Viggo got a Visa!

So, you may or may not have understood before about the situation we were in with Viggo's visa. He came into the states on a 90-day visa waiver, which ran out March 7th. There is basically no way to extend your stay on a visa waiver, and it is not allowed to apply for any other kind of visa from within the US. As far as we could tell, and we had called every number we could find to call, Viggo was going to have to return to Norway without me and Daniel before the 7th.

As a last attempt, though, we contacted Senator Gordon Smith's office to ask if they could help us in any way. They were able to set up an appointment for Viggo right away at the US Consulate in Vancouver, Canada. Viggo drove up to Canada on Tuesday, spent some nice time with friends up there, and came back on Friday with a Visitors and Business visa that is valid for six months at a time for the next ten years. So contrary to all expectation, he is going to be able to stay here with Daniel and I until Daniel receives his passport and can come home to Norway.

Also, Daniel's social security number was processed very quickly. We should be able to apply for a passport for him on Monday and receive it within two weeks, so we expect to return to Norway by the end of March.

Wonder Baby

Daniel is amazing. He is, of course, the most beautiful little boy ever. He hardly ever cries; he lets me know he's hungry by grunting and opening his mouth instead. He sleeps well at night most nights, just waking up a few times to be nursed. When he was four days old he rolled over from his back to his tummy, two different times, and he manages to find his thumb and suck on it on a fairly regular basis. So clearly he is a genius. He hasn't been weighed for over a week, but we can already see on his cheeks and his little fingers that he is getting chubbier. He is a good nurser, and I seem to have more than enough milk to keep him satisfied.

The first few days after we came back from the hospital, I found myself worrying quite a bit. I had a hard time sleeping because I kept wanting to make sure he was still breathing. I'm finally beginning to believe that his lungs will probably keep functioning without my constant supervision. He had jaundice for a few days, but it's all cleared up now.

Although anxiety was a prominent feeling for me during his first week, I am getting more comfortable with my role as a mom, and have been able to really enjoy him for the past few days. We get just a couple of hours a day where he is really alert with open eyes, and that is really precious time. Otherwise he mostly sleeps peacefully, either in someone's arms or in his cradle or carseat; he doesn't seem to care where. Of course he also wakes up on a regular basis to eat. We do usually get a few cries out of him when we change his diaper, if he isn't to sleepy to care. His one bad habit is that his favorite time to pee seems to be during diaper changes; aunt Pamela got well-sprayed the other day.

I am spoiled here at my parents' house, not having to really do any laundry or cleaning or cooking, with several willing pairs of arms to pass Daniel on to if I get tired. In so many ways it is a blessing to be here for these first weeks, where I am so much at home and have so much support.

Welcome Daniel

Finally, after a long time of waiting, we got to meet Daniel face to face yesterday. It was a day of great joy and relief. When Julia went to see the doctor at 11:30 AM yesterday, she was having a lot of discomfort. It turned out she had dilated to 7 cm, so when the doctor asked Julia if she wanted to have her water broken, it was a fairly simple decision to make. After the water was broken around 1 PM, Julia's contractions slowly started to pick up, and after a few hours she was experiencing some intense labor pain. Julia asked for an epidural, and the rest of the labor was a whole different story. During the "pushing" stage of the delivery Julia experienced far less pain, but it took three and a half hours and a lot of energy before we got to meet our little baby boy.
After all this time waiting and hoping that Daniel would delay to enter into the world, it was so unreal to finally be able to rejoice over the birth of our son. I have uploaded some photos to our photo album and will upload more in days to come.

In about a week I will have to leave the US and go home to Norway. Most probably I'll return after a week, so that I can be with Julia and Daniel. It'll take some time before they will be able to travel. Daniel will need to get both his birth certificate and a social security number before we can apply for a passport, so probably he'll be ready towards the end of March, beginning of April.

Daniel Ex Utero

Grandpa Schnake here, pinch hitting for Julia and Viggo:

Daniel was born at 10:15 pm on Monday Feb. 26.
He weighs 7 lb 2 oz and is 19 inches long.
All systems are functional, as demonstrated when he peed on Grandma's arm. All digits present and accounted for.

Julia began labor this afternoon if you don't count the previous three times she was admitted to labor and delivery in the past 9 or 10 weeks. Labor was intense. It took three and one half hours in the "pushing" phase.

We had four or five digital implements flashing and whirring making images, so I am sure you will soon see pictures, video, and probably a TV miniseries before long.

It is after midnight here. So I think I will rest and write more later.

There is a Season

Here's a post by Dad since Julia and Viggo are busy just now:

There is a time for all things. It apppears that this day (March 26) is the day that Daniel Jakob Larsen has been destined to leave Julia's uterus.

Recap: Julia and Viggo flew to Corvallis from Norway to Corvallis on Dec. 7, 2006. They intended to stay for three weeks.

On Dec. 21, Julia began having serious contractions. Her due date was not until March. 20, 2007.

She spent more than eight weeks on bedrest at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene.

She came home to Philomath with Viggo a little over a week ago.

Julia visited her ob/gyn doctor this morning. She was more than 7 cm dilated and the baby's head is quite low.

The doctor decided to break Julia's water this afternoon. That has been done. Now she is in major labor. The baby should be born soon! This time things have gone too far for stopping!

I will add more details when I have them.

And the neverending suspense continues...

Well...we're still here. But not for much longer, at least. We should finally get to go "home" to my parents' house in Corvallis on Monday, assuming I don't give birth before then. On Tuesday Feb. 6th I went into labor for the third time. I have had many episodes where I'll have regular contractions for a couple of hours, but only three times that I've been properly in labor and moved to a delivery room and everything. The doctors, again, were quite sure I would deliver this time, and, again, I didn't after all. Despite several hours of intense pain and frequent contractions, everything slowed down and stopped in the end. Which was very good, of course, because Daniel's lungs needed the extra time to develop some more. On the other hand, though, i really think it must be a bit nicer to just get this whole labor thing over in one shot. And I did feel bad about the fact that my Mom drove down from her prayer retreat 4 hours away only to get here when everything had calmed down again....

I had several episodes with pain and contractions throughout the week, but since last Saturday everything has been pretty calm. We have no idea how much longer we will have to wait, or whether Daniel will come before Viggo has to return to Norway or not. Actually, that's not quite true; we can definitely expect that Daniel will come sometime in the next 5 weeks or so, we just can't pinpoint it any more than that.

I've been shopping for cradles and changing tables online today, and now I find myself sitting in my bed mentally rearranging furniture. It's strange to not be able to get the house ready for the baby at all before he comes. We assumed that we would have plenty of time for that after coming back from our Christmas visit to the states. We really didn't have any big plans in any case; we will just need to make sure that Daniel at least has a place to sleep when we come home.

I'm a bit bored today, and wishing I could go for a walk. But I have visits from both my mom and my friend Kari to look forward to tomorrow, and Viggo and I had a nice Valentines day yesterday. I got a big box of gourmet chocolates from my Dad, and 14 lovely red roses from Viggo, and Viggo took me out to eat at a Chinese restaurant around the corner (I was in a wheelchair).

More Patience Required...

This morning Julia had an amnoicentesis, and we were mentally prepared to leave the hospital to stay with Julia's parents. Daniel has reached 34 weeks, and it was expected that his lungs would be mature by now, so that he would not depend on care from the neonatal ICU when he was born. The results were therefore quite surprising. His lungs are really imature still. The doctor said that on a scale where 1.0 is imature and 2.0 is mature, Daniel scored 1.0. Apparently late maturity of the lungs is a more comon problem in Northern Europe than anywhere else in the world, so I guess my genes are to blame.

When Julia was first admitted to the hospital, she was given two shots of steriods to help the baby's lungs mature. It is quite rare that this procedure is repeated, but Julia got another shot of steriods today and will get another one tomorrow. In two weeks time the doctors will do another amniocentesis to check if the lungs have matured, and if so, we'll get to leave the hospital then. So far our miracle baby has defied all the predictions of the doctors and the nurses, so maybe he will go to full term. The doctor did say, however, that he thought the baby would be born soon, and that it would not be a problem for all three of us to travel home to Norway before March 7th, when my visa waiver expires. We don't know what to expect or believe, but we KNOW that God is faithful and that we are in his care. So despite everything we are experiencing we're not worried. Our faith is in Him who has filled our hearts with peace and who is in control of our future.

Daniel's most recent attempts to escape...

I think I'll just summarize a bit what has been happening since Viggo's last post, for those of you who don't always see Viggo's daily "updates" on the sidebar. Not that that much really "happens" on a daily basis here. However, there was major excitement last Friday, because I went into labor. I have had several episodes of contractions over the last few weeks, but this time it looked like the doctors weren't going to be able to stop it, and I was really going to give birth. I had much more painful contractions than I'd ever had before, and although the estimates seem to vary a bit, it seems likely that I dilated at least to 6cm or so. (I was 5cm before this episode of labor started). However, after a few hours of labor, things started to slow down, so the doctors decided to try one last time to stop them, and then the labor really did stop. It was actually a bit strange and almost sad for me, because I had adjusted to the idea that we were going to have the baby that night, and then there was no baby after all; things just went back to the same as before. Both the doctors and I thought I would probably go back into labor within the next couple of days, but nothing happened. Which is wonderful, of course, because my tummy is still by far the best and safest place for baby Daniel to be right now.

I did have some quite regular contractions for a couple of hours again on Tuesday evening, but it didn't get so far.

I wrote the above part yesterday evening. I had some contractions again after that, which eventually calmed down again, and I have been having some more painful ones this morning. Viggo still got to play soccer today, though! He just has to take along the cell phone and have someone on the sidelines hold onto it while he plays in case I call to say I'm having the baby. Really, things are still the same as they have been all along. It could happen any time now, or not. I guess that's all I'll be writing for now. I'm in a bit of pain and it's kind of hard to focus, so I'll let Viggo finish.

So far our focus has been on the baby, but a few days ago we became aware of the fact that it will be very difficult for me to stay in the US after March 8th, when my 90-day visa waiver expires. We're hoping to find a way for me to stay, but I might have to go home, or at least go to Europe, before I can return to the States. We've made a few phone calls to different government agencies, but have not been able to find a solution yet. We might try to get help from an imigration lawyer sometime next week. We really hope things will work out, so that I can stay here and that all three of us can travel home to Norway together.

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.

Home sweet home

So, Viggo has started referring to our hospital room as our temporary "home". He said we should put up a sign that says "welcome to our humble abode" outside the door. I realized today that I am definitely starting to miss just being at home, at our little house in Norway. It seems almost surreal that we are going to be here three or four months, instead of the planned 3 weeks. But under the circumstances, we've decided that we're probably actually better off here in the US, for various reasons. For one thing, in Norway, I would probably have to stay in the hospital alone, with Viggo working and sleeping at home instead of by my side. We'd rather be together, even if the room is kind of small.
We've had quite a few visitors this week, and I've gotten to go across the street (in a wheelchair, for half an hour) for coffee a couple of times. I'm touched that friends from high school who I haven't really kept in touch with very well over the past six years would take the trouble to come and visit me. I really enjoy visits from my family, too. It's always a party with my Mom here. She has developed a hilarious habit of talking to my belly, actually leaning over with her lips touching the belly and having a conversation with the baby. She speaks for the baby too. Daniel says things like "leave me alone, I'm trying to sleep" in a cute baby voice. If you know my mother very well, this will be easy to picture...
Otherwise, I am just trying not to think about the fact that I have been lying here for almost a whole three weeks now. On the other hand, we are grateful that I am still here, rather than out of the hospital with the baby in the NICU.