture that I took of her, the way she never looked as she had never looked as beautiful holding our baby. It was very it was I have tremendous respect for any woman who has gone through this, gone through that experience and given of themselves in that way that they were able to create successfully created another human being. But my wife is I've always thought she was brilliant and wonderful and I love her, but she completely blew me away with her her strength and her courage and her willingness to just give everything she could.

7:14 It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. They are so much stronger than us. Oh, my God. I mean, without hearing you, it's and I've known this because of things in my family, my wife, they are so much stronger than us. We do not compare of the, of the, the greatness of women. I'm so, it's, I'm so glad there's no man on earth that has, yeah. And all the mass majority of women do this and I'm sure they all handle it differently and different, but yeah, without a doubt, there is no man on earth that, that endures what they go through, the changes to their body over such a long period of time.

7:59 And then in just an incredibly short, intense period of time going through child birth, it is absolutely amazing. I don't, I know, I, I know I couldn't do it. I know I could. We have a pimple and we think it took over our whole face. They have, they're cooking up a human, a baby and the strength. And then the medical problem. We don't have the medical problem when they get pregnant. Our men, if you're healthy, you stay healthy. If you're not healthy, you're going to. They go through changes like that. And some of them are life threatening for women out there that have been through that. It's just amazing when you can finally look at your wife in that different, you've always, we always said, we always thought, but no, it changes.

8:47 Absolutely. When you see that, it just puts them in such a different realm that I know that I'm not. This isn't, yeah, this is just, this isn't just a regular human. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing like, I'm sorry. As fathers, I'm very proud to be a dad and I'm, I think I'm very good. Nothing like that. But I'm sorry. No, nothing. I mean, we, we have a long, we have a long way to go as fathers to contribute at that level. That's why we get the rest of our lives to do all that stuff. Right. Like that's, uh, but no, it was incredible. So I'll let you continue. No, no, no. First and foremost, my wife was just amazing.

9:28 I couldn't be more proud of her. And there were doctors and nurses that all were, all deserve a specific shout out. So the first doctor, Patrice Pellucci, she handled kind of the induction process when we get it on Monday night, then it transitioned to Dr. Kathleen Rogers, who kind of took care of us through labor and the delivery. She was there during the delivery, just did an incredible job. And I hope I get the pronounced, the last name, right. It's Dr. Sarah Scoach. She handled some of the difficulties that we'll talk about when I kind of go through everything and happened after childbirth and got Kelly taken care of.

10:11 There was a nurse, Kenzie, who helped us through pushing and through childbirth and then before and afterwards, another nurse, Courtney Burke, these people, those, first of all, they're the most beautiful women other than my wife and I've ever seen. I will never forget them. Especially part of your, uh, your life, their fit. It's like, you know, you talk about those moments in your past that you just, you can picture it like it was yesterday. I can picture every single one of their faces at different points. There will, I, we were, we were back at the hospital at one point and I heard Courtney's voice and I said, that's court. She wasn't even in the room with us. I'm like, that's Courtney.

10:52 And she came around the corner and it was her. They were incredible. The, the level, first of all, when you're in that position where there's nothing you can do, right. Other than be emotional support and sometimes stay out of the way. Yeah. And just, yeah, just stay out of the way. These people, just an incredible level. First of all, of, of skill and talent, the education that they have, that what they're able to do for people is, is miraculous, but also just the level of caring and compassion. They're just, they're wonderful people. So Dr. Pellucci, Dr. Rogers, Dr. Scoach, and then the nurses, Kenzie and Courtney, Courtney Burke.

11:33 They were absolutely incredible. All at St. Joe's and associates for women's medicine. They were fantastic. And there's a special place for them. Oh, people that take care of other people and, and they do it with such grace and it's just special people. Not everybody can do that. No, no, without a doubt, without a doubt. It was a huge, I've joked around in the past that it kind of, my baseline is that I don't think anybody knows what they're doing. And those people, I never, I never once had anything, never once saw anything that made me go, Oh, like I need to be on alert. I could trust them. I could focus on Kelly and they did everything that they could and should have.

12:14 And the outcome speaks for itself. I'm telling you, I mean, you can talk a lot about Syracuse, but one of the things we have here in Syracuse is our medical, our hospitals and our people that work there are top notch teaching. We're a teaching city. So you know, you're in good hands in Syracuse with the medical field. Yeah. No, it was, they were fantastic. So diving right into the whole thing. So Monday, five o'clock we show up, they get us all checked in. They bring us right in. We are in the room. We were in the room that they took us on the tour. So we're like, okay, we've seen, we've seen this room before and we, we got set up and they basically started with cervical softening.

12:55 So they were like these, they weren't pills. She would like let them dissolve and they gave doses of that stuff. They were every four hours. So one dose at six, one dose at 10, one dose at 2 a.m. That was all with Dr. Pellucci. And then at that point, yeah, they do an exam and they see how things are going. And she wasn't, yeah, she wasn't progressing. So now we're into Tuesday morning. Cause you guys got in there at five, five o'clock. So we got there, you know, we had a little bite to eat and you know, there was a little, there was a little like a fold out for me, but I think Kelly slept a little. I didn't sleep much at all. The excitement of things getting going and being there and knowing it was going to happen.

13:36 So by the morning, then they said they wanted to do this balloon. So the balloon helps, helps them to dilate. So they put it, basically they put this balloon in and they inflate it and that stays in for, I think like it was in there for three, three and a half hours. That took her to almost five centimeters, right? So kind of halfway there, worked. And then they allowed her to do the, we went to the jacuzzi tub. Yes. So there was no, there was no hosing, but she really liked the jacuzzi tub. I thought we were going to be in there for a little while. We were there in there for three and a half, four hours.

14:17 She just stayed in the tub. Really? Yup. Just kept heating it up, kept heating it up and it really worked. And then by the time we went back, it was basically, that's when she was starting to really feel the contractions. I think the warm water and being comfortable in the bath, it moved everything along and it kept, she wasn't, she was very comfortable. So at this point she's been going at it for a while and had no painkillers, no nothing. Then we get back to the room. Now she's really starting to feel it. So we're doing the, she's, she's on the yoga ball, trying to, uh, you know, breathing through as she's starting to really feel the contractions and they had her on these wireless sensors for the contractions.

15:02 So you could see, could trace the contraction and they can trace the baby's heart rate and they're looking to make sure that, you know, as, as things are happening, the baby's okay. But that was basically about, by about eight o'clock, eight 30, I was starting to encourage her because it was started by now she's exhausted, right? The, the pain is starting to get to her and they're like, you could do nitrous oxide, IV pain meds, or right to the epidural. And basically they made it sound like the nitrous oxide half the time doesn't even work, right? So we did the IV pain meds that got her sleepy and it made her certainly be able to tolerate the pain much better.

15:51 So from then through maybe about 1 a.m. She's mostly dozing off. Like she's, she's waking up a little bit at the peak of a contraction, but she's mostly kind of in that quasi half asleep, half awake. So now you're going into Wednesday. That would, this is going Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. So you got there Monday at five, got there Monday at five in the evening. So for me, I, I think I probably got from 6 a.m. on Monday till 5 a.m. say on Wednesday, I got about three hours of sleep, right? So I'm bleary eyed, but I'm okay.

16:32 She had been getting some rest off and on, right? So it was a little bit different, but by about midnight, 1 a.m. She's ready for the epidural, right? Like it's even with the other, yeah. And I'm like, absolutely fine. And honestly, that was the first thing for me that looked, it was like, it was scary, right? Cause they take it very seriously. It's a manual thing. It's got to be very still, so that was a little, the other, and the other thing that happened that was my, my lovely wife does not have good veins for when they wanted to put the, they wanted to put a port in so they could do IVs whenever they wanted. It took three tries. It took first the nurse that we were working with, then the nurse that had the most experience, then the IV team over the time that she was there to get, to put in two IVs.

17:23 It took them six tries. They kept, they kept having problems on black and blue marks. She was getting, she had a lot of that and after a while that's just cause they don't want to put it, they wanted her to be able to move around so they don't want to do it in her arm. So it was, that was, that was challenging throughout. But anyway, so now it's, it's Wednesday morning. She had the epidural and one of the things I was concerned about, and you know, you read about the stuff. One of the challenges with the epidural is then there are people that say, well, then you're not going to be able to feel the contraction. She felt it. She could still feel it, right? You, cause she would feel the pressure. She wasn't having, cause they were worried of, if you don't feel it, you're not pushing, you're not going to push the right time. That was not an issue for her.

18:04 So about maybe 5am, Kenzie, the nurse comes in and says, we're going to try some practice pushes, right? To figure out, so we get her, we get her set up and, and she's doing it and she's watching, she's, she, she's watching. And when she gets it right, she's like, that's the way, whatever that felt like. She was kind of coaching her through it. We did that for a little bit. And then starting at like 6am, it was okay, let's go. And it really was, she, they kind of started with, okay, we're going to do some on this side. So they got her on her one side and did several pushes on one side.

18:48 And, and that was, so they wanted me basically to help her. I was left arm under her knee, right arm on her other shoulder. And yeah, and she still has like, she still has bruises from, from that, because so, so we would do that. She'd do through, I think four, four or five contractions that way, then exact opposite on the other side. And then she'd be on one side and you'd be on, you'd be doing that. So she would kind of have on her. So she'd be on her left. I would be on her or yeah, she would be on her left. I would be on her left and I would be squeezing her. And she, when she hit the top, I could watch the monitor and kind of, okay, here it comes as it got close to the top.

19:35 Cause what I remember with ours, I, for some reason, I remember my mom and me both doing at the same time. Oh, one each like, yeah, I remember her being on the sides. Well, so what they did was it was four on one side, four on the other side, and then we were ready to go. And then she's centered. And then it was, that's it. Then up in the stirrups. That's the only thing I remember is the ready to go. Cause Trina was ready to go. We had no time. There was no side to side. No, no. So that was, it was one four on one side, four on the other side and then go. And it was funny because a couple of times my wife, even though she's in all this pain and, and she's going through all this stuff and she's kind of a little dopey, she's telling the Rogers, telling the doctor he's going to be up here.

20:20 Like, and it's like, yeah. And I'm like, honestly, it was funny because we've talked, we talked so much about my apprehension about this and I'm not minimizing it. Like still, even now, even since the birth, somebody will say something and I'll get my weird, weak, need feeling. But in that moment I was like, I could, I did not, it didn't matter. Yeah. Like whatever's going to happen. I was the same. No, I wasn't down there like, Hey, but at the same time I was, I wasn't I was concerned about what can I, what can I do to help her? Right. But she's, she's throwing that out there and I'm looking at the doctor like I'm fine. Don't worry about it.

21:01 Like we're good. So we go through and four on one side, four on the other, and then, okay, now it's time push, push, push, push. And it was just like all of a sudden, bam, there there's the baby. I know. And I look and there's, there she is. And before I even know what's happening, I'm looking at her. She's happy. I look at the baby and before I even know what's happening, she's like, here you go. And she hands me the thing to cut the, and I'm like, Oh, we talked about this too. Yeah. I thought you weren't going to, but no, I was like, okay, that was it. It was fine. And, and then there, the baby lands on, on her chest and I just, I just want to see, right?

21:48 Like, I just want to look at her. Yeah. So I squat down next to the bed. So I'm, I level with this little, with my daughter and my wife and the doctors are, the doctor's still doing stuff until I see out of the corner of my eye, the doctor's head appears around her foot and goes, are you okay? She's, she's thinking I'm squatting down because I'm going to pass out. Yeah. You need some air. You're going to go down. And I'm like, I'm, I am great. And I stood, stood back up and look, but that's funny. Immediately they get her going. She tries trying to get her to latch. She latches. Everything went great. They put a little hat on her to clean her up a little bit.

22:31 Did you have a moment of the first crying? Did you, were you waiting for the, the cry, the cry of the baby? So it happened very quickly. It happened very quickly. So you didn't have to even think about it. Yeah. And, and I think one of mine were like, come on, let's get the cry. Yeah. No, I didn't. I didn't have that. Uh, it was like, there's the baby. There's the sound. I'm like, okay, that's cool. Yes. And now she's on, she's on Kelly. They get her cleaned up a little bit. All they did was a quick, they did a weight and a weight and a measure. So six pounds, one ounce and 19 and a half inches long. So she is 10th percentile for weight and 52nd percentile for height.

23:17 So she's tall and skinny, very long, but it was so, but she looked, she looked great. Right. For just all pink and perfect and wonderful. And the, the feeding started great. Kelly looked absolutely just radiant. Let's just let you imagine a woman with just absolutely glowing, looked fantastic. So they're just doing all their stuff and there it is. And, and it's just this incredible, indescribable gratitude and wonder at this tiny little, and, and, and it's funny because for me, I know she's little, right? 10th, 10th, 10th percentile for, for, but I'm, but for some reason she was bigger.

24:01 It seemed bigger to me. I thought so too with Nick, with Natalia. And I was like, why is everybody saying that he's tiny? Yeah, she's not that small. This big baby. Yeah. I did have that feeling. Yeah. I'm like, she's not that small. She's, she's like, she's, it's all there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but yeah, so that was something that was just, I'll never forget it. It was a wonderful, wonderful moment. And the doctors and the nurses, everybody, they were fantastic. Yeah. So, you know, after a couple hours, we're in the labor and delivery room that we've been in since Monday night. Sure. Now it's Wednesday morning. It's like 10 AM or maybe not. It might be like nine 30 by now. We'd been in there a couple hours after the baby's born. They're ready to move us.

24:42 So now the pain meds, uh, the epidural is out. The pain meds are kind of wearing off and they say, okay, let's see if we can get you the next step, the nurses want to take Kelly in. So there's, we have our own bathroom in this room, take her in and see if she can, you know, if she can pee through the process, they hadn't put a, they hadn't put her on a catheter, but they had done, they were helping to evacuate her bladder. Basically she wasn't able to go, right? So they, they bring her in and I've got the baby and I hear, oh, okay. And then all of a sudden three, four more nurses come in, into the bathroom, into the, into the bathroom and she's coming back out and she's, and she fainted.

25:28 So just, she was, she, she passed out for just a couple seconds, but they got her back now. So now they've been cleaning up and I've been watching and they are weighing, they were weighing the pads that were coming off of the, off of the bed in an effort to estimate blood loss. Well, they, so they started to become concerned and they start checking, they start checking things and throughout the process before they got her up, they were like pressing her tummy to get her to try to get everything out and it seemed like everything was going fine. And again, in the bed, glowing, beautiful color. She looked, she felt, she could feel fine.

26:09 All that stuff. Now she looks, she, she looks a lot more gray. They put her back, they put her back down and she's, she's in bed and now this was by far the hardest part of the whole process because now pain meds are all worn off. The epidural is out and nothing helping her. She, it's been two hours of things are starting to close back up and now like it was very difficult because of just her anatomy for them to do examinations. Right now things are tightening back up. Now they've got to do these examinations and it is her body getting back to her and her body.

26:51 Yes. And she is, there's no help. Yeah, there's, there's no help there. And she is exhausted and she feels weak and it was just, she was, she had to do what she had to do. She was very, she was very brave through throughout it, but I could see, this is the first time that I could see she was at, she was at, she was at the end of her rope. Sure. Right. And it was just, and there was nothing, there was nothing I could do other than have my forehead against her and, and try to, and try to console her and help her through the pain. And that was, that was just, you're completely helpless.

27:34 You do, you, you're completely helpless to help. You can't do anything. All you can do is be, be there with her through it. And thank goodness through that, through all of this, the baby is fine. Yeah. The baby, everything's good with the baby is just hanging out and, and we're going through this. So essentially what they said was that after the, the, the examination that was really, really difficult, they said basically the upper part of her uterus was not contracting the way it should. So they basically were like, put, they wanted to put her, give her Pitocin to get things to clamp down. And then there is a thing it's called a Jada.

28:18 The Jada is a balloon, another balloon thing that they put in that applies suction and pressure to help, to help things close up and, and, and stop the bleeding. And they, again, this is another thing that's got to be put in. Yeah. This is not a comfort. So it was, first it was the examination that was excruciating for her, then this process. And then they're starting to say, well, we have different, they could give you this for pain or that for pain. They ended up giving her, I think they gave her fentanyl for the pain. Yeah. And then you hear that word and you're like terrified. Right. If you're going to get fentanyl, it's probably best when you're in the hospital. Yes. Professionals. Administered by professionals. Perfect amount.

29:00 But so that, that was it. And they immediately start pushing a bunch of fluids to, to help her with that. Also at that point, she's showing a little bit of a fever, so they put her on IV antibiotics. So they've got an IV for the antibiotics. There's all these, these things beeping and pumping. They're, they're pushing her, pushing fluids for her and they give her the pain meds and now the balloon is in and now it's just wait. Yeah. They do her blood work and it was challenging because by the end of the day, so now this is, you know, this is all happening in the morning, maybe not. This is Wednesday morning, Wednesday, nine 30. So all day long, we're there instead of going to the mother and baby room until about 10 o'clock at night.

29:48 But by that time they've kind of, they've done her blood labs a couple of times and they're kind of saying, well, if you want a transfusion, we can give you one. Cause she had lost enough blood. Yeah, it was, the numbers weren't, weren't great. And at that point she had had, but it was like, well, you know, think about it. You don't have to do it now. They could do it the next day. Sure. And she just, I think was ready. We wanted to get into the other room. So it was about 10 30 at night. Finally on Wednesday we got moved into the mom and baby room. So now it's like, okay, from, for me, three hours of sleep from six in the morning on Monday until 10 30, I, we got settled, got everything good.

30:34 The baby's, the baby's good. Kelly's good. We get settled in. We have this great nurse there and the mom and baby unit that took, got her all, got us all set up, brought us some snacks, like all that stuff. It was nice. And there's a bed there. I pull out the bed and I'm out. So I, yeah, I was, I just fell asleep. That was it. I had a pretty good night's sleep. The baby through the night is like cluster feeding already. Like she's gone. She's wants to be fat hour and a half, two hours, like almost continuously, right? Like just like one after that, like 30, maybe 30 minutes in between.

31:14 So Kelly's not getting a lot of rest. Obviously she's, she's trying to get, and at this point she's fine with the situation with the bleeding and the, so yeah, the balloon, the, the balloon, the Jada did its job again, the numbers are improving, so that's all good. That she doesn't seem to, she, she isn't visibly, you know, losing any more blood than she should be. So yes. Yeah. So that, that stuff has all resolved before they allowed us to come here. The, the transfusion is still on the table, on the table for the morning, if they need it, right. But yeah, the, the, her, she's stable. She, she's headed in the right direction. Baby again, still doing great.

31:55 So morning comes, she's exhausted, obviously, and they start coming in to do the tests and they come in, oh, we're going to do the pediatric exam. So they check out the baby and they're looking at, and everything's good. Muscle tone's good. All her reflexes are intact and all that stuff. So that's all good. Then they come in and they want to do the hearing tests. So they do that. They do that stuff. Everything's all good. And it's about now, maybe 830 in the morning on Thursday. So, and I'm thinking, okay, like I'm starting to feel now, like, okay, I can breathe a little bit. Like Kelly's okay. Baby's great. You slatted it. We're headed in the right direction.

32:36 I'm yeah, I've had a little bit of sleep, so I'm not that far gone. Right. My phone rings and I'm like, okay, look, cause now, now all this time I had told everybody, I had told my family, look, we're going to sign off at five o'clock on Monday and we will do our thing. We're not going to contact you until the mom and baby room, but we didn't think it was going to be four days, right? So I had communicated a little bit with my, my sisters throughout the process. Yes. So it's 830 in the morning. My phone rings. I look, it's my cleaning lady. Oh, and Thursday she comes once a month on Thursdays. Her name's Bridget. Awesome. We love her. I answered the phone. She's like, hi, how are things going?

33:17 I tell her, you know, and she's like, well, I hate to tell you this now, but I went downstairs in the basement and the basements flooded. I'm like, well, so like where, everywhere, the basement, how, how deep, how deep? She's like, well, it's about the depth of my nail. So I'm thinking, oh, half inch or like, and I'm like, okay. And she's like, is there anything that you want me to do? And I'm just like, I'm in a cloud. I'm like, uh, go into the utility room. Can you hear, is the sump pump running? She's like, I don't think it doesn't sound like it.

33:57 And there's more water in here. I'm like, okay. So now while we were in the hospital, we've talked in previous episodes about all this snow that we got, it warmed up a lot of snow melted, and then we got rain for like two or three days while we were in the hospital through all this stuff that we just talked about, tons of rain. Right. And where we are, we get, you know, the property gets wet. So she's telling me this, I'm like, okay. So we'll work the problem, right? So I'm like, got it. Let me find a plumber. I start calling people. I get, I find somebody miraculously. So it's now like, you know, it's going on nine o'clock in the morning and I'm giving everybody the sob story.

34:37 Like I'm at St. John's. My wife just gave birth. She's had complications and my placements, I need some, and I find somebody that I can get somebody there at 10 AM. I'm like, fantastic. Thank you. Then I'm like, okay. I got to call like serve pro or one of those places just to get the water out. So I start calling every single place. I go down the list and Google every single place. We're two weeks out. We're three weeks out. Cause this flooding, there's been ice damming because of all this. No, they're, they're, they're booked everywhere because so many people need help. So there's no chance of that. So I call one of my, it's my, my cousin's son, uh, who also happens to work for me.

35:21 I thought he was going to be in Buffalo that day for work. He happened to be here in town. I'm like, can you do me a favor and go over? He, he came over and helped the plumber got thing. He, I told him where my shop vac was. He opt up a bunch of the water while he's doing that. I go online. Oh, without it, we'd be completely, it would have been, I go online. I ordered three big dehumidifiers for him to pick up and, you know, and get them set up cause we had one, but I ordered that stuff, had all that. I thought, okay. And then again, I feel better. And, but now I'm, I feel like I'm missing something cause doctors are coming in and out, I keep having to leave the room.

36:01 I'm on the phone talking to people. I want to be, I want to know what's going on with the baby. So, but I feel a little better. So now 10 o'clock comes 10 30, things are looking good with the baby. Kelly's still, you know, she's exhausted. She's lost a lot of blood. We're talking about, I'm encouraging her. I'm like, just, I'm like, look, what's the downside to taking the transfusion? And if it's going to help you to be able to recover in all the other ways you're going to need to, but she, because of her experience with the IVs, she's reluctant to do that. So, you know, we're kind of having that discussion and then I get another phone call and it's the plumber and the plumber says, look, you know, I got this, I got the new sump pump in.

36:48 I got the old sump pump out. I got the new sump pump in and I hooked it up and it's not pumping. And he's basically telling me that the outflow pipe, something's wrong. Something's not, something's not, it's not pushing the water out. And I can hear in the guy's voice, like he's got, he's got five other guys. He's, he's telling me, I got five other calls I got to get to and, and I can hear in his voice, he's ready to be like, I'm all tuned. And the last thing you want to hear, I'm like, look, you know, is if there's anything, you know, if there's anything that you can do, uh, he's like, well, I'm going to try this and you know, I'll call you back. He lets me talk to Frank and I'm like, look, just try to convince him to do whatever.

37:30 If he even has to run a temporary pipe, get something going. And I hung up, I hung up and it was a combination of, I think the exhaustion, everything that had happened, feeling so helpless with what Kelly went through. And my head went to some really dark, I broke down. I went, my head went to some really dark places. I just, I broke down crying. And I mean, when you say dark places, just like, just like Matt, like just feeling like, why is this happening? What, why? Like, there's nothing I can do. I can't win. Why does this have to happen now?

38:12 Like, I can't take, I'm, I can't take care of him. I can't do anything to help my wife. I can't really do anything for my baby. Cause all she wants is my wife. I can't do any, my, my, I can't, I can't, like, there's not, I was feeling helpless and in that moment, I just, it stopped. It was like a switch. And I literally felt like this is nothing but the devil in your head. If you're going to have problems with your wife and your barely day old baby in the hospital. And the big problem is there's a flood in your basement. That's the problem you want.

38:54 And it's all that crap turned off and my phone rang and it was Frank and I answered the phone and he's like, we opened up the basement window. He's plumbing a temporary pipe. It's pumping and the water level is already going down. God is good. God is good. All right. And I thought, okay. And from then on this, like all that crap was done. I just like, whatever it was. It was, I'll fix it. It was God saying, listen. Yeah, we're going to, we're going to set you right, right now. Yeah. We're going to set your, your brain. What is important? Everything. And I think it was at that point, I think it was around that time. I was tech, I was texting you. And I think I said, I said to you, everything I had, everything I've ever wanted is in the room with me right now.

39:40 Everything else is, I couldn't care less. I couldn't care less. Um, and that's amen to that. Cause yeah. At that point. Yeah. Let you know. No, like figured out who figured out. Yeah, that's right. Broken window. Figured out my car doesn't work. Figured out. Yep. That was that. So from then on, it was just Kelly really didn't want to do the, the transfusion. So then it was just more blood tests to make sure that she was trending in the right direction. Making blood. Yeah. She was doing all that stuff. The lactation consultants come in. She was doing really well, but that's a whole process of, for a new mother, a new mother, nursing. That can be frustrating too.

40:21 I think this has gone really well. But now the lactation consultants, there were two lactation consultants at St. Joe's. There's one at the pediatrician that we just saw today. Uh, for the second time, they had been incredibly helpful. So we went basically the rest of the day, Thursday was just kind of recovery and to know your baby, getting to know the baby a little bit and, and experiencing that. And then Friday morning, I think we were really, we were ready to go home and it was Friday morning. It was now the rain had stopped. Now it was back to like blustery winter.

41:02 We're on the fifth floor. We're looking out at the Syracuse skyline and it's just a blizzard and the nurses are coming in and, and they're like, Oh, when is this going to stop? And I looked at the nurse, I said, it's going to, the sun's going to come out the minute you let us out of here. I promise. And she, she chuckled and by about 1230 one o'clock they come back in, they did another, the pediatrician did another evaluation of the baby. Everything's good. Kelly's numbers are good enough. And they're like, okay, we're, you know, you're ready to go home and went out. It was still cold, but by the time I pulled, went, got the car, pulled it around, got everything loaded in and they brought Kelly down, sun came out.

41:47 See, it was perfect. And, uh, so you didn't have to go home on that. Fresh was a drive with the snow, 10 miles an hour. It was, there was some traffic on 81 from construction, but it was a nice, easy drive home and we got, got, got here. And first thing we find is a basket from Natalia. So, uh, go out, Carlos son and his girlfriend had watched the house and the dogs for us while we were in the hospital. They left us this cute little basket with like energy drinks and snacks and some knuckers and some other stuff. Uh, it was, it was just very, very touching.

42:28 Came in and I was worried too, because I wanted to, again, we talked, I read all these books about how to introduce the dogs, all this stuff. So we get here and I didn't get a chance to come here and let them smell something, but we had, we had her little cap that was the first thing she ever wore. So she stayed with Kelly in the car and I came in, got greeted the dogs, gave him some love, let him smell it, told him to sit, gave her, gave him treats. Smell it, sit, treats, smell, sit, treat. And they're like, okay, whatever this thing is, we get treats when we sit. Yep.

43:08 Then bring the baby in and wearing the cap. No, no. Bring the baby in. Cause now the baby smells like the cat. We got dogs. Couldn't smell. Oh yeah. So, and they were absolutely great the whole time. Like Watson, the big one, just Kelly sits down with, she's got the baby. He sits, looks, looks at me. Good dog. Looks at the baby, looks at me. Good. Give him a treat. And this doesn't look like a puppy. This is not a puppy. Doesn't look like one of us. It looks like one of you's. Yeah. So they were great. And in the beginning, actually, Rumpel was a little more standoffish.

43:49 Yeah. Watson was much more interested, but respectful and just became over the next few hours, we'd have the baby in the, in the crib and all of a sudden you hear a sound, we'd be at the kitchen, at the kitchen table, Watson go look in the, go, go in the bedroom, look, come back out, look at us, go back and look like just absolutely like keeping an eye on her. And I talked to him like, you're my partner. You're going to protect her. And he gets, yeah, he, he gets it. They kept this up. Oh yeah. They've been perfect. They have been, they've been great. That's awesome. The closest, everyone's, it's funny cause there's a thing.

44:30 I don't know if you've ever heard of it called cobbing. Cobbing. Dogs will do this thing called cobbing. And it's like, imagine if they, if they love you, they'll come up and they will just nibble. Oh, cats do that too. Right? Yeah. People think they're biting them. Yup. And within a day, that's the one thing he had come up and he would, he would cob her foot. Oh my God. And I'm like, oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. That's so, no, they've been, they've been fantastic with that. So Friday was just the relief of being home, seeing the sun, getting her saddle and then trying to get Kelly some rest. Right. She's exhausted and kind of, you know, and trying to get the baby to, to settle down and it, but generally I think, I think she's been really good.

45:18 Even in the very beginning, once I figured out the temperature thing that she needed, I think in the beginning we were not bundling her up. They need to be just, they really, at one point I'm like, what's going on? I thought I was holding her and as soon as I felt her warmth, she was out like a light and something in my head, like, yeah, she has been in a 98 degree water bed her entire existence and now it's 72, 72 degrees. So I started, we started doing the double swaddle and a hat and that, then she immediately started to get, get more rest and, and, and adjust nicely.

46:00 So that was Friday. And then we were ready for Saturday to roll right into her first appointment at the pediatrician to see her the next day. It's quick. So Saturday morning, we're getting ready. We get us, we get showers. I had one shower the whole time. We were in four days at the hospital. Yeah. The dogs knew, the dogs knew I was home. Uh, so we get ready, we get her in the little car carrier and, and Kelly goes, I got to put on my boots. And now she has been telling me all along through her pregnancy, how she's bloated and her ankles are gone.

46:42 And I keep telling her, Oh, come on. I don't know. Cause she hasn't now at some point, it might've been Friday night. She, I'm like, let me rub your feet. Cause I can tell she's got the compression stockings on and she's just, she's feeling all bloated. Her feet, I started to rub her feet and I'm like, her feet were twice as thick. Wow. Twice as thick as they have ever been. Yeah. Like, and I mean like at the arch, like that, like I was like, wow. They had pushed so much fluid into her and then everything else, her body's going through. So we're getting ready to leave. And she's, she goes, and this was very close to a break for her because she tried to put her feet in her boots, which are literally the biggest footwear she owns.

47:28 And she's like, I can't get my foot in my boots. How are we going to go to the PV? I can't. And thank goodness we talked about it. One episode that her, her friend, Alison had sent her those kids. She goes, I don't know what I'm going to do. She disappears. She comes back and she's like, we need to send something to Alison for the kids. She got her kids on and we went, we were going to this practice called Somerwood Pediatrics. Somerwood. It's not. Yeah. That's right. I'm Buckley road. Okay. It's adorable, right? It's all Disney and stuff. Yeah. It's very cute. Until they're 18 and 23 and they're like, dad, I think we need to go to the, yeah, we want to go to the other one.

48:14 Uh, no. So we went, they, they did their exam. Everything was good. Like the provider that we talked to, Cheryl, I think they're good there. Um, yeah, they seem, they seem really, they seem really nice. They did a good job. And then we talked about it in the last episode. My sister and her husband both had COVID. Yes. So he had, so he got COVID. Then he's recovering. He finally tests negative and then my sister gets it. Now she's got away. And basically what the pediatricians told us was three days after she gets a negative test, she's good. But we got to wait until then. Right. So she's still testing positive when we come home and she just wants to see the baby.

48:56 So, and I remember that Saturday again, we're back to winter and it's like 40 mile an hour winds, 28 degrees. It's freezing. And I'm like, look, the plan was we told him we had the pediatrician where I'm like, if you want to come over and look through the window in Kelly's office, we have these windows that face the driveway. And I'm like, you can come and we'll hold her up. And of course, the COVID birthdays and COVID, remember that? Yeah. Yeah. And she's like, OK. So she comes. So they come over and it's like, and I told her, I'm like, it's really cold.

49:37 And the wind, like we're in the middle, the wind's coming. You got wild land and wind. But she came with her, with her husband. And we thought that they got to see the baby on Saturday afternoon. And then I could just see your sister now just at the window, just kind of wanted to jump in and hold the baby. It is. It's something that, you know, my, my, my, my sister in, in Texas, my brother in Tennessee, my mom and dad are long past. And, but for my sister here, for both my sisters, they were teenagers when I was born. So they, this, they're looking at, this is, this is somebody who they diapered, it's their baby.

50:23 This is an incredible time. Yeah, this is a big thing. It's an incredible time. So it was very nice. It was nice to see that. I wish it could have been in person, but since then, then they have. So Saturday, Sunday, it was more, you know, just trying to get as much rest as she could. And the baby, you know, the baby was doing great. The cradle wise thing is absolutely worth every penny. This thing is amazing. It is cool. Once you figure it out and get the settings and you play with it a little bit and you find out what, what the baby responds to, you put the baby down and as soon as it starts to stir, it starts to settle her down. It plays whatever sound you have set up.

51:05 It does like a heartbeat sound. That the baby responds. It's come such a long way, man. Oh, it's that thing is, I mean, shout out to that company. What's who makes it? That's the company name is cradle wise. Cradle wise. Yeah. It's awesome. Shout out to not a, not a sponsor yet, but if they want to be worth every, worth every penny and then it allows you, it, it, it logs all the data so I can go back through now and see every day since we've been home, how it changes minute by minute when she's sleeping, when she wakes up. You can see her sleep is starting to consolidate. She's sleeping more in the, kind of the wee hours, the 2am to 8am time.

51:45 So it helps you get into a rhythm. But so by Monday feeling better. And then the very first people who got to see my little girl or Carlo and Trina. That's right. Yours truly. They, they, that's right. They came over Monday evening. They were our first visitors. I was surprised cause I thought people would come over, but I didn't realize that the weather, the weather and then your sister being sick. So I didn't think we were going to be the first, but when you told us, we were like, no, we liked that. It was awesome. We were very happy. Yeah. I'm telling you just, just the first time we saw the baby, the little, the little head, I mean, it's perfect.

52:29 Every, Oh, just beautiful, beautiful little baby girl. And, uh, yeah, we were, we were so, uh, it was, it was a nice, it was, it was a nice, it was nice for us just to show her off a little bit and also just to see, to see you guys and talk. And it was funny because immediately we just paired off. Right. So Trina and Trina and Kelly are talking and we were talking and catching up. I was telling them a little bit because you were telling yours, the story and my wife and Kelly were in the other room looking at the baby and going through the story. So we didn't want to override each other's stories.

53:10 So we were in separate rooms, so we weren't ruining the story for the other person. Exactly. So that was fun. Yeah, no, that was, it was great. And we got to pop the question of would Carlo and Trina like to be the godparents for a little baby Josie and they accept and they accepted. Of course. So we're, we're thrilled. Can't wait. We're thrilled about that. And also the thing that came up, it was funny through while, while it was Ash Wednesday, so the baby was born coincidentally. So on, on Ash Wednesday, but also, and I didn't know this cause this is one of my grandparents that I never met. She, she was born on my maternal grandmother's birthday, which is kind of a nice, yeah.

53:58 That's very cool. So I, at some point Trina had texted me to tell me that you guys had gone to mass at Archer, Sacred Heart and had met our pastor that I've talked about many times. Father Seab, who's a great, great guy. We really love him. And find out that he is a fan of your work, which was, which was good. So that kind of was like, that was the, that's what put you over the top. This is like, okay, I got it. I got to come here. He was trying to recruit. I like that. He was recruiting. You know, I, you know what I found? I found, and I found tonight and I showed Kelly. I'm like, we got to give this to Father Seab.

54:39 I have kept an original, uh, with the three of us, an original coffee for coffee mug with all three of us on it. And so that can be my proof to father that I was part of, I was part of it in the beginning. And I think I have two. I'm going to keep one, but I might give him one, uh, just since he is a fan, I still have a shirt. Do you still have the shirt I've made you guys? I think I still have it. I think it's so funny, but yeah. So I went to, I went to the church, Sacred Heart, shout out to Sacred Heart. And, uh, there was a, uh, one of their most popular, uh, fish Friday dinners. Yeah. Have you gone to this past Friday?

55:21 They have it set up and you can do a drive through. Yes. So you pull up, you pull up, you give them your order and yeah, it was great. And what a great sandwich. Oh my God. Yeah, they, they really, it was good. We'll, we'll definitely, we'll be hitting it up on Fridays. Absolutely. That's what we said with the, with our kids. So we got to actually go there and we actually spent time with father and it was nice. It was, and then, uh, I thought he already knew about the podcast, so I kind of threw that in there and he's like, Oh, Frank does a podcast. And, uh, then he came back downstairs when we were eating, he goes, I already signed up for the podcast. And so it was nice. So, uh, it'll, it'll be nice knowing that we now met him and talk to him and we have something, he sent a nice email.

56:06 He said, I just want to let you know, I met Carlo Russo and he told me the good news and congratulations. So I sent a picture back with a picture of the baby back to him. But yeah, yeah, that was, that was really nice. So, so we got to visit with you. And thank, yes. Trina and I are just so excited and honored that you asked us. And, uh, so I have to ask this too, in my family, a lot of the Italian stuff is not, is bastardized or it's not, it's not the proper terminology. What would you call your godmother and godfather? So we would, we would call them, there's a name. Is it Kumbhara? Kumbhara? Kumbhara, yeah. That's what I was just trying to figure out. But you see, but when you think about it, anybody who watches like the Sopranos thinks that that's a sidekick, right?

56:52 But so we would call it Kumbha and Kumbha. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so I was wondering what, so you're going to be, you're going to be Kumbha Carlo. So yeah, so we were excited to ask them. When you asked me that, cause it's been, it's been used so many, like the Soprano way, I'm like, wait a minute, what is it? I think that is different, right? That's Kumbhara. Kumbhara, yeah, that's the American, that's my Kumbhara on the side. I don't know, but we don't want to know about that. It was Kumbha and Kumbha. Kumbha, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we had that visit Monday night. It was nice. And what had happened Monday, I found out Tuesday morning. So Tuesday morning, we're, you know, the baby's sleeping.

57:32 Kelly and I are still in bed. She cuddles up and she's resting a little bit longer and I, I can hear her breath. Her breathing is, is fast. Yeah. And I thought, that's, that's weird. And when we, when she wakes up, we start talking and she tells me that while she was talking with Trina, she noticed she was getting short of breath. And I noticed that talking to her and I thought, well, she's just at the baby and all this other stuff that you told me about, I really didn't question. So when you told me that it really hit home, oh yeah, cause I didn't notice it. And I was going to say something, but I said, I better not, you know, so that was new.

58:13 So of course we, I'm like, okay. So she says, well, I'm going to call, you know, we'll call the doctor. But I'm like, well, okay. Just for the heck of it. Get your, get your blood pressure cuff. What's your, what's your blood pressure. Her blood pressure was good. Take her temperature. No fever. Okay. So let's see what they say. And when she calls and tells them this, they're immediately like, you can go to the emergency room or you can come to labor and delivery. And I'm okay. And so I think I was downstairs emptying the, the dehumidifiers and she's like, can we go? I'll be up. So we get together, boom, boom, and down back down to St. Joe's and they bring us into, so there's a triage area as you enter the labor and delivery area where you come in.

59:00 So if you're natural and they want to make sure you're ready to go, they treat, they put you in there. So we go in there and they start taking a look at her and they take her blood pressure first thing and her blood pressure. Now at home, the blood pressure cuff says 117 over 80. We get there less than 40 minutes later, it's 157 over 90 something. And so immediately I'm like, oh, now I'm thinking all those times that she was checking her blood pressure when she was, after she had that scare and she was checking it at home and her blood pressure was normal. It's because that cuffs a piece of shit. Oh, right. So immediately I'm like default.

59:42 I'm like, oh, okay. A defective. So they do that. So they, they start, they look, they do her blood work, they're looking at stuff and Dr. Rogers, again, the doctor who handled basically the whole delivery says, look, we know you had some of the hypertension before. They basically say, yeah, no, you had a odd presentation of preeclampsia. So she had mild, mild preeclampsia. And then when she's saying that with, cause every time they brought it up beforehand, I kept saying, she's only had two readings because she's only had two readings that were high.

1:00:23 Well, they were the two readings that weren't with that cuff. Right. Right. So that, that was probably always, it was probably always high, which would have changed things. Sure. Right. So thank goodness there wasn't anything, but they said lay out all your, your numbers are headed in the right direction. But the only thing we're worried about is the, your blood pressure's a little high. They also said what you're experiencing with the shortness of breath, cause her blood oxygen levels were great. Okay. But what they said was what had happened over the course of the day Monday. And it was obvious. Like I, I actually mentioned it to her right before you guys came over. It was her milk came in. So that, so, and that, that weight on her chest is some, many women have this, this feeling of heaviness that translates to labor breathing.

1:01:18 So like, we think it's a combination of that and the blood pressure. So they're like, we're going to put you on the lowest dose of this blood pressure medication. There, there's no lower than this. We're going to put you on that and see. And if, if in two hours your blood pressure comes down, we'll release you. You're good. So with it, they tested her in an hour. Blood pressure was normal. Second hour, still good. And, and we got sent out, but so while we were there for about four hours and again, the difference, like night and day, And you had the baby with you at all. Baby was with us and she was fine. While we were there, it actually, I'm kind of glad I would have rather not have her be frightened and having trouble breathing, but while we were there, we got to see the lactation consultant again, she came in, Kelly nursed in front of the lactation consultant, gave her a bunch of good tips.

1:02:14 That's awesome. And so that was super helpful. We got to see Courtney. I got to tell her about the podcast. I got to tell her, that's how we do it. You're going to, I'm going to talk about how wonderful you were. So please listen, keep listening and keep, and keep listening. If you're interested, but, uh, if nothing else, just to hear how, uh, how much we think of you, so, so that was, that was great. No, we got to see them. And, uh, have you felt like you've been on a roller coaster? Yeah, but you know what? A lot of things went away. I feel like I've been at it as you're telling me this stuff up and down, up and down. Yeah, there have been, but at some point when that, when I had that bad moment, that Thursday morning, when we were still there from then on, when we go to the doctors, we've been to the doctors a bunch of times, we went back up there.

1:03:04 The panic is not, that is gone. Okay. That's I know. I feel like there was a switch that, that the last thing God wants is for me to be afraid. Yeah. Right. That's the, that's the, that's the last thing. And if I allow myself to be afraid, it's the wrong thing. And it's just, it's just, so that's exactly, exactly. Yeah. Fear is the devil. That 100%. So I haven't had to deal with that. It's been, it's been great. There've been ups and downs and challenges, but cause yeah, there's been a lot of things we're having. We've got to like, uh, you know, some of the, out of the hardest moment kind of after this, cause we had, because we had to go to the back to labor and delivery, we were supposed to that morning be going to the pediatrician for a three day followup and we couldn't.

1:03:58 So we were supposed to do that the next day. But while we were there, I think it was a good thing that we went, they addressed the issue. They got her on the, the blood pressure meds on the way home, stopped, picked up her meds, got her home. But the other piece of it too, is my, my wife wants everything to go perfectly, wants to do everything she can. And if it was keeping the baby happy and relaxed, she was holding, holding her, not putting her down, letting her stay on her breast rather than, and she wasn't getting enough rest. She was ignoring her own stuff, her own needs, right? Then Tuesday morning, got home better, but still, still struggling.

1:04:45 The breathing, not easy. And Wednesday morning, we're supposed to go to the pediatrician cause we rescheduled and I wake up and she's in bed, she's not using the nursing pillow. She's got the baby and I'm looking at her and she is, you know how when you're just, when you're exhausted and, and you're hurting and she's just shoulder round, shoulders rounded, kind of hunched forward. I can see it in her face. She's, she, she's struggling. And I'm like, you know, you, have you eaten?

1:05:25 No. Have you had enough to drink? No. And she's also at that point where, because she's at her limit, she doesn't want to hear anything from me. And at that, in that moment, I'm like, okay, so this, I'm going to tell you what we're going to do and we're going to do it. And I said, the first thing is you can't sit like this, right? She's like, I'm like, look, if I hunch over like that, like you're sitting right now, as much as I know it feels good to you right now, you're making it harder for yourself to breathe when you're nursing and you're not using the, my best friend, you're hunched over everything.

1:06:05 I'm like, you gotta, you gotta open it up. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to go get this here. Eat this. I don't want eat it. Kind of had to really kind of be a little bit more firm, but with the right daughter had in the right direction, try the pillow, but I can't with it. Try it gets her in a position. It changes her posture. The breath starts to start breathing with her. Coached her through some belly breathing, trying to just slow it down. And I'm, and I'm pointing out to her, like, look, I know you can breathe at a slower rate because when you fall asleep, you do, right?

1:06:47 I'm like, just try and calm down, try and get it to sell us. So we got her to settle down and then much more tried to be much more on point of. I can't just be occupied with getting her rest. I've got to try to be more supportive of, Hey, did you take your, did you take your meds? Did you take your medicine? When was the last time you ate something? Cause she left to her own devices was going from dinner at six o'clock and then. Up all night, feeding the baby and not eating nothing, right? Yeah. You gotta be the eyes and ears and at least until she's starting to get more clear headed. The good part was that we made it to our pediatrician appointment and again, they weighed her at that point.

1:07:33 She's at, so that when we were, when we were at the hospital, we had them weigh her and she was five pounds, five ounces, right? So she had gone from six, one, six pounds, one to five pounds, five. The next day when we go in, so this is a last Wednesday, she, she went to the pediatrician and she's five pounds, eight and a half ounces. So she had picked up some, which was good. All the feeding stuff is going the right way and there's all this, you know, for a while there, she, we were getting wet diapers, but we weren't getting poopy diapers. Then that started happening very regularly. So that's all good. That's, that happened all good.

1:08:14 But we get there and then they're like, Oh, we have a lactation consultant here. Would you like to talk to her? And that's one thing that I think both of us are like, no matter how much reading, no matter how much, how informed we are, we're like, yup. Anybody who wants to talk to us about stuff, let's listen. Kelly's the same way. She's like, yup, let's do that. So we talked to this woman, awesome, doing this for decades and starts asking and she's looking at her and she could tell that she, Kelly did not look great for this appointment. She was exhausted. Yeah. She was, she's been through it. So she, she's like, so let's talk about biomechanics, your posture.

1:08:58 She starts talking to her about all the stuff that we were talking about and Kelly's smiles and looks at me and she's like, are you using the breast, are you using a Boppy or a breastfeeding pillow? Well, I wasn't, but I have started. She's like, very important. Just thank goodness, reinforced all over that stuff. And so then from then on, straight line improvement with all that stuff. So that was Wednesday. Then we had a follow-up Friday with her OBGYN, checked her blood pressure, talked to her, things are headed in the right direction. She's got another follow-up in a week. They're keeping her on the, the, they said the blood pressure medication probably on up for a few weeks, but we did that and then the other big, nice thing.

1:09:46 So Sunday finally was the first opportunity for my sister Paula and her husband to come over. Nice. So they brought us dinner from Saporita and Antonio. Of course, all this whole time, uh, both my sisters and, and Kelly's sister and our, uh, and sister-in-law all have access to the cradle wise app. So they can log in and whenever the baby, they get a notification, whenever we put the baby down, they get a notification, they can log in and they can watch her if they can see it. Oh, there's monitors. Okay. Yeah. So there's a, there's a webcam in the, in the thing. Oh my God. So that has changed. They're constantly watching. Yeah. They see the baby sleep.

1:10:26 So she's seeing her all the time. Uh, but she got to meet her in person and hold her. Uh, so that was really, that was nice. We had a visit with them on Sunday. And then finally yesterday was just continuing to kind of get into a normal routine, it's going well. And then today we went back for a meeting with the lactation consultant at the pediatrician and weighed in. She is now six pounds, three and a half ounces. So she has gained back all back to birth weight, plus two and a half ounces. And then we came home and she pooped four or five ounces.

1:11:06 So we may be back behind the eight ball again, but it's all been good. So we're at the point now, Kelly looks so much better. She's feeling better. We're getting outside. Yeah. She's we're, we're going to get outside after we record, take a little walk and get the baby out there. It has been a roller coaster, but I feel incredibly blessed. I feel younger than I ever did. That's awesome. I do. It does. Kids keep you, they have to, you have to be mentally 20 something years old. Yeah, yeah, honestly, I have to say, I don't want to, I don't want to jinx myself or Kelly, but this has been easier than I thought it was going to be.

1:11:51 It's like right now you're in a good phase of the, of timing. Yeah. It's going to, they're going to be changes coming, but things are going to change, but yeah, that doesn't mean it's going to be bad, but the, the experience generally, it's just been, it's been wonderful. And, and, and not, not, and that isn't to say, look, I am intimately aware that we have, we have every conceivable advantage, right? We have everything we could possibly need. We're both home. We have time off from work, but we are incredibly blessed when it comes to that.

1:12:31 And it's still not easy. I know. Right. It's still, it's still not easy. Now I am like, I was, I was, I was teasing Kelly earlier. Like, it is a point of pride for me. She has not washed a dish, cooked a meal or done a load of laundry since you're on it. You're like, I want to make it. I wanted that kid to turn five before she, she has to do that. Right. Like especially what she's been through. Yes. With that, but with that being said, I do have set number one, my, the paradigm shift outside of there is this little human that is incredible and there's so much joy. There's also this realization that any woman I have so much respect for any woman who has faced this, like it's one thing you're in a relationship and there are a lot of people who look, the guy's got to go back to work, right?

1:13:25 He can't be here. Yep. Most of the time, there is a special place in hell for any man who allows a woman who has the means to do what I'm doing or anything close to it to help a woman through this experience and doesn't. Yeah. There's just, I don't, that is, I can't even conceive. The idea of not seeing my child, I would do anything for that baby and that woman that gave me that gift and to have these men that walk out, I don't understand it.

1:14:13 I'm sure people have their demons and because that's what it is. It's got to be just the only way. It's got to be a demon. Ultimately, they're the ones losing. They're the ones losing. Absolutely. But, but even so that, that, that suffering is not enough. The single mother, a single mother, what the, I can't even imagine, even if you have a family around you that is supportive for, for Kelly right now, I know what I'm doing. It's not enough, but I know what I'm doing. And if, and if she didn't have that, I don't know what, oh my God, I don't know what, what it would be like. So God, God bless every, any single mother that has been through this and has, has just survived.

1:15:02 I can't tell you how much respect I have for them. No, it's, it's, it's, um, you realize all this when you have your child. Yeah. That, um, yeah, you're always like, oh yeah, that must be hard. Right. Yeah, that's not, we're all smart. We can figure out, it's gotta be hard, but when you're in it and then you separate your portion of that and go, oh man, there's, there's people that do this without me in the picture and succeed with all kinds of other challenges and succeed and they, that's a strong, strong, strong person. That's a special, a special, special thing. But yeah, but, but otherwise.

1:15:45 How do you, how have you, have you heard the word dad, daddy, your sister calling you daddy or your wife calling you daddy and you're like, oh yeah. Honestly, so I already kind of have a shtick, which is whenever I pick, whenever I pick the little Josie up, I look right. And as soon as I get the eye contact, I go, hello, I'm daddy. I'm the favorite. So I hear daddy a lot. That's funny, I thought you were going to go, hi, I'm Frank Serial. I'm 55 years old. I'm your father. Surprisingly, no, and now I get, now I can pretty consistently get a little smile when I get that.

1:16:27 No, somebody occasionally that will, when you hear that from your child, when I hear it from her, I know I'm going to lose it. It's the best, just seeing her when I know she's looking at me, when she is like, you get that right, you get the distance, right? She's like, oh, there you are. And the, but this morning I have another, like when, when Kelly, Kelly was getting ready to take a shower, so we were going to go to the pediatrician and I'm like, and I tell, you know, I told Google to turn on Louie Prima and I'm just dancing around the kitchen and singing, singing these goofy songs.

1:17:08 And she's loving it. And Ella Fitzgerald comes on and paper, Ella Fitzgerald singing Paper Moon and she's, she's all into it and I'm singing a lot, oh, just thinking about all those experiences and all those things that she has to look forward to and watching, watching the reactions. It's, it's just, it's going to be the best. It's like, there's no TV that can beat it. There's no episode of anything to watch for out like we were when we came over. Do you guys just sit here and watch it for hours? And we could, it's easy enough to do because you're just fascinated. Every little curve and emotion and hands and, oh my God.

1:17:50 And it's a blessing. I'm so glad that we're at this point. We started this podcast. A quick question was given to me, Hey, you know, want to do this? And I never thought, you know, wow, we're going to really go through it. And then the baby and all the experience. And it's so cool to have this on audio and video to look through. You know, it's a great thing to have. It's like a little gift. I mean, maybe someday you can go, Hey, listen, this is what we did when we knew we, when we knew we were going to have you and we created this thing. And, and that says a lot. I mean, that was one of the other things that happened Sunday. So the other day, very generously Kelly's brother and his wife gave us a photo shoot.

1:18:35 So we had the photographer come out and there was, and he's like, well, what do you want to, you know, what do you want to do? And do you have anything you want me to shoot with her? And I'm like, we got to get Mickey. Cause one of the things that we did when we decided really like we're going to really try was we were on a cruise, um, last February. And you know, the cruise, when you're at sea, sea days, the gift shops are open. It's all this Disney stuff. And there's all these little, and I'm like, I think we should get, why don't we get her, why don't we get his or her first Mickey and Kelly was like, well, you do that.

1:19:20 And how are you going to feel when, like, basically, cause we didn't know. Okay. I was just going to say, this is obviously a year ago. So you had no idea. No, no. Yeah. This was brand new. This was, she didn't want to disappoint. Yeah. It's like, you know, there's a lot invested there. And I'm like, Oh, I'm like, yeah, I think we should. So we had this little, it's a little baby Mickey in a swaddle and we've had it since. And I'm like, get Mickey. Yeah. And there's, and there, he took some pictures. Isn't that crazy? You bought it. You bought this thing, not, you weren't, you didn't know if you were going to be parents, you didn't know there was no face. There's no, and now you're taking a picture with the baby in this thing. How a year plus some change.

1:20:03 Everything. Yeah. You're a completely different world. Completely different world, completely different experience and attitude toward life. And yeah. And I got to add that to the check, please. Cause I forgot. Those things are not cheap. Whenever we do that update since the baby, like the first day, I'm like, we need knuckers on Amazon ordering like the top. We have just been banging out. Like it's been crazy. It doesn't stop because I just, I just, yesterday I went to our, our second son's college introduction dinner. So yeah, that bill keeps going and going and going. It's all money.

1:20:43 Well, this is all good money. No, it's been absolutely fantastic. I couldn't be, I couldn't be more excited. I do think it's going to be fun as we get into this. Cause we are learning a lot. We're finding these products that are on incredibly helpful. Yeah. We're going to have a, we're going to have a good time. And you were talking about how this changes because, I mean, up to this point, we were talking about the, the come up, the, you know, you know, week 17, week 18. Now it's, it's here. So we obviously, we want to make it to a point where we don't, we want to make it interesting still, obviously for everybody to listen and there'll be different little avenues we can go down for the podcast.

1:21:27 So yeah, no, I think there's going to be, there's going to be, yeah, there's going to be tons, tons of stuff. There's so much for us to learn and we already are little tips and tricks and fun things that have been helpful already. And yeah, it's been, it's been awesome. And the changing of phases of what the baby goes through. Yeah. Cause you know, I hope to God, uh, the sleeping continues because that's very important. Oh yeah. Oh my God. Everything rolls so much better when everybody's rested. Well this, all these people, the lactation consultant, we were talking to her today and she's like laying out. So, you know, you got to wait. She's asking us about our return to work schedule and how that works and coaching us through look in four weeks, four weeks, you're going to want to start pumping, saving milk.

1:22:11 Cause right now she hasn't had to give any formula. It's all been, the longer you can do it, the better she's going to go as long, but what, what she's recommending, which I think is a great idea. These women, these women, they go back to work and they've never fed from a bottle. So they think they're just going to start giving her a bottle. The baby doesn't want the bottle. So what she's telling us is at four weeks she starts pumping and then once a day I get, I give a bottle. I remember doing that train. So they get used to the, so that when she is going back to work, it's not, it's not alien. Yeah. Right. So there's all these, all these little things that they're, they're, they're doing great with and, and, and helping us to set her up. Already talking about get her in, get her into a routine of bedtime and a specific time and a specific set of, uh, you know, a set of actions that lead up to bedtime because it just, all that stuff structure.

1:23:03 This is where my, my tendency to want things to be structured and organized will be good. I'm sure. But yeah, she'll be out there already. Well that Huckleberry app, that thing is dispensable. Every, it tracks everything. Every time, every time Kelly feeds, it's like start to stopwatch at times how long she's on each breast. That's awesome. When she's going to bed, the, the cradle wise app tracks all the sleep for us. It is a, it is a data rich environment. Oh yeah. You have reports. Come put that on my office. I read that on my desk. I need that. That's it. But so my question to you is when will the baby be going to the first mass?

1:23:48 You know, it's interesting. I have been all about let's, let's do it. And there's no right or wrong answer. Kelly has no, Kelly has, has said we were going to probably wait a little bit longer. But our friends, Perry and Yehida are in Texas. Their baby came just a few days before ours and they went to mass Sunday and that seemed to open the door. Kelly's like, well, maybe we can. So we, we gotta, we were saying when we were on our way home from, from the appointment today, I'm like, we gotta go to confession because we missed Ash Wednesday. We missed mass twice. But yeah, I would like it to be this Sunday when we get back. Yeah, it'll be great.

1:24:28 I'm looking forward to that. But no, this has been, it's just been awesome. I'm excited to continue with this. Yeah, no, it's the fun of doing this with you. Yeah, this is awesome. I, I, I look forward to this all the time. I talk about it all the time. I, I actually, I think I've, I've taken more pictures with our merch when I do my other job than I do with my normal jobs. Because I'm, it's a, it's not because it's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a proud thing to do. It's a, you know, we're talking about family and we're talking about religion. We're talking about, you know, being a good person and being a good father and wanting more than, you know, maybe we got out of our own father and that's not a bad thing.

1:25:14 It's just that, you know, whatever they gave us, they gave us for as much as they could and we know better now and we can afford a lot more than they could have. My parents had no money and I'm, I'm sure we all were the same under middle class families or less than that sometimes. So this is very important to me. This, this, this project that we're doing, this podcast, and I would love to see how far we can take it, you know? No, I think it's going to be great. It's, there's, there's something new every day and it's going to be fun. And there's just so many, just in the next few, what have we got? There's, I said to Kelly, I got an email for work and it was the, the, how the Easter bunny is going to be at the mall.

1:25:55 I'm like the Easter bunny is there in two days. It's just like, I think we can skip it this time. Can you imagine next Christmas? Oh no, I can't. I will say also I've been putting, getting pushed a lot, I think because, I think because of the already having booked the cruise and that stuff. And having talked with many people about the baby races, I'm already getting pushed all this stuff about like how to, how to train your kids. I forgot the track, the racetrack has to be built in the backyard. That's it. Well, the first thing is going to be, I already saw, they recommend you get a balance beam. You make a balance beam.

1:26:36 There's, there's also, they do a ramp. So it's like the kids kind of sliding forward. So they learned to army crawl first. Of course. That will be one of the, at the top of my list of projects. She's, she's going to be a track star. Uh, but no, I can't wait. He might actually, uh, film the stuff like a Rocky background, like in training. Absolutely. That'll be it. It's going to be fantastic. We'd have to cover the face. You have to do the face cover. We don't want any photos out there. No, we have. Yeah. We have not done that. We didn't do any of our usual, uh, our usual segments.

1:27:17 This was the first episode with the baby in the house. That's right. She's upstairs. I don't know why I'm still talking to you. Cause I could be up there with her. That's right. You can be looking at her. Look sleeping. Is this gas or does she really like me? Yeah. Well, well, thank you for taking yourself out of the baby's, uh, no, I was excited. I was excited that we got to the point where I'm like, okay, I've been, I've been kind of back on my rhythm with work email, just keeping up on things and, and the, you know, like normal house stuff. So I felt like, yeah, we can fit this in, but we are going to, it's a beautiful day. We're going to, we're going to put her in the stroller and take her for a little walk.

1:28:01 It's over 50 degrees today. It's beautiful. It's sunny, nice. So we're going to do that, but thank you for sticking with us. Uh, for another episode, there is more baby Josie excitement to come and we'll have a great time. Thank you. Well, folks, that's another episode of the gray hair and daycare podcast in the books. Thanks very much for tuning in and spending this time with us. We hope it was fun. If you enjoyed this week's descent into the madness of dadness, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you don't miss any of our future adventures while you're at it, give us a share the cast with your friends on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, carrier, pigeon, whatever you crazy kids are using.

1:28:43 Have any hilarious parenting stories of your own questions about navigating fatherhood later in life, or even when normal people do it, email us at ghdc.podcast at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to.