taken on her 2 weeks birthday, this is pretty much what veronica considers the height of entertainment:
“moving my arm..and the other arm…and feet! and legs! aaaahhhh… wait…do I see something?”
She doesn’t really interact with toys yet…but maybe I should get her a rattle…That might go over big
Chris held Veronica yesterday for me, so I could take a shower. He was in bed, and holding little V while he watched Bloomberg news channel as he does every morning when he wakes up. I came back in a towel to hear him say to her: “Look at you making frowny faces. You are so serious! ‘We shall fight them on the beaches; we shall fight them in the crib…'”
Then he saw me. “What? all babies look like Winston Churchill”
We’ve been practicing referring to each other as mommy and daddy. It’s weird, but we’re getting used to it. It’s only been a week and..some days. My days are counted out in 3 hour sections; that’s how often I have to feed my child day or night. So, calendar days seem impossible to get my head around.
Everyone says that being a parent is amazing. Of course, saying something like that never prepared a person for it. Yes, it’s a lot of work. And yes, she is precious and adorable. And none of those sentences deserve to be written because they don’t get close to containing the meaning–the reality of it.
This weekend over-stressed me and therefore Veronica. My body is on some strange auto-pilot (lactatation being the most obvious symptom) and Veronica is just so new to the world that it doesn’t take much to throw either or both of us off. So, since Saturday night she has been experiencing intestinal distress.
Poor thing! I could hear her tummy gurgling, and I could definitely hear her screams. She could not calm down, she would not go to sleep. So the first night you think it’s just that one time. But it went on and I was ragged.
The responsibility of it hits me. I have to help her. She needs me. I have to be aware of all her needs even before she is. So her screams and lack of sleep for both of us took it’s toll.
In the end, I finally decided that I needed to do SOMETHING. Poking around on the internet I got an idea of what was wrong and hit upon a solution. I tried it and GLORY BE, she slept very well last night.
So did I. I hope it keeps up.
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:
We eventually got to go home, on the condition that we keep her on this lighted pad all the time:
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:
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:
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:
She was born with alert eyes.
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.
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
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.
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.”
We have seen one species’ response to the Christmas air threat.
Here is the response from the other
Skellig cat keeps a cool head.
So my brother Mark sent a toy to Chris for a Christmas present: a remote control helicopter. After opening the package, Chris opened it right away and was impressed that Mark had also included the batteries for the helicopter. It was put to use right away.
The presents from my family get opened on Christmas Eve, since that has been our tradition as long as I can remember. So the helicopter had star billing for that night.
As you can read in a previous post, I got a video recorder from Chris. Since I’ve been sick and Chris has been busy, we didn’t get to put these two delightful toys together until today.
General Chris said that the controls were difficult to manage, but he seemed to improve with practice.
Perhaps the next exercise will include the cat.
UPDATE: Lucy Dog recognizes herself in the video, and will bark at her recorded barkings. Maybe it will take a while for her to get used to being a movie star.