photo history

I found the card reader…Here’s a quick series of photos of us.

In the hospital; she looks alert, and I look like..well..how I felt:

 IMG_9010

We eventually got to go home, on the condition that we keep her on this lighted pad all the time:
IMG_9013

That cord was three feet long! I could barely FEED her on the thing, let alone carry her around the house.

But it left, and she got to be more comfortable:
 IMG_9015

See that quilt she’s on? my friend Veronica made it for her! Baby Veronica spendsd lots of time on it being tired and sleepy:
IMG_9018

Not that she sleeps all the time. If I balance her carefully on my crossed knee, she is very interested in watching me as I check emails or create a blog post:
watching me blog

 

She was born with alert eyes.

 

 

 

 

a good night..redefined

so my child had me up a lot last night, but in the end as an act of mercy (from who, I can’t say, but I’m grateful) let me sleep a full two and a half hours.

I threw my back out. Too much hunching, perhaps. Or maybe it was inevitable that something go amiss after all the massive effort the delivery entailed. But what the means is most of the day before and all yesterday I could barely walk and standing was iffy.

That means I haven’t had a shower in forever. I am so filthy. If I were a blanket I would not let myself NEAR my child until I’d been laundered. What with diaper changing encounters, milk and formula dripping and spurting in all directions, spit up and the other post-delivery oozings, etc I am not fit to exist outside a trash can.

But Chris put some ice on my back yesterday, and I think I can stand long enoiugh to shower at last. Veronica is lying on my knee as i write this one handed. Once she decides to sleep again I’m popping the bath&Bodu works and rejoining the human race.

Home Excitement

I can’t seem to find the card reader for still photos, but I promised to show what she looks like. Here is our child in an action sequence:

As I suspected would be the case, our loving family dog is very very concerned with the care and well-being of the new person in the house. She wags constantly when Veronica is visible, and will bark alarm when the child is really crying.

I’m pretty sure she doubts my competence as a parent. But here’s a glimpse:

So yesterday was the first full day home with our Daughter. It was so exciting to be home again!

She seemed to like her crib, which was good, because the alien space blanket only had a a 3-ft umbilical cord. We had to move the armchair closer to the crib just so I could move her out to feed her (Every three Hours! Or Two! or One! doctors keep telling me I’m not feeding her enough, because if I was she wouldn’t be jaundiced!)

Anyway, she was great and stayed there all day pretty much sleeping. Chris and I ran around realizing all the things that so OBVIOUSLY had to be changed now that she was here.

I meant to take a nap, but I didn’t.

So, veteran parents…you see this one coming don’t you? A classic rookie mistake.

“She seemed tired, so I just let her sleep..” all day which means that all night she is not interested in sleeping.

We had a rough night. No sleeping for anyone.

But the good news is, at our doctor visit today they said she is not jaundiced anymore and the blanket is exorcised at last.

Last night was rough, but we vowed to do better today. I have to keep the child awake for some periods during the day, or it wil just happen again. The above shots are from the ‘stay awake’ efforts this afternoon

Introducing Veronica Grace Daley born 1/22/09

Just got home from the hospital last night, totally exhausted and overwhelmed.

BUT! Vernonica was born 8 lbs 10 oz. They induced labor at ~7pm on 1/20 and she entered the world ~29 hours later at 2:14 am.  She’s 20 inches long, with the most alert eyes. She looks a lot like her daddy.

She’s beautiful.

I’m still laid pretty low from the labor, no real complications, but even a good delivery is an atomic bomb to a woman’s body.

Veronica is healthy, but we have to keep her on a science fiction glowing space mat  because she’s got elevated Bilirubin (modern slang for jaundice). It makes it harder to cuddle with her.

Pictures to come, I promise. But be patient: our hands are very full right now.

Tick tock

As of now, it will be 48 hours until I arrive at the hospital to begin birthing this child.

It seems both very near and impossibly far away. I am eager to trade in these old tired uncomfortable symptoms for the new and unknown ones that come from delivering a baby.

One good thing is, I’m sleeping really well. I guess I know that I won’t be sleeping so well on tuesday night, and somehow that let me sleep for about 11 hours today. I’ll need my strength.

One fear I have is that the old tired uncomfortable symptoms will stick around to keep the new symptoms company for a while. I HOPE that my hands and feet will stop swelling the instant the delivery is over. But maybe not.

Well, it can’t start to be over until the delivery is over. So, nothing to do but wait and nap as much as possible.

d-day: Jan 20th

Visited the Doctor yesterday, and he is not willing to wait for my little girl to come out on her own. She’s healthy, even more than me since I have a cold. But she’s big.  ‘Large for Gestational Age’ they call it. She’s 9 and half pounds, which is quite a bit past the LGA threshold. They say a girl is LGA once she’s 8 lbs 14 oz. We probably passed that last month.

It’s apparently not a problem for her to be big, but it’s a little bit of a problem for me. Then again, having her inside me is enough of a problem. The solution is to put some air between us.

So it’s scheduled for Tuesday night. I’m very relieved to have a known end date. And Chris is pleased to have a known schedule for this thing.

Stretched out next to him, I said “It’s amazing that you are just the same as you’ve always been, while I am so changed.”

He smiled. “I have a painting of myself in the attic.”

“Okay, good. I can’t be the only one suffering.”

Mattel says: All your Bratz are belong to us

When I was a kid, my mom did not let me play with Barbie dolls because they presented an impossible standard of beauty. I didn’t care that much for dolls, but I loved playing dress-up and did resent the Barbie sanctions. My  daughter will play with Barbie if she wants.

But a couple years back, I encountered the Bratz dolls. These little 10″ fabrications of feminine ideal are just about the sluttiest thing for ages 3 and up. The Bratz make the anorexic Barbie (a 5’9″ Barbie in real measurements would have a 36″ chest, 18 waist and 33″ hips) look wholesome.  No way would a child of mine be playing with these belly-baring, poof-lipped pubescent prettygirls that truly belong in the virtual reality section of an Adult DVD store.

Bratz came about in 2001. That’s not long after Brittany Spears declared she was saving herself ’til marriage, even if though she wanted someone to hit her “Baby, One More Time”.  The Spice Girls were peaked and already broken up by the time the Bratz got packaged, so the dolls were not breaking new ground.

But the Bratz were for little girls, and therefore lingered longer.  I would not be able to stop my kid from seeing these and wanting their hyper-sexualized glamour as they stand in plastic-packaged splendor in the toy aisle of EVERYWHERE. They are in the zeigiest. Pandora was here  and the box is open.

But now, I see new hope.

Turns out, Carter Bryant, the creator of Bratz, was working for Mattel when he sold the idea of Bratz to MGA Entertainment. Since he was on their payroll, Mattel had the rights to his ideas. The lawyers began their work.

I don’t know if Mr. Bryant brought his teenage slut fantasy doll up for consideration to his then-employer Mattel. They already had been making and selling Barbie for more than 40 years. Perhaps they had more shame than MGA proved to have.

Either way, the courts say that Mattel owns Bratz now. It’s a business after all, and this WSJ article asks:

MattelInc. faces a big question in the wake of a federal judge’s order handing it control of MGA Entertainment Inc.’s popular Bratz dolls: Are the Bratz worth more to Mattel dead or alive?

The times have changed. Brittany Spears long ago lost her schoolgirl allure. And isn’t it a common rule of thumb, that hemlines rise and fall with the economy? Let these barely-clad Bratz recede into history already.

Please Mattel, let the Bratz die. Barbie can handle the future.

 

 

 

 

symptoms

While I am sleeping, a small ninja creeps into my mouth. This is easy, since my nose is stuffed up and I have to breathe with my mouth open.

He creeps into my mouth with full ninja weaponry and stabs the back of  my throat repeatedly.

I dont’ wake up right away, but I do wake up and usually reach for some water since the winter desert air of my home has stripped the mucous membranes of my oral cavity of all moisture. I reach for some water first to add the moisture that nature intended my mouth to have, but as soon as I swallow I discover the ravages the small ninja has left behind on my tonsils.

Tonsil wounds heal slowly, apparently.

d-day minus 8: recontextualizing

It might be even longer. I suspect that it will be longer.

Because of all the wonderful hormones that are peaking at this final moment, there is pretty much no way I am going to feel good until after the hormone-factory (known as the placenta) leaves my body to normalize itself. So, feeling good is several weeks away.

To add insult to injury, there is this nasty cold.

I don’t like being uncomfortable. But I also don’t really like complaining.

So here’s my plan: the goal of each day is to reach the end of it. Not to accomplish tasks or learn things or even to ‘have a nice day.’ The goal is to get through the time.

Time is weighing very heavy on my hands. As well as everything else in my body. But maybe this is sort of like an 8 day plane ride. Just have to get through the uncomfortableness in the most dignified way possible.

D-Day -10: more fun with cat and dog

What with being pregnant, and the pregnancy-related discomfort (carpal tunnel is making my hands unable to hold a book while laying down–the only position I can maintain for long, and having a cold going on 10 days, I am finding what entertainment I can.

Here is my first movie. I should find a way of adding it to the “Animal Tongues” collection:

I sniffed the tuna hard to see if my sense of smell was beginning to return. It is not.
Chris gave me a pained look, and said it was just as well for the moment