I Don't Know Who's Luckier

...Hale, who got held yesterday by his other crazy-in-love-with-him grandma, or Patsy (Amy's mom), that very same grandma.


I think they're going to be getting along just fine.

Six Pounds.

And I think it's all in his cheeks.

Huge!

The boy weighed in at 5lbs 11.5oz today. I think growing so fast is why his red blood cell production can't keep up. He got the first shot of EPO today. Made him holler. But it seems like the right thing to do.

Yesterday Hale's paternal grandmother got to be the first non-parent/non-nurse to hold him.


Sweet or what?


I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the effect of hearing your mother talking sweet mommy-talk in her sweet mommy voice to your very own son for the first time is a powerful one.

Whoooo.

Good powerful.

Happy Lunaversary, Monthling!

Hale turned a month old yesterday.

A MONTH!

Can't hardly believe it.

He's doing great. Weighing in at 5 and a quarter pounds.

Though: He's getting extra iron and some extra sleep, to counter a (totally normal) lag in his red blood cell count. He's a little anemic, and if he doesn't step it up a bit in the next while (like by the end of the week), they're talking about putting him on a drug that's meant to kick-start that production.

Epogen. What some Tour de France guys got kicked out for using. So, you know, that's cool. Right?

(thanks to wonderful nurse Nancy for snapping the picture!)

An Auspicious Number

Hale is now officially an American.

5 Pounds, Baby!

It feels like a milestone. Five pounds isn't so small. Four pounds, three pounds... that is pretty wee. Five pounds is sack of flour. Sacks of flour are what we used in high school in health class when we got to the unit called 'Family Life' in which we carried around sacks flour and pretended they were babies. We drew faces on them,  named them and were instructed not to drop them on our way to math. 

(If I go back to teaching, I would like to teach health and redo this curriculum-- make 'em carry around tiny monkeys. Hale is way more like a monkey than a sack of flour. Darwin- umm, was right. There is no way around it.)

Tasting Food For the First Time

What do you take for granted?

That food has a taste? That you get it with your mouth? That you can control how much and how fast you take it in?

Yesterday Hale ate his first food. With his actual mouth. Mother's milk, in a bottle. Sweet/sour Mimi, the crazy* night nurse gave him two full feedings with a bottle. "Nippling him," is how they say it.

(*crazy=awesome, in a crazy way. you should meet her. you'd like her.)

The deal is, the wiring inside his head (or any kid's, at 34 weeks' gestation) generally isn't squared away for the holy triumvirate: Suck+Swallow+Breathe. He can reliably do any two, and at this point requires some special attention to ensure he doesn't get himself into any trouble gulping that stuff down.

I got to feed him about a half-feeding (20ml, or about 2/3 oz--he's getting about 40ml per feeding, eight times a day) with a bottle yesterday. It made me nervous, the nurse saying, things like, 'watch you don't drown him, now!"


Takes concentration not to drown your son. Pacing.

He's gaining weight pretty fast (4lbs 13oz today), and now with this starting to eat thing, we're about equal parts excited and scared they're going to send the pup home with us sooner rather than later.

Nobody's given us a timeline, or any kind of targets exactly (like a weight, say, 6lbs, that seems to be in lots of people's heads) for when he'll be able to go home.

Pretty much, when Hale is able to regulate his own temperature reliably (check, basically), gain weight from food he's taking by mouth (well under way), and more or less stop with the little 'forgetting to breathe' and 'not bothering to have a heartbeat' episodes (which he's improving at at a rate which seems slow but which doesn't seem to alarm anyone who ought to know better)--then he'll get out of there.

Oh, and I literally just this minute found this out: He also has to nipple from a breast or a bottle for all eight feedings in order to come home. I think I foresee a singularly tired Amy in our near future!

Hale and his new real estate!

Hale moved into a crib yesterday! No more incubator (as long as he is able to maintain his temperature.) I think he likes it.



It must seem like a lot of room for him.

The Glamor of Breast Pumping

I had heard moms refer to it--but much like the pain of childbirth--the gruesome details were not given.

When the lactation nurse at the hospital wheeled in a pump (I call it my "R2 Unit" as in Luke Skywalker's "Me and this R2 Unit have been through a lot together.") just hours after Hale was born and explained to me I should attach it to my breasts 8 times a day for 10-15 minutes, I did not realize she was handing me a new career--as a milk maker.

It takes a serious practice in meditation to move away from images of a dairy farm when pumping milk with Hale no where near my mammaries.

I am reading a trashy novel (Twilight, crack trash not to be given to tweens) that my friend Derek gave me to keep my mind off watching every drop plop in the bottle. I need to now produce 38 ml every three hours to keep up with my son's meals.

Not that I am counting the milliliters... Okay, am a little bit--if I don't produce enough, Hale gets formula. Which I can't help but sneer a bit as I type, even though my brain knows it's fine for him. I can't help but think how breastmilk--"liquid gold"--is the best thing for him.

I started seeing an acupuncturist to help me with lactation. Yes. It involves needles in the boobs themselves. I didn't look. Yes. More milk is coming in. But who knows if it is the needles or the various other things I am trying...

• fenugreek
• other herb pills, from the nice naturopathic acupuncturist--I don't know exactly what they are, but they come in a sweet medieval looking little brown bottle
• Mother's Milk tea
• massive amounts of protein
• sleep (hard to get with the 8x a day pumping)
• and my favorite... skin to skin contact with my Hale (Last night was the first night it just started spontanously spewing from my right breast while he was having a "breast experience" on my left. That is what they call it... "breast experience" when he just hangs out there. "Liquid gold" indeed--the nurse saw this and scampered up with a bottle to hold there to collect the droplets, in fact.)
  

Hale has started to suck a little bit, and it hurts like, well, it hurts like a mothersucker!


This is not a dramatization! It was this painful.

Feeding your baby... who knew... (I mean, apart from all the other mothers, of course!)

Childrens Books. Any You LOVE?

A while ago, well before Amy was even pregnant, I bookmarked a page in "Heading East," a photo blog I read. Later, after we found out we were going to be parents, the author posted a follow-up.

Each link takes you to a list of the author's favorite kids books. We haven't had time to check out all of these, of course, but I expect we will try. And into that mix we want to ask you what children's books you loved as a kid, or as a parent.

Amy and I plan to read to Hale at least fourteen or fifteen hours a day, of course.

Because it just firms up my respect for his esthetic and perspective, and because it sounds right to me, I'll excerpt Raul Gutierrez's kids' books advice here:

My general advice on buying kids books:

1. Always buy hardcover. A used hardcover is usually better than a new softcover. If your kids loves a book, he will read it hundreds of times. Softcover books just don't hold up.

2. As a general rule avoid celebrity authors.

3. Avoid modern "message" books.

4. Love the politically incorrect. The Tiny Nonsense Stories feature gun wielding kittens, cigarette smoking ducks, and pig families that sneak around scaring the daylights out of each other. Kids of course love these stories.

5. For vintage books, never worry about finding a first edition if you plan on actually reading your children's books. Your kids will want to bring them to the dinner table, they will bend them, tear, them and so on. This is how children's books like to be read. Just find the cleanest cheapest copy you can find.

6. Don't buy junk books - novelizations of children's films, books about Disney or Pixar characters ect...

7. Don't underestimate your kid. If you read books to them regularly, even books that might seem a little advanced for them, they will absorb them like little sponges. In a few months you'll be shocked when they start reading the books back to you from memory.

Susan Ryan, of A River Reader, the Guerneville, CA bookstore that hosted the first Edges of Bounty reading, was kind enough to send us a little package of four cute books from this series. They're books about different kinds of ethnic food--Mexican, Jewish, Soul Food and Dim Sum are the titles of the books we've been reading to Hale.

If you ever get to Guerneville, do yourself a favor and stop into A River Reader. Great bookstore, seriously.

So... what are your favorite kids books?

Group Health, We Love You!

Amy here. I am back ...well, a little bit. A slightest hint of a routine is emerging for our new life as parents of Hale who lives in a hospital instead of at home.

We go in the morning for a few hours and in the evening for a few hours and pretend to be moving forward with the rest of our life in between. This is how we have done it for the past few days.

Before that I was at the hospital pretty much all day until one of Hale's (our) nurses so gently, so sweetly told me go GO HOME and REST. I love her for that.

I just got a customer service survey from Group Health in the mail. Besides thinking about how blessed we are for having a son who came so early and is doing so well—(He just was weighed in at a little over 4 pounds and he is breathing totally on his own)—I think about how on earth I can properly thank all the people at Group Health who have been my absolute heroes.

Every nurse watching over Hale is incredible. It is so clear they are doing their job out of love. I turn the corner in the Special Care Nursery toward Hale's corner ("a womb with a view", one nurse calls it) and 85% of the time there is a sweet someone there, checking on him, talking to him, caring for him. Then I walk in and they check on, talk with and care about ME too.

They are teaching us so much — tricks on how to change a diaper, the ergonomics of breastfeeding, that it is OK (indeed, necessary!) to leave the hospital. When I talk about the nurses at Group Health, I pretty much well up with tears every time. They are taking care of my baby and I know they are doing a better job than I could right now. Scott and I feel so grateful. So blessed to have them.

Boy oh boy, did he come out quick!

This was not the birth we had planned. For months I have been envisioning a home birth. A quiet, intimate affair. What went down was neither quiet nor intimate. It was bright, loud (mostly because of my yelling—probably would have freaked out our neighbors anyway). Oh, and the birth was quick. Like, really quick.

Here is the timeline:

9:30 pm on Feb. 17 after our first birth class...(We were so excited after class. Our teacher, Penny Simkin, made pushing out baby sound so empowering. Maybe I got over excited about the whole thing.) we got home and I begin to feel funny. Like the baby was resting heavy on my pelvis.

Felt like he was in there all sprawly-style. Scott took this picture, which he calls, 'dislocated baby'"
(Note protruding Hale on the left side there)

3:30 am on Feb. 18 — I wake up and have Scott rub my belly hoping it will convince the baby to move a bit. I decide that I will call the midwives in the morning to see if there is some trick to get the baby to adjust its position.

6:30 am — I wake up to do some yoga, but it just doesn't feel good. I look up the midwives number to see what time I can call.

7:15 am — I know something is going on. I wake up Scott "Umm, I think we should call the midwives." I worry that it might not be enough of an emergency, but then I almost collapse with pain and figure it is OK if Scott makes the call. Scott hands me the phone and the midwife hears my voice and says, "Honey, I think you are in labor. You got to get to the hospital." I don't remember panicking. I put toothpaste in my purse, but not a toothbrush and we left.

7:25 am — No time to think or be afraid. We are on the road and there is morning traffic on I-5 and I am yelling something fierce. I grab onto Scott's hand as he drives through red lights on Capitol Hill. I never think "Oh crap, I am in labor" I just brace myself against Scott's hand and the car door and scream from the gut.

8:05 — We arrive at Urgent Care. I am whisked off to a delivery room. Everyone was calm but acted swift. Some part of me knew it was an emergency, but I was so focused on getting through the pain, that I just went with it. I still felt no fear. I just felt I had to get this job done.

Scott was right beside me. I had his hand the whole time. I kept looking in his eyes. At one point, I remember he had my purse around his shoulder. There was no time to ask what to do with such a thing. He was in one of those hospital scrub outfits with my Queen Bee purse he got me for my birthday resting on his lap. It was such an odd sight and so funny, but there was no time or energy to laugh.

9:02 — There was some crazy pain. (And, damn I can't remember it. Our bodies and brains are amazing.) Hale True is born! I am reeling and remain reeling.

I felt so exhilarated after pushing him out. I felt like I really accomplished something. I was so in love with the nurses and the doctor that were there with me. One amazing woman was holding my hand, my leg so it would stay open and was taking pictures at the same time.

I felt like I had known them forever. I felt closer to Scott than ever before. I now we have a baby boy— I love this kid. In the end, I wouldn't change a thing about my birth experience.

It turns out it was everything it was supposed to be.

Can You Anthropomorphize a Baby?

Hale always gives us the sweet eyes when we're going to leave at night.The feel guilty sweet eyes.

What, you think we want to leave you there? We always end up staring at him for 45 minutes extra and being late wherever we're trying to go (i.e., bed).

The Bird. The Dart.

This boy and that gesture, I swear! I went to take a picture of Hale in the Isolette porthole. The camera comes up, and he flips me the bird. Just flips it. Hard. And not for the first time, either.

I was like, whoa there, rocker...

Later tonight, we were visiting some lovely friends, and espied this lovely car in their lovely neighborhood.
It's a Dodge Dart, pretty sure a '66, and I'm pretty sure it's identical to the car I rode around in mostly as a kid. Probably not when I was as young as Hale, but it's the first car I remember. The license plate on ours is the first thing I memorized: OGT-097. That chalk white is still my favorite color of white.

Between this car and that ceramic cat thing, it seems clear the vein of nostalgia comes a bit closer to the surface when you become a dad.

(Blog Admin Crap) Trouble With Comments?

So it seems that posting comments has been kind of troublesome for some folks? I love the idea that this blog can be a conversation, but if the comments don't work, that fails. 

I've been twiddling with the settings to see if I can make it easier. Please email me (squire at nonfictionphoto dot com) if you have trouble with comments, and let me know what didn't work. 

Thanks!

Reconsidering Time: Counting Down/Counting Up

Sometime during Amy's pregnancy, I began to tell people I was understanding time for the first time in my life. Feeling it.

It had to do, of course, with the Very Big Thing coming, that we knew very little about. That we were counting down to. And every day, the closer it came, the less we felt we knew about it.

It was a new mode of time for me. One that made my feet feel more connected to the earth.

Now, I think, that mode has changed somewhat. Now that Hale is out here in the world with us, we are no longer counting down, but rather we're counting up.

Now instead of knowing less each day about what it is we're counting, we're getting to know more each day who this person is, what our lives will be like with him.

Today was Hale's second semanaversary. Two weeks old this morning. Counting Up.



Five, ten, fifteen: 15 days old. And my feet feel even more connected with the earth.

Meeting You In This Way

When Hale was in Amy's belly, I talked to him in there: "We are so excited to meet you!" I would say, "I am waiting you."

Now we are meeting him, in this very rare way. In these enforced dribs and drabs. It's so much more gradual and metered than the firehose familymaking of taking home a full-grown newborn.

We are probably a little jealous of that firehose, for sure. But I think we're being honest too when we talk about feeling lucky about the way things are working out. And not just because of all the ways in which they could have gone wrong (still can go wrong, of course).

If the Baby Manager had come up to us two and a half weeks ago and asked whether, on our baby application, we had meant to check the "premature okay" box... It's true we might have said, "Oh, my gosh, no. Uncheck that! Thank you for noticing!"

But knowing what we know now, I think we might have just left that box checked.

Lost Cat

My parents came to visit Amy and Me and (more to the point of course) Hale right after the boy was born. My mom brought flowers in this little ceramic kitty thing. On the bottom it's marked, "Randy to Charlene, August 9th, 1967--birth of Scott"

It ushered in a long, long string of meaningful gifting, son to mother, of ceramic cats. Approximately every gift I gave my mother between my birth and, like, my 18th birthday or so, was some variation on the ceramic cat theme.

So, clearly, an important gift in this context.


Well, it got lost. When we moved from the first recovery room to the 'boarding' room (where we, as nonpatient parents of a Special Care Nursery kid were allowed to stay for a few nights), we failed to pack the kitty.

We noticed a couple days later, and when we asked around, nobody had seen hide nor hair ofit. With a big gulp, we put out an all points bulletin around the floor.

Three or four days later it turned up. Not that many things I worry much about, but this was one that definitely put a little lump in my throat when I was forced to imagine it gone for good. Funny how stuff can matter like that.

Another Night, Another Family Portrait

This of our reflection in the northeast-facing window, the lights of north Bellevue appearing behind my face.

Bleary Madonna

Apparently, I am addicted to this form:
I think that it must be hard-wired into a man's head to cue warm feelings, just like the stripes of a tiger are wired in to cue the flight instinct.

Another. Same visit. We were tired, barely keeping our eyes open, and this rendering pretty truthfully conveys my memory.
And successfully triggers my lizard brain "Mmmmm" response.

Babies, Bathwater, and Our Boy's Above Birthweight

Today Amy came home from the hospital (I had to stay home and work--somebody's gotta make some money around here...) and said, "Um, we received a special offer today. What would you think about, when we go to visit Hale for his Five o'clock feeding, if we were to give him a bath?"

And I was all like, "Yes, please!" And so we did. Since he's doing so well (they're telling us), and since the nurses know they have particularly gifted parents on their hands (we're telling ourselves), they are letting us be pretty hands-on. Changing diapers, getting him in and out of the incubator, fixing up his clothes, helping us not to drown him...


It's sweet as heck, really--and totally like we're at craft camp or something. The nurses are so amazingly sweet and patient and confident and caring. It's like they really care how we do at this! And they help us get to where we feel like we can actually sort of do something, instead of being overwhelmed by it.

Seriously: It's cheating.

After the bath he got weighed--he's bigger than ever (meaning he's surpassed his birthweight). When Hale was born, this scale read 3lbs, 11.6oz. That means he's beaten his personal best by three tenths of an ounce. That's about a bite. Crazy.

Yep. He's still pretty darn little. They told us today that by the time he gets sprung out of there, he'll likely weigh six pounds or so.

Just. Amazing. The whole thing, you know?