Six years ago today, my daughter Emily Elizabeth Fisher was born. You can’t tell by looking at her now, but she was born at the six and a half month point of her intended nine month gestation! She was not due on January 8th, 2005. She was due on March 15th, almost 10 weeks later.

Friday night, December 31st, 2005. My wife and I were going to drive a little under half an hour away to spend New Years Eve with friends, dining out, followed by a movie at their home. My wife wasn’t feeling fully up to it at the last minute, and insisted I go without her. I offered multiple times to stay home, she told me there was no reason I couldn’t go have fun. So I did, even though I had a feeling I’d be called to come home before Midnight.

That call came and I arrived home, helped get her more comfortable with her strange pains, and we went to bed. She woke me up at about 2 am or so, and we went to the Hospital. Happy New Year! We’re going to the hospital.

We stayed till morning, where they said it was just some sort of abdominal pain and told us to go back home. However, that night it was much worse and there was definitely something wrong. She took an ambulance, because even the slightest movement was unbearable.

Meanwhile we had an ice storm here in Marion IN. I can’t fully remember when it started, Monday or Tuesday Jan the 3rd or 4th. I vividly remember waking up alone in bed to no heat, or electricity, having slept in past time to get to work.

Luckily I had just gotten a cell phone. It was actually easier that my wife was in the Hospital so I could take care of the errands at hand: making sure that our Boston Terrier at the time was not freezing, prepping the faucets to keep from freezing, and getting food out of the Refrigerator and Freezer that was ironically unfreezing.

I juggled all that along with figuring out work hours, since my wife was safe in the Hospital, and I needed to save my family sick days and vacation time for when the baby acutely arrived.

I know I didn’t have work, on Thursday January 6th because there was no power to my building. Friday January 7th, I went to check on my wife early in the morning in the hospital. She was fine as she could be in the situation, so I headed to work.

Then, I got the call. Her water had broke and she needed to be sent to a much better facility at the IU Med Center in Indianapolis. I headed to the hospital, then back in the car south an hour south to Indianapolis, while she rode in the Ambulance.

We were there all day, where they ran better tests and finally figured out what the problem was: Placenta Pre-via, where the placenta prematurely starts to from the uterus. It can be caused by many things, and we still don’t know now what may have triggered it.

We stayed that night, waking every hour or so lying on the fold out single chair that turned into a “bed” if you can call it that. We were told that the goal was to keep Emily in gestation as long as possible, but she has other plans.

Saturday January 8th, 2005 Emily Elizabeth Fisher was born a preemie. She did exceptional well. She was kept in the NICU to be monitored closely and given the extra care a preemie needs.

My wife stayed in the Ronald McDonald house a few blocks away the whole time Emily was kept in the Hospital. I was back at home, holding down the fort, and working to save my vacation time for when they were able to come home.

I’d visit and stay through the weekends, and visit at least once or twice through the week, especially if friends wanted to take the trip down in the evening to visit and buy us dinner. We say a lot of love poured out on us during this time.

Gradually Emily got her body weight up, and got rid of her Jaundice, and still came home earlier than her intended due date. She was released on Valentines Day February 14th, 6 weeks after being born. Since then, I remember her coming home that day more than the Valentines day holiday itself. It was the best Valentines day I ever had.

The results are in. I stayed off Twitter & Facebook for one full week. I allowed myself to check e-mail and Google Reader in the morning and evening and that was it.

Revisiting the reasons:

1. I wanted to see if there was a strategy to my tweeting/liking/commenting.
2. I felt like I was using it way too much. A balance needed to be found.
3. I wanted to rewire my brain to read longer than 140 characters.
4. To prove I could.

Day 1:

This was the day of the WWDC Steve Jobs Keynote. Bad day to start. I wanted to share and be shared to about all of the announcements. Takeaway: Social is definitely a major aspect for me when it comes to social media. And it should be. Hint: It’s in the name.

Day 2: So much better today. I worked on other writing for the online writing class I have been taking, and so that creative outlet filled the “need to share” that Social media seems to have been filling. Takeaway: Do the small pieces of content I put out on social media sites drain my creative tank?

Day 3:

Traveled 9 hours by car starting at 5am. Much easier to ignore the urge to tweet. Not sure if it was that it was day 3, or the fact that I had other things to do. Either way, it got easier, not harder. Takeaway: Put yourself in a new situation where you don’t have the same old triggers. 

Day 4:

Not as bad. Part of the problem the first day or so was the feeling as if I was missing out on everything in the world. Once I was able to go through my Google Reader feeds at the beginning and end of the day for a few days in a row, I felt much more empowered to make it through the rest of the week. Takeaway: If you set up the right capturing tools, the Internet can wait for you, and you can wait for the Internet.

Day 5:

Another extremely busy day. Having something else to do helps to shift focus away. Takeaway: It helps to remember that actively putting yourself in a position to not even choose the option you are avoiding can help to avoid temptation.

Day 6:

Nothing to report here. I was busy with my mom’s (your mom) wedding. Helps to have other activities planned for the reinforcement of distraction from what I am avoiding.

Day 7:

Travelled another 9 hours in the car. When it came time to approach the Twitter stream, it felt overwhelming. I decided to reply to a message or two, after the 1 week had passed. I can honestly say that I don’t miss staring at a computer screen, regardless of the size.

Overall, this experiment was a success. I enjoyed not having to stay connected, and proving I wasn’t being ruled by instant gratification that the internet can bring. I am more interested now in fully unplugging for the same time period without any digital interface at all. I know I could do it, and would be interested in seeing what my brain feels like after that.

One thing I am going to do from this point forward is to have a weekly Social Media Sabbath. I will stay off Social Media sites, and even try to leave all notifications off, and possibly just forward my cell phone to the home line. I think unplugging even for a smaller duration on a regular basis will help me push forward creatively in ways I have forgotten how.