Drake Scott Claborn

Many of you (I am making an assumption that enough people will read this to constitute "many") are aware by now that Brittany and I welcomed our first child last Monday (December 21st). He was born at 5:45pm, weighed 7 lbs., 8 oz., was 20.5 inches long and we named him Drake Scott Claborn.

To say the last 9 days have been a whirlwind would be a huge understatement. Some observations:
- Showing up to Freeman at 5am will guarantee a great parking place and is a little like checking in for a 6am flight out of Joplin - it's just you, one other couple, and a couple of random people.
- The coffee at the hospital cafeteria is mediocre, the free coffee in the waiting rooms is worth exactly what you pay for it.
- Text messaging during the delivery of your first child is tough for a guy, we're not that good at multi-tasking, but it beats having multiple spectators in the room with you.
- Newborns are far smaller than I thought - and ours is a pretty normal size for a newborn.
- The stories you've heard about the first few poopy diapers being tough to change, because the poo is very difficult to get off the kid's butt, are a complete understatement of the situation.
- The stories you've heard about little boys peeing while having their diaper changed (and consequently nothing in place to contain the pee) are true. We've experienced this probably a dozen times in less than a week at home. But having him pee all over the place is manageable as long as you have one of the waterproof changing mats and it sure beats trying to change him mid-poop and not realizing what is about to happen. The very fact that I wrote that last part should tell you this happened to me as well.
- Honestly, half the time when I see newborns, I have to really work at finding something on the kid that I think looks much like whichever parent everyone is convinced the child looks just like. And maybe some of you will struggle figuring out who Drake looks like, but once you see some pictures I doubt it. My mom brought some of my newborn pictures for me to see and I see a lot of my son in pictures of me at that age. But what I find more interesting is that there are a couple of features (hairline and wrinkled forehead) that are very distinctive in my son and can easily be seen in me today, but that were not discernible when I was a baby. It's like the infant version of what I look like today came to live with us more than a duplicate of me when I was a baby.
- People told us all along to get sleep while we could. We believed them, but had no idea just how little sleep we would get in these early days.

To be honest, the first week with your first child can be overwhelming - between all the new things you have to learn, the complete lack of sleep, keeping straight who is visiting when, etc. - and there were times when I thought to myself, "Are we really going to be able to function with a kid?" Actually, i think I said that at one point. Everything takes much longer. Just getting a shower and 3 meals for everyone (well, a sponge bath and 8 meals for the kid) was a struggle for a while. But on Sunday as we were on a family outing - a trip to Best Buy for Britt to pick up camera accessories while I stayed in the car with Drake (no, we weren't about to take him in) - I was reminded of my first week of college (yes, 1997 was a long time ago).

I remember that week being fairly overwhelming, the campus I was on was 3 times larger than my hometown and I had no idea what I was doing. I remember spending all week just trying to keep up with week 1 assignments (and mostly getting very behind on the reading). But somehow on Thursday evening of that week I had managed to catch up a little and got time to go out and wash my car (this was pre-Trans Am) - something I enjoyed doing. For just a moment that evening I again believed that by God's grace I could in fact succeed in college - not that I had all the answers or anything, I just reached a place where I didn't feel like I was drowning.

On Sunday afternoon for the first time I started to get the sense that we (my family and I) can in fact function. There's still a ton I don't know, we're figuring it out together everyday, but we've crossed that first gap and are on our way.


This is one of my wife's favorite faces that Drake makes. Not sure why, just makes her laugh.


This pretty much makes having a baby official. It's been announced to the mall.





Drake likes his car seat. He's been known to sleep in it for hours at a time. He must be able to sense that that seat his his ticket to all things automotive.