Blog about my new baby daughter Emily
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My New Daughter Blog
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Sunday, December 21, 2003
Album: December Baby Pictures
9:20 AM
Amazon.com: Your About You Area: Reviews: "The Best Darn Bathtub Period October 14, 2003
Our daughter loves to take a bath in this tub, and we love to bathe her in our Eurobath. The contoured tub holds her head above water without our assistance, and it has since she was a tiny little thing - under 7 pounds when her cord fell off. We are looking forward to being able to turn her around when she can sit up on her own! Hate to bathe her without it - though we have had to a few times. "
8:49 AM
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Emily spoke her first words recently. Here's the link.
Baby News
10:47 AM
Monday, November 24, 2003
Buzznet - marcussimon
6:42 AM
Saturday, November 22, 2003
First Names and What They Mean: "EMILY
Gender:Female
Root: EMIL
Origin:Latin
Meaning:Industrious, Work "
7:39 AM
Thursday, October 23, 2003
That was emily's 1st self authored post. At 6.3 months she can finally reach the keyboard. It's mostly commas because they are on the first line-- which is about as far as she can reach. She even got in an A though, before she hit the enter button.
7:39 AM
,,,,,,,,,,,a ,
7:37 AM
Monday, May 19, 2003
We are trying to do this new program out of a book call Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. The author, of course, has her own website. Anyway, I think it's going ok. We are little late in the game, though, even at 6 weeks. Both Rachel and I certainly buy the concept, and it seems to fit our personalities, but we've already gotten into some bad habits (according to the baby whisperer they are bad habits) and they can be hard to break. The basic premise of the book is to use the E.A.S.Y. method of child rearing. Eat, Activity, Sleep, You time. If you structure your life in this order, the author argues, you and your baby will be much happier. It's not a rigid schedule, just an order for doing things . . . allows for flexibility, but also gives us a framework for doing things, which is what we were looking for.
What it doesn't do, or hasn't yet, is tell us what to do when she is having a total meltdown at bed time. We now know that she is over tired, and not hungry, which is a good first step . . .but now that we know that, what are we supposed to do about it? I guess we haven't reached that chapter yet. Some of the things we're not supposed to do are the things that seem to work. Rocking, holding her in our arms until she falls asleep. apparently that conditions her to expect that in order ot be able to fall asleep, and how will we like that when she's 2 and ways 30 pounds . . .
Which is a good point, it just doesn't help me know what I should do now. So for tonight, she is sleeping in her carseat, which I rocked back and forth for about 5 minutes to get her to close her eyes and fall sound asleep.
We'll let you know how it turns out.
11:45 PM
Saturday, May 10, 2003
The next post was originally posted on Marcus's Blog on May 9th at about 9 pm.
8:44 AM
I've been meaning to post the story of Emily's birth - or more precisely, her delivery, for some time now. I find that I have much less time to indulge this new hobby of mine than I did before Emily was born or even when she was in the Hospital. I wanted to write about this moment before the memories and the emotions had time to fade. I find that even now, a month and one day after she was born, the memories of what I felt and saw and heard, but mostly what I felt, are as vivid as they were just one day after she was born.
It's hard to tell this story without using a lot of superlatives- scariest, happiest, most anxious, greatest relief . . . all of the emotions that I felt I felt more intensely than I had previously thought possible.
It didn't start out that way, though.
We first learned that Rachel was in labor when we went to see Dr. Armstrong for our regularly scheduled weekly visit on Monday April 7th. We'd seen him the Monday before and been told that Rachel's cervix hadn't even begun to dilate. With her due date only 8 days away, he'd have expected her to be somewhat dilated, but there was nothing. So we were pretty confident that Rachel would go past her due date, and then we'd be able to schedule a day to induce. April 10th, we thought, would be very convenient. It was a Thursday, Dr. Armstrong's regular hospital day, which was nice. It mean we'd have him all day, and not just after he was paged to the hospital for delivery. It was also close to the weekend, which would be convenient for all the family who'd want to come visit.
On the 7th, though, we discovered Rachel was already dilated 2 cm, and that the backpain she'd been experiencing was likely the beginning of labor pain. We decided to check into the hospital that night, well 1am the next morning, for an induction Tuesday. Tuesday, you understand, is Dr. Armstrong's other hospital day . . .and we didn't want to risk Rachel going into full blown labor and having her water break on Wednesday-- even though we probably could have made it to Thursday just fine.
So things were pretty routine on Monday. I went back to the office and finished my day of work, conducting another 2 or 3 settlements. I told them I'd be out the following day- and probably the rest of hte week, since I'd be attending the birth of my child the following day. They'd been expecting something that week, and were able to accomodate.
We finished packing the bag that evening at home, and I headed over to the McLean substation of the Fairfax County police department to get the new car seat installation inspected. Rachel had made the appointment the week before and we had joked that we were pushing it waiting until 9pm the night before her due date. It was the first available timeslot, though, and we had been so sure we'd go past the due date that we wern't really concerned.
We tried to go to sleep around 10 to get a few hours rest before we checked in to the hospital. We couldn't sleep though, and ended up watching the NCAA finals, which lasted until after midnight, before heading over the Arlington hospital.
I can't for the life of me remember who won that game.
We entered through the Emergency room, and made our way up to the Labor and Delivery on the 3rd floor. We'd pre-registered at a labor and delivery class we'd taken 6 weeks before, so there was no paperwork to fill out, and we knew exactly where we were going. We checked in, the nurses too Rachel's history, asked her some embarassing questions, did a sonogram to make sure hte baby's head was pointing down, and then administered a drug via suppository to help speed labor. Rachel's labor was already far enough along that we didn't need to use the synthetic hormone petocin, which is what is often used to induce labor. This all took us until about 4.
At 6 am I woke up and the nurse was in the room making Rachel shift positions from side to side, and rolling her around trying to get the baby's heart rate to surge. Apparently a very steady heartrate, though it seems like a healthy thing to the uninitiated, is actually not a healthy pattern. The baby's heart rate is supposed to surge when she is active and go down during restful period. A steady heartbeat means those periods of activity aren't happening. That's not good.
Rachel had two kinds of monitors attached to her at this point. One measured the baby's heart rate, the other contractions of her uterus. I would watch both, and could tell Rachel before she started to feel it that she was having a contraction. While the nurse was in the room, I was watching only the heartrate monitor. around 6:40 she was able to get it to surge a few times, though never as high as I had seen it earlier in the morning, and decided that was good enough.
Labor and Delivery nurses change shifts at 7:00. At 6:40 it was also time to do her paperwork and fill in the new nurse on what was going on with her new patients, so we understood that she needed to go, and didn't think it was a very big deal. This was also the time Rachel was really starting to feel her contractions. We hadn't yet asked for the epidural, though we'd planned to at the first sign of discomfort as we were planning for the baby's arrival.
Rachel's mother is a nurse, and we knew from other visits to the hospital that the shift change was a very busy time for the nurses, so we thought we'd try and make it until 7:00 before we hit the call button. The thing is, labor goes from uncomfortable to painful very quickly, and Rachel wasn't liking it too much. We tried some of the techniques we'd learned at baby class to distract her from her pain . . . I would count up to the peak of her contractions, and then tell her when they had peaked and count back down. I did this with the assistance of the monitors, as I had never paid enough attention in class to knowhow to accurately time contractions, or to know how long they were supposed to last. But I faked it as best I could, and for a while it seemed to help.
By seven though, Rachel was in a lot of pain, and by 7:15 when we hadn't seen the new nurse yet, we called for her.
A bit of advice for all of you who think you may have children some day, and like us, have no interest in "natural" child birth. Sometime the Epidural guy (some also call him the Anesthesiologist) gets busy. When he gets busy, it takes time for him to get to you. In the meantime, fortunately, the new labor and delivery nurse gave us a quick referesher course on the breathing exercises we had ignored at baby class.
At this point none of what is happening seems very real to me. I don't know if it was the lack of sleep or the haze I always experience at big time events I've anticipate all my life but which are so singular and unique, their are no reference points to help put them in perspective. I know I am not explaining this very well . . .let me try harder. I first remember feeling the way I was feeling in the labor and delivery room at my Bar Mitzvah. It was an event that, at the time, I had been anticipating for as long as I could remember. When the day came, I remember trying so hard to focus on every detail of everything that was happening so that I could remember it forever. I couldn't though. The harder I tried to focus, the thicker the fog in my mind seemed to get, pushing reality farther and farther away from my concious mind. People would talk to to me, and it seemed like they were a distance away, and that their voices were reverberating over a chasm before they reached my ears. My own voice was equally distant . . .as if my lips and my ears were in different rooms. I think what was happening, looking back on it, was that as everything was happening, I was trying to think of what it reminded me of . . .
I think that's how we experience most of life. This situation I'm in reminds me of that situation. This is what I did then, and this is what happens. If I do X this time, maybe Y will happen instead of Z, which is what happened before. Isn't that, after all, how we learn. When we learn to ride a bike, we first learn what it feels like to fall to the left. The next time we feel ourselves falling to the left, we shift some of our weight to the right, until we learn what if feels like to fall to the right. Eventually, we figure out how much of our weight to throw in the opposite direction to keep ourselves from following. Watch a child learning to ride a bike and you'll see that their body's jerk back and forth, even after they've learned to keep their balance.
Sometimes in life though, we experience events that inspire emotions that are so unlike anything we've ever felt before, we aren't sure what we are supposed feel next - how we should react to those feelings, what's likely to come next . . . the resulting state of mind is often described as surreal, since we've lost the markers that help us put more ordinary feelings in perspective.
But I digress.
The point is, as all this is happening, there is almost a fog that's enveloped me as I lose my frame of reference. . . not knowing what I will feel next, how much more excited I am likely to feel, howm much joy to expect the first time I see my baby's head . . .so much of my time is filled anticipating, trying to guess how I feel next that I am detatched from what is happening now, in real time.
So now that I think about it, the feeling in my head is probably similar to what rachel was feeling below the waist after they inserted the epidural.
Until things started to happen to bring everything into much sharper focus.
About a minute or two after Rachel's epidural was put in, the nurse started having trouble finding the baby's heart beat again. She took the monitor off and re-attached it. That's it, I thought, a problem with the equipment, She found the heartbeat again . . . I know this not because she told me but because my eyes were glued to the read LED numbers that told me how many times per minute my baby's heart was beating.
And then she started shifting Rachel again, and then moving the monitor. And for a while there were no numbers on the read out. Then numbers that were much too low to be the baby's hearbeat.
The nurse buzzed the desk. "Someone go get Dr. Armstrong. Now."
Dr. Armstrong was there. Some relief. He'd know what to do. The nurse handed him a different type of heart monitor. An internal monitor. There is a heartbeat . . . but whose? Mom or baby? It's too slow to be baby . . . it must be mom. Hook up the external monitor again. Reach inside.
There it is, the heart beat is back. It's rising. It's back to normal.
My heartbeat, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. I've experienced a fear so deep, so profound, I have absolutely nothing to compare it to. And there is no fog to soften this emotion. No question that what is happening is all to real.
Now that it is over, I search for comparisons. I think back to times I feared for my own life. I remember the time as a child I was at beach at Ocean City and I was knocked over by a wave, and I couldn't tell if I was upside down or right side up and I couldn't find the ground to plant my feet and enough time passed that I felt certain I would die. But that happened so quickly . . . and it was over almost as quickly as it had begun. That fear didn't have time to ripen. To touch the pit of my soul the way this fear had.
The thought of losing my daughter before she was even born was too much to bear. I was paralyzed. If there was a flight, fight or freeze reflex that kicked in, it wsa freeze. I also felt like I needed to somehow remain strong and confident and reassuring for Rachel's sake. I don't think I succeeded.
After Dr. Armstrong got the heartbeat back, he yelled to someone . . . I don't remember if it was a nurse, the Epidural guy, or someone else, "I need the room. Get it ready" or some words almost exactly like that. I quickly realized that he was talking about the operating room, and he intended to do a C-section.
At first this was a tremendous relief . . . just let this baby be born, before anything worse can happen . . .get her out while she's still alive. Then the fear grabbed me again.
I visualized a knife cutting into my wife's swollen belly . . .the belly through which I'd felt a foot kicking.
Back to now. Dr. Armstrong is talking to me. He is explaining that the umbilical cord seems to be wrapped around the baby's head. As the baby's head drops into Rachel's pelvis, the cord get's squeezed- decreasing the flow of oxygen rich blood from the placenta. He thinks this is the case, becuase when he pushes the baby's head back up out of the pelvis, the baby is no longer in distress.
We could wait, he says, but it's likely to happen again when the baby's head descends further into the pelvis . . . and i don't want to lose the baby's heartbeat for that long again.
And now I am looking at my beautiful wife, thinking about someone cutting her open, and trying as hard as I can not to look scared as I am feeling more dread and apprehension than I ever thought possible, and as choke back hard to try and fight the sobs I feel coming on, I open my mouth to try and say "I need to go to the bathroom, I'll be right back" but opening my mouth allows the sobs to move further up into my throat, and it is all I can do to keep from breaking down as I get the words out. And I must have almost run to the door.
I burst into tears the moment I stepped into the hallway. I indulged myself for about 2 minutes before I went back into the room. I put on the white space suit you've seen in all the pictures, and boties over my shoes, and tied on a face mask. I was going to be allowed in the operating room.
I didn't know how much time I had. I hurried. I didn't think they would wait for me if I fell behind. Should I grab a camera? I had packed a 35 mm Nikon SLR, a Sony Digital Camera, a Polaroid, and a Sony Video camera. I'd had the camera out earlier, to tyr and get Rachel to narrate the movie I had in my head, that started in the Labor and Deliver room, had her yelling at me to turn off the video in the middle of a contraction, and ended with me cutting the cord as they put the baby on her chest.
I grabbed and ran after the gurney wheeling Rachel toward the OR. I got to the door, Dr. Armstrong turned around at the door ot the room and told me to wait out here.
I paced the hall. I paced and worried and paced and worried and try to chase the image of my wife being cut into, my pregnant wife being cut into, I tried to chase that image out of my head. I worried that they were never going to come get me. I worried that I misunderstood their instructions. Should I just go in? Should I keep waiting? My parents were coming . . .we'd called them earlier. Would they be able to find us? I wish they were here to hold me right now. To wait with me.
They came and got me. Finally. I saw Rachel. She was staring at the door, longing for me to come through. I sat on a stool by her head. There was a large blue sheet over her chest that kept us from seeing the other side. We held hands. The video camera hung from my shoulder. I flipped it on, but let it dangle.
We stared at eachother. We didn't anything . Dr. Lee, the epidural guy, was working the anesthesia. He tried to make conversation. To distract us from what was happening. TO communicate to us that this was all very routine. Stuff he'd done dozens of times before. It helped.
We listened as they spoke to eachother. Dr. Lee called out the time as they made the initial incision. Rachel and I looked at eachother, and we strained to move our ears as close to hte sheet as possible without moving our heads. If we were cartoon characters our ears would have grown to ten times there normal size and physically stretched away from our heads toward the sheet.
All we wanted to hear was the sound of a cry. More than I have ever wanted to hear any sound ever, I wanted to hear that cry. We listened. Rachel told me how odd it was to feel herself being tugged at and pulled on, but not feel the pain. Then we heard a wet sucking pop as the skin around Rachel's incision stretched and squeezed as they pulled Emily into the world. Then an eternity passed as we listened twice as hard as before for that cry. And then it came. A gurgle at first, and a very weak cough, and sob, and sob, and then a full throated cry!
She was born. I pressed the record button on the Camera and lifted it from my side, looking for my first glimpse of my little girl.
And she was born.
8:42 AM
Sunday, April 27, 2003
It's just past 11 and Rachel is sound asleep. Emily, on the other hand, is wide awake. I am trying to keep her entertained and quiet until she falls asleep, so mommy can get some much needed rest. I've gone ahead and run an ethernet cable into the nursery, so we could add an old laptop to the home network in here. Emily made her first sound that wasn't a cry yesterday. I guess you could call it a coo, but it didn't sound the sound a pigeon or a dove makes, which is what I think of when I think of cooing. This was higher pitched, but it was definetly a voice, and not a cry or a whimper or a belch. I would have posted something yesterday, but I wasn't sure of what I had heard until she did it again today. She's growing up nicely. She needs me . . . BRB. She's wide awake, lying on her back, in her sleep sack and pajamas, with her eyes wide open. She's not crying, just fussing. Her eyes are more human looking now. You can definetly see more defined pupils. Her eyes follow things now too, and she recognizes something in the mirror when she sees her reflection. It looks like I am going to be up for a while . . .
11:13 PM
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Emily went to the pediatrician today for her 2 week check-up. If you have seen the main site you know that she was born at 6 pounds 3 ounces at birth, 19 1/2 inclhes long, with a 13 1/4 inch head. She lost about 12 % of her body weight, though, during the 1st three days of her life, which scared us a little. She was down to 5 lb. 7 oz at her smallest. Well, good news! Today she weighed in at:
6lb. 9 1/2 ounces,
20 inches,
13 3/4 head
As far as norms go, her weight puts her in the 25th percentile, her length and head circumference in the 50th percentile.
What they don't attempt to quantify is her beauty, which both Rachel and I beleive is in the 99th percentile!
Good news. Thought I would share.
11:52 AM
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Good Morning. My baby Emily just turned 2 weeks old! She was born at 8:37 am on April 8th, 2003. She already has her own home page - I have been trying to keep that up to date, and will continue to do so, but this is an easier way to quickly post upates and information, for those who are interested. I am not sure yet what capabilities exist on a page like this. Can I insert pictures? Videos? I will see. I have already figured out how to insert links, at least. Emily and I will discover the world of Blogging together, I suppose. That's all for now. Please check back often for more. I plan to add more useful, less self-indulgent blogs soon, like a baby-product review Blog, with reviews and suggestions regarding all of the baby products we are experimenting with, etc.
10:38 PM
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