Coming home

After a short stay in the hospital, Levi and I were discharged shortly after noon on Thursday.  I was anxious to get home, knowing I had my mom and my sister there to help out, and knowing that my bed and rocking chair were a lot more comfortable than that hospital bed. 

When we got home, the kids couldn't wait to hold little Levi again. 

Levi Nathaniel's Entrance

Levi was due April 14th, but at 37 weeks, I was pretty sure he was going to come early.  I had a few nights where my contractions were almost close enough to cause me to head to the hospital, and knowing that I was already at 3 cm, I was pretty sure I was close.  But then the contractions became less and less frequent.  I can became more and more uncomfortable.  On top of that, my doctor was taking a trip to Paris over spring break.

Thankfully I had an appointment the day my doctor returned, and an induction set up for 2 days later.  At my appointment, I think my doctor sensed my frustration and exhaustion, and asked if I would be open to an earlier induction.  Even though my mom and my sister weren't due into town until the following night, I was ready to have this baby, and starting to feel that he wasn't going to come on his own, no matter how long I waited.

Our good friends the Jakeman's offered to take our kids for the night, and also fed us a delicious dinner of french bread pizza.  The hospital called, and Sam and I headed off.  At this point I felt contractions again, and so I was hopeful the labor would progress quickly, and without too much intervention.

When we checked in to the hospital, and they hooked me up to the monitors, it showed I was contracting every 4 to 5 minutes, but then they would slow down. They took me off the monitors to allow me to walk around, but all that did was stop my labor all together.  I'm not sure why, but my body really likes to be laying still in order to have contractions.  So I gave up, and got back into bed. Sam had gone home to make sure the kids had everything they needed for the following day, and I made arrangements over the phone for them to play at friends houses until Sam or my mom could take over. 

Pitocin was started at 10 PM, but my labor seemed fruitless until they gave me an epidural at 1:30 AM.  My doctor came in right after and broke my water, and predicted he'd be back about 5:30 to deliver me. Sam tried to settle in for the night, and I tried to get some rest as well.  But I couldn't sleep at all.  I was hooked up to monitors, and I could still feel contractions, and they took my blood pressure every 15 minutes.  I also had to turn from side to side to help make sure the epidural would be even.

We hadn't officially decided on a name yet, but I think we were both pretty sure his first name would be Levi.  But we really hadn't come up with a middle name that stood out to us.  It was while I was lying in bed, numbed up from the epidural, watching the contractions on the monitor, that I thought Levi Nathaniel was a good name.  About 3 am my nurse came in.  I was thinking that she was also worried about my progression, but all she said was that she wanted to check me.  I was shocked when she reported I was at a 9.5, and just needed to switch sides again and I would be ready to deliver really soon.   I was a 10 by 3:30, and the doctor came in soon there after.

Before I knew it, I was giving 4 or 5 good pushes, and little Levi's head emerged.  2 more to get the shoulders out, and he was out and up on my chest.  I could hardly believe he was there.  He let out some loud screams, and then settled down on my chest.  He was beautiful.  Looked a lot like Noah and Olivia to me.  Lots of dark hair, and huge chubby cheeks.  He had no interest in nursing, but was making the cutest little faces.  He kept his eyes mostly closed, and let out some yells here and there, but was content to lay there next to me while they finished up.  Sam cut the cord, and then sat back down quickly to make sure he wouldn't end up on the floor.

They let me hold him for quite a while.  We all guessed how much we thought he might weigh.  I was thinking somewhere around 8 pounds - my doctor had said he didn't' think this baby was going to be big like Olivia and Noah.  Sam, however, thought he was going to be over 9.  I was pretty surprised when they declared he weighed 9 pounds 5.5 ounces!

He scored a 9 on his apgar test, his coloring not quite pink enough for a 10.  The nurses diapered, dressed and swaddled him, and gave him back to me.  He was ready to nurse now, and did a whopping 20 minutes on each side.

Sam and I enjoyed the quiet morning with Levi, and marveled at his tiny parts.  10 perfect little fingers and 10 perfect little toes.  A nice round head, and a strong neck, just like Olivia.

We called the kids in the morning, and it was so fun to hear their squeals of delight at hearing their baby brother was finally here. Their first question was, "When can we see him?"  Sam brought them to the hospital that evening, and they were each so excited to hold him, look at him, and constantly comment on how cute he was.  One funny side note, the kids were all pretty disappointed at our name choice.  We hadn't decided for sure on a middle name yet, but Levi was his first name.  The kids had been rooting for Isaac, and I think Olivia threw a bit of a fit in the car on the way to the hospital.  Thankfully the fit was so good it put her right to sleep. But once they saw him, they got over that, and quickly warmed up to calling him Levi. 

Happy Birthday!

Mollie went to the hospital at 7pm on Sunday night, and Olivia came at 6am Monday morning. 11 hours in the hospital puts her between Harrison (almost 24 hours) and Noah (not even 2 hours). She and Mollie are both doing well. For those curious about details:

8 lb 14 oz.
20 1/4 in
Female
Olivia Grace Payne

Done

Ladies and gentlemen, signatures in hand.

(Acknowledgments from the dissertation)

I would like to sincerely thank my advisor Vineet Bafna, for his steady and encouraging guidance. He was instrumental in helping me find my niche in graduate school, and finding research that I could flourish with. Vineet was always available for me and is a generous man.Vineet always focused on getting the correct result, regardless of its affect on the research.

I would also like to thank the members of my committee.I have been blessed with significant scientific interaction with every committee member; each was open, generous, and kind.With each, I felt elevated beyond a graduate student to peer.I thank Bill Loomis for his thoughtful and careful mentoring of a young computer science student. Bill spent many hours helping me understand and appreciate the beauty of molecular biology. His tutoring was invaluable in helping me to be a competent bioinformaticist. He always stressed to me that computation alone would not solve any significant or interesting problems. I thank Steve Briggs, for his guidance and encouragement. I benefited greatly from regularly attending his lab meetings and watching his discerning eye. I thank Betsy Komives for her friendly and informative tutorage in the experimental aspects of mass spectrometry. Finally, I thank Terry Hwa for his respect and solicitation of my ideas.

My work would not have been possible without funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, both of which supplied training grants that allowed me to research here at UCSD. The NIH bioinformatics training grant gave me the opportunity to rotate through many labs and find the research that interested me. The NSF plant systems biology IGERT helped me find exciting and productive collaborations and allowed me to present my research at conferences. This research was supported in part by the UCSD FWGrid Project, NSF Research Infrastructure Grant Number EIA-0303622.

I would like to thank the many friends and family who supported and influenced my education. First, my wife Mollie has been the standard of unwavering support. She always helped me to focus on what is most important for both my degree and my life. Without her love and support, none of this would have been possible. My two boys, Harrison and Noah, whose energy fills me. I thank my sister, Sara Anderson, for introducing me to bioinformatics. I would like to thank my parent for their support and encouragement. They have also been an example for me in balancing life and work. Finally, I would like to thank my grandfather, John W Payne, who made the educational leap from shepherd to college professor, for his diligence and determination in pursuing education.

I would also like to thank past scientists who had a significant impact on my career. Bryan Morse, at Brigham Young University, and Bernard Heymann, at the National Institutes of Health, both provided research opportunities for me as an undergraduate in biomedical imaging. I would also like to thank Steve Wasserman, at UCSD, for letting me rotate in his lab and learn basic experimental techniques.

I would like to thank past and present members of the Bafna, Briggs and Zhou lab for helping me with my research. Stephen Tanner for mentoring in computational mass spectrometry, and for writing a wonderful software tool, Inspect, which I was able to extend and use for all my research needs. I would like to thank Natalie Castellana for her diligent work with me in the Arabidopsis proteogenomic annotation. Zhouxin Shen, Marcus Smolka, and Claudio Albuquerque all generated the data that I used for my research. I am indebted to them for their gifted knowledge of analytical chemistry and mass spectrometry.

The big day has come....

Sam is graduating!!!

And the decision is in....

After 3 months on the job search, 20 job applications submitted, 13 interviews (for 7 jobs), 1 exam, 2 code samples, 2 cross country trips, 6 job offers, one counter-offer, and much deliberation, we have made our decision: (drum roll, please)

The J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD.

We are very excited (and a bit overwhelmed in thinking about all the details) but most of all we are glad the decision is made. Harrison and Noah are excited because "there's a train in Maryland that goes to DC where the zoo is FREE. You don't need passes or anything!"

Now we can concentrate on other little things, like the fact that we have a baby due in 3 weeks, Sam's defense in 2 weeks, and arrangements to make to move from coast to coast within a few weeks of the baby's arrival...