Curt and Sarah Schnarr Family Blog

Emily and Sarah with Ben. This is the best we could do for pictures, Emily has been giving cheezy smiles every time she sees a camera...

Here's Ben getting a little sleep bathing in at 2 weeks old. He's been getting bigger and stronger all the time. We know he's got a strong bladder, as he can now pee on his own head...

He's now weighing in at just over 5 pounds, and is starting to move around a bit more as well. That may be partly due to the fact that the doctors have started him on a daily dose of Caribou Blend. Well, not exactly, he's on caffeine though... You see, the one reason he hasn't been able to come home from the hospital yet (OK, the other reason. I'll get to the first reason in a minute) is that he has been having some episodes of not being able to coordinate his breathing very well with his swallowing, especially with the bottle. That in turn causes a vagal reaction, which in short is a slowing of the heart rate. Sometimes that causes him to turn a little ashen in color and he is not able to catch his breath for a while (apnea). So because of his little apnea episodes, he has been put on caffeine to see if it helps him to be a little more alert when he eats and can figure out how to make everything work together. So far it seems to be helping. The other reason he hasn't been able to go home yet is that he failed his car seat test. He probably procrastinated on the studying a little too much, and then he probably didn't realize he was going to be tested anyways, so we'll let it slide this time. Anyways, he has another test next Tuesday, so hopefully he'll be prepared this time. If he doesn't pass that one but everything else looks good, then he'll come home next week in a car bed. Because of the apnea episodes after eating, they want to make sure he gets monitored, so we will also be taking home a monitor to make sure we don't neglect him for too long... That's about all for now, he's really doing everything a baby his age should be doing at this point, so we're thrilled. Can't wait to get the little guy home either, but we may all have heart attacks when that monitor goes off for the first time.

No new pictures today, but Benjamin is beginning to eat from a bottle (he's been eating well from his mom for a few days now), he needs to get a little better at it before he can come home, but he's making progress. The nurses kept saying he didn't do so well when they tried the bottle on him, but leave it to daddy to get him eating, 1/3 oz on the first try. He'll probably need to get to an ounce or more at a time before coming home, but as I mentioned, it's progress!

Just so Emily doesn't feel too left out of the pictures, here she is sitting on the flowers looking cute as a button. I'm sure she'd respond to that by saying "Emily not as cute as a button now!"

Here is also the latest picture of Ben at almost 1 week old. Still with the feeding tube, but no IV!

Ben continues to do well, he even got his IV out yesterday! It was getting to be a little much for his parents: they had it in his right arm, then his left arm, then his left foot, then they started getting a little low on places to put it and he got the IV in the middle of his head. That started looking funny after a while too, so then it was put on the side of his head and finally he got it taken out. Poor little guy is full of holes! I'm sure it's quite a relief to all of us to have that thing out...

Sarah's home from the hospital as of today. She can now be reached at home, so stop calling the hospital already!

Ben is still doing well, eating like a horse, and even starting to gain back the usual post-birth weight loss. With any luck maybe we can get him home sooner, but even though he's an over-achiever we're not going to expect him for a couple more weeks.

Darn you for taking me out so early! I'm so mad I'm gonna shake my fist at you!

And was he ever mad. This is again from Sunday early morning, and he screamed his head off for about half an hour. That was reassuring, because we at least knew he was alright. I forgot to mention his stats other than birth weight earlier. He was 18.3 inches long (70th %ile for is age), with a head circumference of 12.4" (70th %ile). Weight wise he was only 40th %ile, so he's a little stringbean.

This was the night Ben was born, right after he got in the incubator.

I'm attempting to post a couple of pictures, one with Ben and dad, and one with Ben and mom, but I'm having a little bit of trouble... Hopefully this works. As you can see, the post worked. Mom has to lie down when she holds Ben, and as you can also see, the computer monitors at the hospital are all sideways. And the keyboards.

Here's one picture. I'll post more as fast as I can upload them. Sarah and I went to the hospital last night because Sarah had some cramping that was really bad. When we got there, she was fully dilated and the amniotic sac was starting to protrude through the cervix. The dr. could feel a foot, and an ultrasound confirmed that he was breech. We elected to go with the c-section because of decreased risks for the baby, and were we glad we did. He had managed to wrap his umbilical cord around his neck twice, so a normal delivery could have been tragic. As it turns out, Sarah is hurting (but at least the pain is controllable), and Benjamin is doing great. I am off to go see him again, I'll post more later.

I will continue to try to get some pictures uploaded, but in the meantime:

Welcome Benjamin Douglas Schnarr, born 12:52 AM August 12th (7 weeks early) by c-section. He was 4 pounds, 2.6 ounces, we don't know his length yet, but he is looking good so far. He's bright pink, scored an 8 out of 9 APGAR, breathing is great, and he's a really good screamer. Emily is very happy to hear that she is a big sister now, and can't wait to see Ben. Benjamin will probably be in the hospital for about 3 weeks, or until he doesn't need the extra warmth of the incubator, and doesn't need the monitoring that he gets at the special care unit. Sarah is back in the same room as she was for bed rest, and can be reached during most reasonable hours... The number is 612-863-2550, and Sarah will likely be at the hospital full time for the next 3-4 days, then she is allowed to leave but will have to go back every few hours to feed Ben. I'll post more later if I can get the pictures up, or if there is any update to the information.

Sarah was discharged from the hospital yesterday afternoon, and she is now at her parents home on bedrest. The best way to reach her is probably her cell phone, because it's cordless, followed by her parents' phone number. So far, everything is going well.

Hi, friends and family who look at this blog...

As you may know, Sarah went into pre-term labor on Sunday night, so we went to the hospital and they checked her out and got the labor pretty well stopped/stabilized. They just took her off of the IV Magnesium drug that slows things down and have started her on an oral drug in preparation for her to hopefully go home. Best case scenario, she could be home by tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon, but is of course very dependent on how she reacts to the oral labor stoppers. The baby is getting checked often and he appears to be doing very well. Anyways, Sarah's room has just been changed, and with that comes a new telephone number. If anyone would like to reach her, please call her room at 612-863-2550. Please do not call her today (Wednesday, Aug. 8) until at least 5pm, as she is trying to catch up on some lost sleep from the last 2 nights. Thanks!

Here are several pictures from the beach day at Bob and Sue's last weekend. There are many more that will hopefully be posted at some point.

Birthday party at the cabin with Emily's cousins. Emily got a water table that she loves to play at with no clothes on, but of course we won't be posting those pictures. We'll save them for someday when we need them...

No, Emily, Wait! You can't touch the candles! Who are you, your dad's kid!?!?!

Here we are at the oft-neglected blog (lately). We've lost one camera and another one stopped working so there aren't that many new pictures. These are from the newest camera of Emily playing with her new water table that she got from her Nana and Papa for her birthday.

Emily turned just over a week ago, and so far is a wonderful kid. She had her 2 year checkup on Thursday and she's 29.5 lbs and 34.75" ... both only in the 75th percentile! They don't measure head size at this age, but we're pretty sure she's off the charts for that one. We're told her vocabulary should be 20-50 words by now, but we'd be really surprised if we couldn't count well over a hundred words. In other words, she's a chatterbox, and she knows what everything is. One of the things she's said recently while reading a book with an airplane in it: "I fly in the airplane. That would be super great" Or something to that effect. She's creating very long sentences these days, which surprises us quite a bit.