Sorry to be Tardy

We've entered a truly splendid part of the early life of Sania. It's not easy, for sure, but it's easier than life with a certain firebrand we know well. Sania's sleep isn't dreamy for us (K, of course, bears the brunt of it), but it's a lot better than the sleep patterns of her room's previous occupant. She nurses like a champ, she has gone as many as 5.75 hours of sleep at a stretch at night (though it isn't commonplace yet), and she smiles and coos like a baby in commercial.

Reid continues to be a really nice big brother. A little bit of the expected impatience with Sania-care has arisen, mostly in the form of gentle requests to 'put the baby in the basket' which is Reid's word for bassinet. But he more often wants to hold her, and told K the other day about how he was going to teach her to do things, which is funny because several of them he doesn't yet know how to do himself.

School-wise, Reid is doing mostly fine in his new school, and we are both more confident about his ability to move again in September and more concerned that we're pressing our luck. But the morning routine, which now involves multiple modes of transportation and plenty of Reid supervision, if he wakes early enough to allow plenty of play at home (usually a safe bet), doesn't end with a crying jag and demands to stay at home, most days.

Sania's growing by leaps and bounds. We're between her 5th and 6th week, and we're already in the size 2 diapers, and mostly through our 0-3 months clothes. This is partly because she is trending tall (they fit around her, but the length of her torso outreaches the length of the clothes), but also because she has a habit of going through clothing pretty fast (hopefully remedied by the size 2 diapers).

As with the wonderful days of blooming recognition with her brother, K and I are continuing to have reveletory little moments when Sania will look at us and smile, or even half-laugh, and though she isn't really ready to play, she definitely seems to be enjoying herself. Knock on wood items? Sure. She hasn't spit-up as much as Reid (though the aforementioned diaper-adjustments have been similarly hazardous). We're waiting for the other shoe to drop sleep-wise, but in the meantime, keep our fingers crossed. And she hasn't asked to get her belly-button pierced, but once I found out we were having a girl, I began preparing myself for that eventual occurence, so I should be ready when it happens. In about 35 years.

Anyhow, here's a bunch of pictures. Enjoy.

Sania Continues to Grow

There are a lot of eating going on here at our house. K and I joke that we're eating like a family from the 50's. Sania drinks and drinks and drinks. K just sits on different pieces of furniture feeding Sania. Because she's such a good eater, it means K must be super-sentitive about what she eats. Many, many things translate into painful gas for Sania. That's why we're eating like working men from America's golden age: meat and potatoes.

Sania has learned to smile a little bit. I don't think it has anything to do with whether she's happy or not, though it does come sometimes when you want it, which is nice. It was a lot warmer today than we expected, and before long, Sania was cutting loose in her birthday suit.

Sania attented her first wedding this weekend (see, it's not all blogging and laundry), and although, in fact, two very nice people were getting married, it was difficult for those in attendance to not be momentarily dazzled by the chic young lady in the red gingham dress.

I tried to get Sania comfortable for some photography action while the sun was on the wane and K was handling Reid-bathing duties one night last week. People who know Reid's bathtime ritual well know that it's a surprise for him to let mommy crack into the bathtub rotation. One drawback of the schedule we've somewhat settled into is that after a long night of feeding (sometimes as sparingly as once, sometimes as often as three time before 6 am) Reid and I get up and get ready to go to school and work. We bang around downstairs and probably wake K more than she admits, but we try to let her and Sania sleep. As a result, K feels like she doesn't see Reid as much anymore, and I'm hungry for some Sania-time when I get home from work.

This particular night, Reid went for the mommy-bath (though I was called in to consult on the story-time and Sania was anxious to drink some delicious milk from her sole-source provider) and I snapped some pictures of Sania lounging in the fading sunlight.

I think they turned out pretty good. As family-photographer, I'm getting a little annoyed at our pocket camera (Canon Powershot A-400) because it seems to be obsessively focusing on the wrong thing in a frame, such as a lampshade in the background versus the extremely cute infant or the grinning toddler in the center of the shot. I'm mostly back on the Sony Mavica from 2003, which takes fewer pictures but of a higher quality. The main drawback of both of course is slow-button-mashing-response, and the Mavica, which really can take a nice picture, weighs as much as our dog.

To Sania: The day you were born

Sania, as I sit on the couch and watch you and your mom play on your butterfly, I realize that now's a good time to tell you about the day you were born.

We went to bed the night before Easter thinking we'd probably get up and go over to your Aunt Naynay's for a nice Easter lunch. Lucky for those folks, we were only responsible for bringing drinks to lunch. Because in the wee hours Sunday morning, your mom sorta-kinda thought maybe her water was...leaking. Not breaking, but leaking. Her doctor had been down there giving her the business trying to make you come out on Good Friday, and it looks like her efforts were going to bear fruit.

Nonetheless, your mom woke me to tell me about the developments, and we decided to monitor the situation until morning. The sun came up, and I opened my eyes to your mom standing beside the bed in exactly the same spot she was standing in when she told me she thought maybe something was happening with you five hours earlier. She said maybe we ought to go to the hospital.

Two other things were going on. The doctor had scheduled us to induce your arrival Monday afternoon. Therefore your grandparents on your mom's side hopped on a plane from Atlanta. They were sleeping downstairs. Down the hall, your brother wasn't sleeping. He was shouting. So we needed to get Grammie and Pawpaw up and get Reid locked in to some kind of breakfast solution while we went to the hospital.

Much shouting and sobbing later, we were on our way to the hospital where you were born. It was just about eight a.m. on Easter Sunday, April 16th.

The hospital where you were born recently did some renovation, so it's a long thin hospital linking about four big buildings. The new ER is in building number one. The baby-delivering portion is in building number three. We thought we needed to go through the new ER, because it wasn't regular business hours. We were wrong, and two nice ladies in the ER stuck your mom in a wheelchair and we proceeded to drive her through the hospital which is still having some renovations done, getting lost a couple times, and eventually winding our way to the Women and Infant Health place, back to labor and delivery, which everyone called L and D.

We signed in and got a room. Lucky number 10. Our nurse bustled around getting things ready, putting monitors on your mom to listen to your heartbeat, and we waited for a doctor. When one came in, she checked your mom out, looked at her chart, and decided that we would stay and have a baby that day. Because your mom had a positive group B strep test, she would have antibiotics added to her saline along with some pitocin to bring steadier contractions. Her water hadn't broken, but it was leaking.

Unlike with your brother, your mom was feeling fine while we waited for you to come that Sunday. We went to the hospital on a Sunday morning with him as well, but your mom had a fever that day, and it was two weeks until his due date. Your due date, my dear, was the Thursday before Easter, and we were in penalty minutes with your pregnancy. Anyhow, because of your mom's fever, or maybe because we were first-time parents, the situation in the delivery room that day was tense for us both. I don't remember a lot of it disctinctly, because I was really worried about your mom feeling better. What I don't recall is being bored.

Awaiting your arrival, Ms. Sania, was pleasantly uneventful. The most excitement was figuring out how my mom would get from your Aunt Naynay's house to our house to get your brother so he could have an Easter egg hunt while your mom's parents got themselves over to the hospital in time to attend the birth. Otherwise, your mom watched some TV and I read a magazine. Maybe with your brother we thought about how our lives would change, or we thought about all the things we hadn't finished, or we just worried. With you, we were ready. We wanted to meet you. It was a waiting game.

Some time after noon, the doctor decided it was time to move things along a little bit, and she went ahead and broke the membrane in which you comfortably had been floating for the better part of a year. Your mom's always been a champion water drinker, and things were well-hydrated throughout the pregnancy. Of course, your mom had a nice gentle dose of anasthetic (not as much as with your brother, for whose delivery your mom recalls 'not feeling my legs'), so the contractions were technically getting stronger, but she was mostly just surfing through them without much pain. She's a champ, your mom.

By late in the three o'clock hour, your mom told the nurse that she thought maybe it was time to push a little. For weeks -- literally weeks -- your mom had been telling me that it felt like you were right there, on top of her pelvic bone, waiting to get out. But obviously, that feeling was more acute at this time. The nurse took a look at your launch-pad for the oxygen-breathing world and her eyes widened. "Don't do anything. The baby's right there. I'm going to get to the doctor."

We sat there, we two, waiting for the doctor.

Things happened very quickly from here on out. It took longer to put all the plastic and autoclaved instruments and accessories out for the doctor to run things in the delivery room than it did for your mom to push you out. The pushing, since you won't know for a while, goes like this: When a little monitor shows that a contraction is coming (along with the pain your mom is feeling), the nurse and your dad stand on either side of your mom and try to help her push. She only pushes for ten seconds at a time, basically two or three times per contraction. Your mom pushed nine times in the space of twelve minutes. The last push brought us you.

When your brother was born, because of your mom's fever, a neonatal specialist was in the room to make sure he was totally fine (he was). I recall skipping back and forth across the few feet from where he was carefully inspected and your mom was catching her breath and regaining her stamina. With Reid, she pushed for nearly two hours. When you were born, they took you over to a table where the nurse checked some things but let me get right up there next to you.

This is the first picture I took of you.

Your mom recovered quickly and let me take a picture of her holding you that I will cherish for the rest of my life and show no one else. After a little bit of holding and a little bit of nursing, they took you down to the nursery and I got to come. They bathed you and brought you up to temperature and checked to make sure everything was solid and intact. It was. You enjoyed the bath, and you showed that all your systems work fine by, well, demonstrating them. (Something you've continued to do admirably.) You were born at 4:11 p.m. Our life changed forever at that moment, again. Welcome to the world, little one. Your mom, brother and I love you.

Dimensions

Sania had a doctor's appointment this week, and things are going swimmingly from a medical perspective. The doctor says that the goal for newborns is to return to their birth weight by two weeks of life. Then you add an additional ounce for every day past two weeks. We were at the doctor on Sania's 18th day of life, and her birth weight was 8 pounds, 8 ounces. That means our target was 8 pounds, 12 ounces.

Sania weighed in at a comfortable 9 pounds and 11 ounces. The doctor said she's eating fine.

Other things proceeded normally. On Sunday last week the nasty little doodad on her belly button fell off, which is a relief to Reid and several of our friends who were freaked/grossed out by it.

I'm preparing a mega-post of all the folks who've visited Sania, so if you've been around, look for yourself in the next few days. I've also got to put the day-Sania-was-born post together, but it's been busy around here...

Luckily, Reid was available to give me some pointers on holding the baby. I don't know what I'd do without him.

Heavy Lifting, Of Two Kinds

Tonight I planned on writing the big post to Sania about how she came to join the world, from K waking up after midnight on Easter morning to the glorious moment at 4:11 pm when she took her first breath, but instead I ended up co-managing the exciting end of our family laundry fast, and folding until the wee hours.

So instead, here's a little something from one of Sania's first trips out into the world. Reid was feeling a little bit jealous (also needed a nap) because Sania was debuting her on-parent travel system. Unfortunately, because he's huge and because she just had a baby, K couldn't scoop up Reid to offer parental balance and stop the whining. The solution: Pack-Daddy.

I had been carrying Sania in the Baby Bjorn because we were visiting Eastern Market and it's a bit tough to maneuver strollers about there. Plus the strolling parent can't get up to the delicious free samples of strawberries and apples, and that wouldn't be right. So I had Sania snapped in pretty comfortably and she was dozing, dreaming, no doubt, of another parent's nourishing contents. To achieve the Reid-on-shoulders trick, I needed to lower myself down on my haunches, instruct Reid of the critical nature that his legs stay far far apart, and then power lift him -- clear of the baby -- over my head and onto my shoulders. The expression on my face tells you that I'm surprised -- and remain so to this moment -- that one or two members of my family weren't kicked in the head Sunday.

Second in our heavy lifting category is the early adventures of Ms. Sania as she attempts to exercise her neck muscles and pick that pretty little noggin up off the blanket. Tummy time is banned (as is riding in the Baby Bjorn) until the umbilical cord makes its long-awaited exit, so she mostly gets to exercise her head when jockeying for position during her marathon feeding sessions. But tonight, she braced herself and decided, "I...will lift...my head."

(You can click on these to see slightly bigger versions.)