At Home

I had to post my favorite new picture of Daniel below. He loves to lie under his play gym and look at his toys. Yesterday he had an online video conversation with his Grandma and he seemed to think that was pretty cool too. I should perhaps mention that the sleeping through the night mentioned in the last post was a one-time thing. We seem to be rather going downhill as far as that is concerned. He's still the perfect baby though.

We are happy to be in Norway for now, but are very much looking forward to going to Tanzania! When Viggo and I were getting married, I had a period of feeling very overwhelmed by the idea of truly leaving home, first for Norway, then for Africa. God gave me a verse from Psalm 23 that was a huge reassurance: "Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever". Viggo and I will probably live quite a few different places over the years, but wherever we go we will always be at home in the Lord.

Seven Hours

That's how many hours Daniel slept last night without waking up to nurse - from 10:00PM to 5:00 AM. We were very pleasantly suprised. We're back home in Norway and doing wonderfully. Daniel went to his first Norwegian church service on Easter and was much admired. It also snowed two inches that day. Now, though, it is sunny and beautiful and about 60 degrees. I think I will take Daniel out for a walk in his baby carriage soon. It is very nice to be in our own little home again.

Here is Daniel doing his "superbaby" pose, wearing an outfit knitted by his great-great grandmother, which once belonged to Viggo. Daniel weighs a whole 11 pounds (5 kilos) as of today. More pictures will be coming soon, Mom and Dad, but Viggo is busy translating today.

Going home

We finally received Daniel's passport yesterday, and we should be leaving for Norway tomorrow. It will be good to go home, although it has been good to be "home" with my family here in Oregon as well. Daniel's American grandparents are definitely going to miss him.

Daniel had a bit of a fever much of last week, which it turned out was caused by a urinary tract infection. It took three trips to the doctor to figure that out, but ultimately he got the antibiotics he needed and he's much better now. He wasn't eating very well while he was sick, but he's making up for lost time now, eating voraciously every 1-2 hours and getting chubbier every day.

Viggo was invited to speak in church last Sunday and shared about our experience of God's faithfulness over the past year and since we'ver been married. It is awesome to see how he has provided for us and taken care of us and enabled us to trust him even in some difficult situations. We were also glad to see our church here getting excited about being involved in our future work.

I haven't quite figured out how to post pictures yet, or I'd put up one of Daniel. However, there's a new video (narrated in Norwegian..) and possibly some new pictures in our photo album under "Daniel's first month". He's pretty cute!

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.