Jim's blog

I apologize for the delayed posting, but as you can imagine, things have been crazy. We did the C-Section shortly after 4:30 p.m., and Brennan Jacob was born at 4:53.

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Due to the slow progress, the doctor introduced a very small dose of Pitocin to move labor along. This seemed to work well at first, but as the strength of contractions increased, the baby wasn’t responding well. The heart rate would drop each time, indicating that the cord may be wrapped around an arm, shoulder, or something. So, now a C-Section has been scheduled for 4:30 p.m. CST. So, ready or not, here comes the baby!

The next update should introduce him or her!

It seems that the doctor who said Lissa was at 9cm was wrong. When she was checked again at noon, she was still only 5cm. So, unlike what we thought, things are actually progressing slowly. I guess now we just hang in there…

Well, it’s the real thing! We got to the hospital at around 8:30. When they checked around 9:00, Lissa was already dilated 5cm. Right now she is up to 9cm and is getting her epidural. (They kick me out of the room during the procedure, so I could take a few minutes to send an update.)

I’ll tell you one thing, Lissa sure has been strong. (Thanks for your prayers!) She doesn’t have a high pain tolerance, but she has really been amazing.

Things are moving really quickly. So quickly that they weren’t even sure they had time to do the epidural. Additionally, the baby finally dropped. (Lissa’s doctor wasn’t sure that the baby would fit.) It shouldn’t be long now!!!

Well, unless it’s false labor, it seems that it is time! Lissa had contractions most of the night. They started off at about 15-minute intervals. Then they dropped to 10 minutes. Since about 5:30 CST this morning, they have been pretty consistent around 4, 5, or 6 minutes. So, it’s probably about time to head off to the hospital.

Subject to my access to a phone connection (or the strength of my cellular signal) and Lissa’s needs, I will be trying to post some updates as things progress. Of course I will include any pictures as they become available.

We would both appreciate your prayers:

* That this is real labor.
* That everything will go smoothly and without complications.
* That Lissa at least has a chance at a normal delivery rather than a C-Section.
* That Lissa will have the strength, endurance, and patience she needs throughout labor and/or surgery.
* That I will be able to support Lissa in any way she needs.
* That our little gift from God will be healthy, strong, and active.
* That, regardless of what happens, we both recognize that it is God’s will and that He is control of everything.

And the silence is finally broken.

Yes, I’ve been absent for quite some time. It’s understandable, you see, for as many of you know, it will soon be Jim and Lissa plus one!! I know that is a scary thought, but there is no turning back now. Lissa will be 37 weeks pregnant — full term — tomorrow! So, this could all become a reality any day now.

This must be setting in for me finally. It is well known that pregnant women go through a nesting phase before giving birth. Lissa may be experiencing that, but I think I am too busy nesting to notice.

...and the country gives a big sigh of relief, takes a deep breath, and moves forward...

I am pleased to announce — a few days after the fact — the release of TextilePHP, a PHP port of Brad Choate’s Textile.pm Perl module. Brad’s code is by far the most advanced implementation of Textile, a syntax developed by Dean Allen of textism.com. Textile.pm is the engine that powers Brad’s mttextile Movable Type plugin.

Textile is a shorthand syntax for writing (X)HTML markup. Here are some examples:

|_. input |_. output |
| *strong* | strong |
| __italic__ | italic |
|{padding-right: 2em;}. “a link (link title)”:http://jimandlissa.com/ | a link |

TextilePHP is a line-by-line port of Textile.pm with phpdoc-style comments that are parsed by Doxygen to create user and developer documentation. TextilePHP is free, open source code released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Use the TextilePHP project page here to download TextilePHP, read the documentation, and report bugs or feature requests.

Nothing like more than six months of downtime to kill a blog, eh? Needless to say, things have been absolutely crazy since my last post in November. We bought a house (as Lissa noted), packed, moved, and unpacked. And that was all within about three weeks! Since then (as Lissa has also noted), we have replaced floors, stripped wallpaper, painted rooms, bought furniture, etc., etc. I’m a bit tired, as you might imagine.

I have also been doing a lot of software development lately. [weblink:http://drupal.org/] moved to version 4.4, so I updated all of my existing Drupal modules. I then finished and released another module, Context Links. One of the most time-consuming projects, though, has been a major update to my Textile module. I spent considerable time porting — line-by-line — Brad Choate’s Textile.pm Perl module to PHP and released this port a few days ago. A more detailed post will follow this one. That’s not all, though; I have also submitted several code patches to fix bugs in and add enhancments to Drupal.

I’ll try to get back into the habit of blogging, though.

We have debated it, disagreed about it, and discussed it, but we finally decided it was time: time to get a digital camera. Actually, we already had one — an old Apple QuickTake 200 that I got for free several years ago with a PowerBook purchase — but it was so simple and had such low resolution that we rarely used it.

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After considering several alternatives and turning to my always-trusted Consumer Reports, we decided on the Kodak EasyShare DX6340. It appears to provide a good balance of features, ease of use, and price, and it has consistently received good reviews. Last Friday night we went to our local Target and purchased the camera, a 128MB memory card, and a miniature umbrella (completely unrelated to the camera purchase).