Christian Robert Gorczyca - May 1st, 2010

I started out my Saturday around 5:15AM. I had to finish packing things and meet some fellow homebrewers @ Harbor Inn & Ale for our first ever Monroe Big Brew Day. For those that don't know, I run a homebrew club in Monroe, MI called The Muskrat Mashers. We meet once a month and discuss techniques of homebrewing and styles of beer. I've been working on organizing this event for a while now. We had lined up around 7 brewers to come out, to make a total of around 70 gallons of beer. Big Brew Day is a national holiday in the homebrew world. The American Homebrewers Association organize this event annually, asking brew clubs from all over the country to get together and brew batches of beer.

I met the crew at the restaurant where we set up two large tents. Not long after set up the storms blew through. I headed home to grab a few more things, and came back, set up and started brewing. My plan was to finish brewing before everyone, so I could hang out, help others and chat with everyone.


Around 10, Jen called saying she was in serious pain and could barely walk. Lucky her parents were up visiting anyhow, she said she was going to go in to get checked out. I told her I was finishing up and would meet her up at the hospital. I rushed to finish, cleaned up fast (thanks to the brew club for helping out and packing me up quick!).. By the time I got up to the hospital, the doctor had decided to move forward with the C-section early. There wasn't any major complications, he said "There's something in there the baby's not liking, so he's pushing down." He said it could be a pinched nerve or something, but, rather than send us home and have her be in pain for two more days, he just decided to do it then.

Here I am in shorts, tshirt, sandals, baseball cap on, dirty.. not really ready for all of this, but I didn't have much choice! They handed me the scrubs outfit and started getting Jen ready.

It wasn't long until I was sitting there with Jen talking to her as they were working on getting the baby out. Pretty soon they told me to pop my head up to see the baby.. and not long after they were pulling him out. It's a boy! Very cool. What's funny is, last time we were pretty sure it was a boy.. so this time, we were kind of thinking it would be a girl. Regardless, we were thrilled. The lil' guy cried like crazy.. way more than Madalyn. I got to carry him down the hall to the nursery - have experience from Madalyn, so I wasn't nervous a bit this time.


Jen went to recovery and they cleaned him up. We got some time to talk about the names finally (we had a couple picked out, and I wanted to have Jen see him to decide on the name). She looked at him and said "Oh Rob he looks like Christian!".. Which was one of the names I actually came up with when talking about a name for Madalyn (before we knew she was a girl), and Jen really latched on to. We thought it would be neat to use the family name Robert as the middle name, and there it was. Christian Robert Gorczyca.

Christian weighed in at 7lb. 13 oz. 20 1/2 inches length. His color was a bit off after trying to feed him, so they took him and put him on a monitor and warmed him back up.. they said he was getting cold. The doctor ordered him to be in the nursery monitored all night, so the first night they kept coming in to get Jen to feed him in the nursery area. They ran a few normal tests on him, and everything checked out well.. He's looking good and is healthy.

We were really surprised by his long dark hair! Definitely momma's hair. What's cute is he has this dark brown hair, but the tips of a lot of it are blonde. Very neat looking - the nurses were saying it looks like he got the tips frosted.. a stylin' kid already! We can't tell yet what color his eyes are, they look brown. Hard to say. Very cute though and so tiny! I can't even remember now (and it's only been a year) Madalyn being that tiny!

So, that's the story of the big day. Madalyn came up to the hospital, but Christian was in the nursery, and they said she couldn't go in there to see him. So hopefully today we'll get to introduce the two. She's proudly wearing her "Big Sister" t-shirt. She was having way to much fun at the hospital too. Charming the nurses and pressing every button she could find… I had to keep her reigned in, so she didn't flip Jens bed over or something.

More pics can be found: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorczyca