Almost Three Weeks

We're still working on the sleep thing, and will be for some time, I have no doubt.

Last night we just all slept on our comfy couches. Piper actually slept most of the night, broken up only by two feedings between midnight and 6 AM.

We're still trying to get the hang of things - partly, understanding her and what she needs. We've had a few instances of screaming-crying fits. We change the diaper, we burp, we hold her, we hold her a different way, we check the book and see that she's just eaten 30 minutes ago, but nothing will quiet or calm her. "She just ate! We could try feeding her again.... ", and she latches on and is good to go.

Duh.

I don't know why it takes us 15 minutes to realize it sometimes.

When she sleeps in the little chair thingy that we put her in, she sleeps WITH COMMENTARY. Serious. Just nearly constant little noises from her. Squeaks, sighs, groans, etc. I can sleep through it, but that's what ends up keeping Krissi awake. And I figure it indicates that she's not sleeping very soundly, but I'm just guessing on that.

We got to do some Gaming With A Baby yesterday, which was fun, and mostly worked out. Again - it took us 30+ minutes to figure out that we needed to feed her if we wanted her to not SCREAM BLOODY MURDER at us. Actually playing while holding her is totally doable (once she quiets down), just a little tricky. I'm totally down with making the effort though. Part of being able to drag Krissi and the baby out of the house to go play games is me being responsible enough to take care of her, and not just pass her off to Krissi.

We're feeling super adventuresome apparently, because we're planning to take her with us to the Zombie Walk this Friday. We have some mild anxiety about keeping her fed and happy while we are out, but we'll manage, and we can always pack her up and roll if we have to. We're not going to go all out like we usually do, but we'll be undead nonetheless!

Ahh, and Krissi just informed me that her belly button scabbie has fallen off. Woo!

Next up (maybe), the ongoing struggle with regards to ear piercings and Santa Claus! (that's two separate arguments, not how the two relate to each other)

Female Role Models

Sorry, this is going to be somewhat rambling and maybe grouchy.

I don't think that women get a fair shake in popular media. Movies, books, etc. I'm painting in broad strokes, and I'll gladly acknowledge that there are exceptions, in fact, I'll go even further and try to identify them. But for the purpose of this gripe, I'm working on the premise that men get to rescue fair maidens, kill dragons, drive fast cars, be crazy popular and have flocks of women swooning over them. While women generally get to be rescued, ride in the passenger seat, and swoon over men. They're always second fiddle, at best.

I'm sure that I am not the first new parent to think perhaps overly much about how things affect a child's outlook on life and the world, and their role in it. Naturally, I want to expose my child to things that will teach her in positive ways, introducing or reinforcing positive qualities, and minimizing negative ones. I liked the Little Mermaid, but by my recollection, its a terrible story for little girls. When you find a man that is dreamy, give up everything that you treasure for a chance to be able to follow him around all moon-eyed. While Mulan, or Belle from Beauty and the Beast seem like more positive female role models.

And don't misunderstand, I'm absolutely not opposed to a girl's right to be a princess, or to dream of growing up and marrying and having a family. I just think that princesses deserve to be in the spotlight too, and kill some dragons, and save some knights, and drive some fast cars. I'm not trying to make them into men with breasts either though.

Which leads me to ramble right into violence. I've recently started tuning in to discussions about exposure of children to violence and other 'non kid' themes on TV and in movies and books. I had a conversation that went something like this: "You know, Kill Bill is a great movie, and I wonder at what age one can introduce a kid to it. Beatrice is a crazy strong female role model. The movies are crazy-wild-over-the-top violent, *almost* enough that I'm like - yeah! my seven year old should watch that! - though certainly there are other themes in the movie that may not be appropriate. Anyway, I guess I'm beating around the bush to say that I don't know how much to or not to expose my kid to violence in media. I don't know how thoroughly to sanitize stuff." And so forth. I chatted about this with Maddie, and we compared our own childhood experiences. She had little or no supervision and could watch anything at all, while I was not allowed to watch the He-Man cartoon, and at one point was briefly banned from watching GI Joe. And we both turned out alright, I think.

I think I need to talk to some people, and read some books or studies or something. While I am not trying to say that I want my kid drenched in blood and gore from the get-go, I don't know what is right with regards to sanitizing violence. And I think its a more complicated question - because I think that simply parking a kid in front of tv, and letting them be exposed to tons of violence is not a good way to go without the parent/teacher being involved, and communicating. I dunno - I don't want to teach my kid that violence is an answer, but c'mon, violence is crazy entertaining. (don't hit me, that sortof an ironic jest)

So, who are popular but terrible female role models, and who are popular (or unknown/unappreciated) *good* female role models?

Anyone care to add anything?

Two Weeks

Piper is two weeks old today.

Its wild how quickly she changes - just like everyone who's had a kid says. Last week she was all sleep. She'd mess up diapers, and yell to be fed, but the rest of the time she slept. This week she has times of wakefulness, where she just looks around. I'm no expert on the subject, but I think that she still can only make out things a few inches away, and still seems to be largely unaware of our attempts to entertain or interact with her, but its still pretty cool. She does seem to enjoy being read to. I've been reading out loud, and she seems to focus on me for brief periods.

Krissi is having trouble getting good rest. She is a very light sleeper, and Piper sometimes sleeps deeply and quietly, but other times makes tons of noise while she sleeps, or wants to be awake, and refuses to be put down to go to sleep. We've been working on getting naps in for Krissi when Piper is sleeping, with mixed results.

I'm back at work today, and next week. I'm so not ready to be away from my little family and my vacation. While to some extent, I welcome a return to some normalcy and a schedule, I so don't want to be away from that cute little baby, and being available to help Krissi, and- to be honest, sitting at home reading books, watching TV, and playing computer games. Its been a good two week vacation.

I wondered to myself why I've got two blogs. Who needs two blogs? And I thought about merging them into one, but I'll run with this for awhile. Its not like I've got a commercial blog and a personal one, or something. I dunno, at the time it seemed like a great idea to have them as separate entities.

I neglected to mention that at our doctors appointment the week after she was born, we got a clean bill of health, and weighed in at 8 pounds, 7 ounces. So we're well on our way to becoming a big fat baby, it looks like.

Sleep

Constantly, people are like "Oh! Enjoy sleep while you can, and get as much as you can right now, cause you won't be sleeping later! OH HO HO HO HO!"

And of course they are sortof right. Babies want to be fed every two hours or so.

Yesterday we started a day/night strategy. We feed her frequently during the day, as often as she'll take it - every hour and a half, give or take. Then at night, she'll feed less frequently. According to our plan. And it seems to have been somewhat successful. We fed about every hour and a half. Our last feeding before heading to bed was at 9:30, and then we all slept until 12:30. Then we had three more feedings before 7:30. So Yay. I'm hoping that this will help us to be able to get some sleep at night.

Also, I sleep like the dead. Last night I hopped right up out of bed at 12:30 to help change a diaper and get everyone setup to feed. While Piper ate, I opened up The Graveyard Book, and read some. But then at the next feeding, I was COMPLETELY INCOHERENT. Krissi wanted me to hop up and change the diaper. I stared at her for a moment, and then at Piper, and asked, "Okay, so you want me to swaddle her?". It goes on like that. Hilarious, I'm sure.

So things are going well. We're all trying to get into a routine and pattern. Krissi is doing pretty well. She is very mobile, despite the incision. She's still got some pain though, and is on medicine for it. We've got a followup appointment on Friday. Breastfeeding is going very well, which I was quite concerned about. But baby and mama seem to be picking it right up.

Yazhi is hilarious. When we lay the baby down in bed, Yazhi puts most of her body on the bed so that she can sniff the baby and hover over her some. She's so interested, and seemingly motherly/protective. She carefully watches over the baby. Its cute and funny.

Day 2!

Well, everyone who reads this already has all of the happy news. Piper was born at 7:41AM on April 3. Baby and mom are both doing very well. Krissi's C section went well. It was weird and a little tough to see her all done up on the operating room table, but I got to be in there, and even see a little bit of the action, and soon enough the doctor was wrestling a baby out of her. She's 8 pounds even, and 20 1/4 inches long. Like most newborn babies, she's pretty much interested in sleeping and eating. I'm very pleased that we seem to be doing great on the breastfeeding angle. She's doing a great job of latching on, and drinking. She's a pro at pooping, and we've had at least 4 muconium filled diapers. Disgusting, but fairly easy to clean up, and no smell. The day passed somewhat in a blur for me, and for Krissi as well. We had a large part of the afternoon to ourselves, and then family and friends all showed up in the early evening and so we got to show her off and make introductions and so forth. All of our friends and family, both local and far away, are amazing folks. Its funny to watch people with the baby, my brother James seems completely moonstruck, and our friend Beth seems to have baby powder all over her (that's code for Seems completely taken, and just about ready for [another] one of her own). It was great to visit with everyone. Around 8 or 9 everyone cleared out, and we got to try to get some rest. Piper, who had pretty much slept ALL DAY, was a little more active in the evening, so we did a lot of changing sleeping positions and so forth. We fed fairly regularly, every two hours. Krissi and I were both pretty exhausted. I can't imagine how Maddie and John did it with two. We slept off and on until early morning, when we all got two good solid naps in between 4am and 8am. It was good, deep sleep, and felt really refreshing.

So things are going really well. Krissi has some pain associated with her c-section, but nothing out of the ordinary. Getting to the bathroom and such is an ordeal though. But each day she will get better, and the pain will decrease.

Our one matter for minor concern is that the baby has a bit of a heart murmer, which is apparently not abnormal for a newborn. The pediatric cardiologist had a look at her, and said that she's got a tiny hole in her heart, which again is not especially unusual. He said it usually closes in the first month or two as the heart develops, but we'll be taking her in after a few weeks for him to have another look. Crossed fingers.

So I could probably go on and on, but I'll try to wrapup. A few random thoughts and then I'm done.

We brought the laptop with us, and the hospital has free wireless access, which is GREAT. We've used it to stream classical music, and it has helped to relax us and make the hospital room slightly less hospitaly room-y. Also, I've been able to upload photos (---> here <---), and keep in touch with far away friends. I also am inclined to mention the convenience of twitter and facebook on my blackberry. I was able to keep our far away friends up to date on what was going on by sending out twitter updates. In brief, I was very pleased with being able to do that. It makes me feel connected to my people.

Blood and guts are scary. While in the OR, I was put in a chair by Krissi's head, with a large surgical sheet up in a partition, separating her head and shoulders from her lower body and all of the action. Maddie was in there with us as well, and urged me to stand up and look over the sheet. I told her no at first. I've seen blood and gore before, and felt that sudden weak-kneed light headedness, and did not really want to pass out in the OR, but I stood and looked, and got to see the whrilwind of activity, as our doctor tugged the bottom half of the baby out of Krissi (and the gush of bright red fluids, mostly amneotic and waters, but still scary looking), and then wrestled with the upper half of the baby, having to do some wiggling and tugging to get her out. I remember thinking about how sore Krissi would surely be, despite the cut. Quickly, the baby was out and handed over to the folks who cleaned her up in another whirlwind of medical efficiency. I recorded a few short video clips, and Maddie took bunches of photos. It was totally weird, standing there, looking at this little screaming baby on the heater, working through the flood of emotions, both heartbreaking love, but also "Who's baby is on the heater? I don't know this kid..". Then I'm picking her up and showing her to Krissi, and holding this little tiny baby. Its just really really surreal. And then, the baby and I are whisked out of the OR to drop the baby off at the nursery, and them I'm back in the hallway in Labor & Delivery. It really really felt like standing outside the exit of a bizaar and surreal amusement park roller coaster: RUSH RUSH WOW ADRENALINE HOLY CRAP WOW WOW Please watch your step as you exit the ride. Heh. Krissi was off to recovery, and after finding my people, we hung out for a few minutes. Family was hanging out the waiting room and got to see her through the nursery windows. After a short bit, I got to sneak back to recovery to visit Krissi, as she lay there, tired and spent on the table. She was all stitched up and fixed up and covered up, and again it was kinda surreal. All of the 10 months, the time, the energy, the twisting and thrilling emotional roller coaster, and then there we are hanging out in Recovery, no more pregnant belly. Soon, she was out of recovery, and fairly soon after that, they brought our little baby out to us. We had a moment early on in the afternoon where it was just the three of us in the room, Piper in the basinet, Krissi and I chilling out, when Piper made a noise, and we both started, having momentarily forgotten that there was a baby in the room with us. I'll say it again. Its surreal.

The hospital staff has been largely excellent, and even though they'll never read this, I am very grateful to Dr. Whaley, and the excellent L&D staff, Penny, Lori P., Shaune, Adrienne, and then the post-partum staff and nursery staff, Sam, Cheryl, Irene, and even our nurse trainee, Meredith. Even the housekeeping staff and food services staff have been friendly and downright awesome. And even though I already mentioned it, BIG BIG BIG thanks again to our local friends and family who came to see us, and to our long distance friends who texted and tweeted and facebook'd and so forth, sending us well wishes and totally making me feel warm and fuzzy and loved.

So, now this has gotten all crazy long winded, and I could probably keep going, but I suppose I need to leave something for tomorrow.

Hope you all like baby pictures, cause I'll sure be taking them and posting them.

Last post befire the big event

Whew.

I feel like I should say something profound.

Tomorrow, Friday, we go in for a C-Section at 7:30AM.

I felt like I had some stuff to say when I started this post, but then I had to run around here at work trying to get stuff in order.

Boy, its terrifying. And exciting.

This time tomorrow, we should have a baby.

If I have cell reception, I'll be making updates on my facebook page, and on http://www.twitter.com/xjermx