Visitors from far and near

Up until now I haven’t done any posting to this blog, since I do all the posting to our Norwegian blog, but here's my first entry. Tomorrow we will have been here for four weeks. Not much has changed since Julia was admitted to the hospital. I like to say that this little hospital room is our bedroom, our living room, and my office. It’s kind of crazy to be living like this for such a long time, but we’re coping well. It started to make me a bit nuts last week, but it really helped that I got to go visit Julia's parents for a couple of days during the weekend. The challenge for Julia is greater of course, but she seems to handle the situation quite well.

The great and all-important thing is that our little baby has gotten four more weeks to grow and mature. In fact, according to the last two ultrasound check-ups, Daniel has grown a whole pound over the last three weeks, which means that he is now approximately 3lb 12oz (1700 grams) and about two weeks ahead of schedule when it comes to size. We're very pleased about this, though Julia is starting to worry a bit that he might actually be too big if he goes to full term (March 23rd). This isn’t very likely though. The doctors still believe that Julia could deliver any day now.

On Monday Julia had a check-up, and the results showed that she was still 4-5 cm dilated, and 80% effaced, with the baby’s head sitting very low, so the doctors told her that she'd still have to stay in the hospital. We had been hoping that she might be able to go home to her parents, but this is what we were really expecting, so we're not too disappointed. Julia will have to stay at the hospital in Eugene for at least 4 more weeks, unless Daniel is born sooner than that. After that she will probably get to go home until she gives birth.


We’ve been really blessed to have several friends and family come visit us while we’ve been here. On Saturday we had visitors all the way from BC, Canada. My old roommate and two of our friends from school made the 9 hour trip to spend the day with us, before they returned back home. On Friday we were surprised to have Julia’s grandparents come visit together with Julia’s mom and aunt. Julia’s grandmother has been very sick since mid-November, and this was her first real trip since then. Whenever Julia’s mom visits she talks with baby Daniel putting her mouth to Julia’s tummy and doing both parts of the conversation. This is always very entertaining for everybody else in the room. Click here, if you want to see a video clip of Barbara talking with Daniel.