The highs and lows

Being parents of a new baby is an occupation filled with high points and low points, and as Poppy's grandma noted on Saturday, the younger the child is, the more extreme those points are.

Friday was a low - perhaps one of the lowest yet. K was trying to work on finishing her thesis which is due this Wednesday. I was at work. Poppy, who had been very fussy on Thursday, took things to a new level. She wasn't feeding well. She wasn't napping well. She couldn't be put down anywhere without crying. So instead of working on her paper, K spent all day pacing around the house with Poppy in her arms - about the only thing that would stop her from crying. At one point we were instant-messaging and she was telling me what was going on - under normal circumstances I would have left work to come home and take over. However I was going through a major crisis at work, the loss of a bunch of shared data on a server I was configuring. This was not something I could simply leave, and that made my day much worse. Back at the homestead, K was conscious of the time that was being lost, and with nerves made raw by the incessant crying, she was pretty much done by the time I got home - tired, upset, frustrated and genuinely worried about missing out on getting important studying done.

Now it was my turn. It didn't take long for me to experience the same situation. I started to get genuinely concerned. What could be making her this upset? At one point she cried with such intensity that she stopped breathing for a couple of seconds, that weird moment where babies need to pause before letting out the next scream. I measured her temperature, which was fine, and continued to try to soothe her. None of the tricks worked - changing her diaper, feeding her, rocking her - she was just pissed off with the world. Finally we attempted to do the going-to-bed routine, and amazingly she went to sleep. We were left with ringing ears, raw nerves and some lukewarm pizza, looking at each other with wide eyes wondering "what the f**k just happened?"

The next day, she was perfect. She smiled plenty in the morning, fed well, took long, deep naps and was alert and engaged in her playtime.

On Sunday she was also pretty good, but went through a fussy period in the afternoon and early evening. It was now we decided to check on something suggested by both my mother and one of K's friends: teething. After feeling around inside her mouth, we think there's noticeable bumps on her upper gums. This may be nothing, or it may be an indication that her periods of irritability might be down to sore gums.

The other theory is that she is picking up on the stress level in the household. As K ticks down the final days of her 27-month masters degree program, and works feverishly to finish a 70-page group thesis, the pressure has been building, as has her stress level. Our friends C&C noted that their 8-month-old is always at her worst when either of them is stressed about something.

Finally, the high point. As I was getting ready to leave for work this morning I looked in on Poppy in her bassinet. I could see that she was awake and just chilling out in her swaddle. As I approached her she suddenly noticed me and immediately gave me the biggest full-body smile ever! Smiles are nothing new for her - she's generally a pretty smiley and happy baby - but they are usually pretty random. This was the first time she has ever smiled in direct response to seeing me. WOW! And she's started doing this thing where her whole body convulses like she's trying to laugh when she has the biggest smiles. It's amazing.

So yeah, a high high and low low in the past three days.

Bubbles and sleep

Poppy changes on a daily basis. The latest development is the ability blow bubbles with her saliva. Okay, not exactly crawling, smiling or talking, but makes a nice change from her usual routine of feeding, sleeping and crying.

On Sunday she will be four weeks old and on Tuesday it will be one whole month. What a crazy time it has been so far! It was most interesting to visit friends yesterday who have an 8-week-old. He seems MASSIVE in comparison to her and he has a cry that sounds like an Aprilia 250cc racing motorcycle. Funny to think that she'll be roughly that size in four weeks. What was encouraging to learn is that she gained one whole pound in the last two weeks as she went from 8 to 9 pounds. That would be like an average 160lb adult gaining 20lbs in two weeks!

Finally, since the most common question we get asked is "are you getting any sleep" here's the current answer: yes. She generally has two feeds each night, sometimes one, each taking about one hour from the moment we wake up to the moment we're back to sleep. Since we go to bed around 10 or 11 and wake around 9 that means in theory we're getting something like 7 or 8 hours a night. Many nights it doesn't work out quite so well, either because we go to bed too late, get up to early, she feeds more often or takes longer to get back to sleep. Those are the nights that suck, and we had two in a row this week. The good news is that the pediatrician says we no longer have to wake her for feedings - we can go until she wakes. This is great, since she is capable of sometimes going five hours from the start of one feed to the start of the next which can mean a four-hour block of sleep for us. Two of those in one night would be amazing, and might be just around the corner....

Feed me Seymour

Poppy is now only 2oz shy of her birth weight, and should hit it before her two-week birthday, the standard for making sure babies are getting enough sustinance. Glad those 3am feeds are working!

Photos

We're posting photos to Facebook and also to a public Picasa album. Check it out.

The labor

We found ourselves down at Fisherman's Wharf around 11am. We got a call from our doula as we walked through the Aquatic Park and she gave us a great pep-talk. After that, we stopped at the Hyde Street Pier, somewhere neither of us had been before. As we walked up the pier K said that she was feeling rather damp. A quick dash into the bathroom confirmed not very much. Sometimes when water breaks it happens high up on the bag of water, so the fluid escapes very slowly. Only one thing to do in that case, which is wait.

After seeing the sea lions at Pier 39 we had lunch, a tourist-tastic bread bowl filled with clam chowder. It was now that K was able to confirm that her water had broken and was leaking gradually. We dashed home to wait for contractions to begin. Helped along by the laughter from a Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie, the did just that at around 5pm. Initially they were just 25 minutes apart, but with two at 9 minutes followed by some at 4 minutes we started to move into golden period: waiting for one hour of strong contractions at least 5 minutes apart. Pretty soon though they were at 2-3 minutes apart and were very strong.

I called our doula who was enroute and told her we were thinking of going to the hospital and she should meet us there, but by then she was just a couple of minutes away. Once she arrived she helped K through another few contractions, all very intense, and then we decided to go to the hospital. I was starting to worry that we'd waited too long - this was all going very, very fast.

We left the house at 7:58, with contractions coming so fast that we couldn't get out to the car without another contraction coming. The key was to drive smoothly and safely without going slowly. The grab handle proved to be K's best friend all the way, as she experienced about another 7 contractions in the car.

I dropped K and our doula off at 8:14 and parked in the adjacent lot. When I got back into the OB triage K was starting to get on a monitor. The nurse was rather brusque and too slow for my taste. She was also annoyed that we hadn't called ahead (like we had time....) When she finally got around to checking dilation she discovered it was an amazing 9cm!!! WAAAAHHHH! The nurses kicked into action, calling ahead to find out what delivery room was closest to the elevators. It was clear that we were now very short of time. Mere moments after K's gurney was rolled into the delivery room, our OB Dr. U showed up. In addition to being on call, she was also on-site and we were delighted that she'd be the one to do the delivery. Dr. U was also really excited. K was now starting to get the urge to push which we'd learned that you have to try to not do. However Dr. U surprisingly said that it was okay. Once on the bed, the staff scrambled to get the room prepped and as soon as they were ready they said that it was time. K had hoped to deliver in a squat position but there was no time to get squat bars. She certainly didn't want to be on her back, so she got on her hands and knees to take the pressure off her spine. Turns out that this would be how she stayed. Finally the pushing began, but since the monitors weren't working properly, Dr. U told K that she had to keep going - we didn't know what the baby's heartbeat was doing. We reached a point where normally a woman could stop pushing for a mo, but not this time. With our doula's support, K kept going, and for the first time I left her side to see what was going on. I could see the head! I quickly moved back to K and told her we were close and that she should dig deep. Summoning all her courage and effort, she made one huge push. I stepped around and watched as the baby's head emerged in entirety. One last push and out came the baby's body. "It's a girl" exclaimed Dr. U. The doc suctioned out some fluid whilst K got off her hands and knees. I got to cut the cord and then little Poppy was free to meet her Mum.

It was 8:53pm.

Laying the foundations for labor

We're home, and doing our best to keep friends and family in the loop, so it's been an afternoon of uploading, tagging and updating. Meanwhile Poppy eats and sleeps.

To tell the labor story properly, it is worth considering how things had gone in the previous few days. On Friday there had been 13 hours of irregular and light contractions that turned out to be false labor. Saturday turned into a bit of a bummer since we had to accept that fact, and face up to the idea that we could be waiting until 12 days past the due date and end up with an induction.

On Sunday morning we gave ourselves a little pep-talk. We looked at some posts on the Berkeley Parents Network which seemed to indicate that an induction doesn't equal a c-section, and then we talked about the positives of an induction (scheduling a time when our OB would be on-call, doing it during the day as opposed to late at night etc.) Finally we started making plans to DO STUFF. First up, a day playing tourist at Fisherman's Wharf. Then on Tuesday, the Australian Pink Floyd show in Oakland. I would plan on working with my band on our album and K would start working with her team on their final project in their Masters program.

With all this in mind we headed to Fishermans Wharf, determined to make the best of things. It was there that things took a rather interesting turn...

She's here!

The Raspberry is now Poppy. Born tonight at 8:53pm, 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital, 20", 7lbs 14oz of healthy girl with a 9 and a 10 on her APGAR tests.

Her full name is Poppiano McRae Nelson-Smith.

Pics to follow...