Two Months

Gracie smiles, coos, and tries to laugh. She is becoming more of a baby and less of a newborn (hooray!). She is her happiest in the morning when she first wakes up, and if I don't lay her back down within an hour of that she will fall asleep on her own no matter where she is. Other than that, she still doesn't have much of a schedule, and that hair still will not quit. But, sad day, it's starting to thin in the back from where she rubs it. (If anyone has any tips on how to stop this, let me know!)

She is getting better and better at putting herself to sleep, which is so thrilling to me. I'm not letting her "cry it out", exactly, I just lay her down when she's awake but drowsy. She will usually lay there grinning at me while I swaddle her, which makes it really hard for me to leave her in there, haha! But I know she's tired so I kiss her goodnight and leave the room. She usually fusses a little bit, but most of the time she just goes to sleep on her own! And when I say "fusses", I mean she literally just lets out a "wah!" every few seconds. Those "wahs" get further and further apart with longer stretches of silence in between until finally they just stop. It usually takes no more than 5 minutes. If she ever does get to actually crying, I go in and get her.

She is starting to get chunkier! I am hoping that one day I won't be able to count the rolls on her thighs. Time shall tell, I suppose.

The dogs are so far very good with her. They are really attentive to her, especially in the first few days we were home from the hospital. Olive would even snap at JJ if he got too close. They're better now, not so desperate to try to sniff her. They do lick her whenever they get the chance, especially Sadie. But she's a lickier dog in general. I hope they continue to be so loving with her once she's mobile and can actually do things to bother them.

3 days old

About a month old, I think?

I know I'm her mom, but dang this kid is cute. I seriously think she is the cutest baby I've ever seen, not that I'm biased or anything. ;) But just look at her! Our other kids are going to have a lot to live up to in the looks department.

A rare combed hair sight.

I'm sorry but it does not get any cuter.

She also laughed for the first time on Saturday. It was as hilarious as it was adorable, because do you want to know what she laughed at? My boob. I'd whipped it out to feed her and she immediately stopped what she was doing, stared at it for a few seconds, and then legit cracked up. It was hilarious.

I mean, that dimple. I die! We love this baby girl!

I don't want to forget.

That onesie says "My heart belongs to Daddy". :)

Just some things about Gracie as of 7 weeks:

+ The way she curls her chubby toes around your thumbs when you hold her feet.

+ Will sleep forever if I sleep next to her, and I can't decide if that's more frustrating or heart-melting.

+ Hates hates HATES to be hot (she get it from her momma). She will scream her head off.

+ Finally LOVES her bouncer/vibrating-chair-thingy.

+ Still has awesome hair.

+ Is a wonderful sleeper at night (thank heavens for that!) but not so much during the day.

+ Hates the sun in her eyes. Even when she's dead asleep, if a ray of sunshine so much as passes over her brow she will immediately fling her head back in protest.

+ Has learned to appreciate diaper changes.

+ Smiles and coos and is just barely starting to laugh, if you're lucky.

+ We still have no idea who she looks like. She has my mouth and dimple for sure, but other than that?

We sure love this little gal.

What's in a Name: Grace Eliana

I have always loved the name Grace, which is sort of weird considering I really am not a huge fan of the other "virtue" names (Hope, Faith, Chastity, Temperance...). I love the concept of grace, that it's a gift for us, an "enabling power and spiritual healing offered through the mercy and love of Jesus Christ." And I love the nickname Gracie.

Incidentally (or perhaps not), my favorite letter of the alphabet, to look at and to write, is a capital G.

Also, I didn't want my daughter to be one of five other girls with the same name in her class. I checked the top baby names lists obsessively the entire time I was pregnant, and I was relieved to see that Grace never rose above number twenty. ;)

Christian liked the name Grace just okay at first, but he started calling her that in the womb and it really grew on him, so that was her name pretty early on.

As for her middle name, I originally stumbled across the name Eliane (that's el-ee-AHN, not a typo of Elaine as in Seinfeld) a few years ago. I had never heard it before and I thought it was pretty. It was different enough to be unique, but normal-sounding enough to not seem made-up. Also, it had a distinct French ring to it that I loved. I really do not like made-up names, or normal names with ridiculous spellings.



But, to each his own. I'm mostly a sucker for classic names. Give me a Matthew, Jane, Luke, Caroline, Mark any day of the week.

On my mom's side of the family, they have a tradition of putting some variation of "Ann" somewhere in the name of the first daughter. My grandma is Joan Anne, my mom is Cathie Annette, my older sister is Anna, etc. I thought Eliane might not have enough "Ann" to it though, and also I didn't want people to mistake it for Elaine (à la Seinfeld), so I decided instead on the variation "Eliana".

And now for a brief aside.

So, I've always wanted to get into the show "So You Think You Can Dance" because I love watching dance, but I'd only seen a few episodes here and there. Last year, I decided I'd finally do it. (Can I just say quickly that I'm so glad I did? Best, most uplifting reality show on TV ever. And other than the occasional celebrity judge, the judges are actually intelligent, articulate, competent humans who know what they're talking about and can give feedback using words other than "yo", "amazing", "tight", etc.)

One girl became my favorite as soon as I saw her audition. Dancing from the heart, exquisite technique, and holy cow legs for days. But what I liked most about her was her genuineness and happy attitude. She was just so lovable.

She also happened to be named Eliana.



To make a long story short, she ended up winning the entire season, and now people ask me if we named Grace after her. I promise I liked that name long before I ever saw her! But if people want to think that, it's okay with me. She is a beautiful dancer, and more importantly she has a beautiful, bright spirit. I would be okay with Grace developing either of those qualities. (Admittedly I could live without the pole-dancing. ;)

But it wasn't until a few weeks before Grace's birth that I actually looked up the meaning of the name Eliana. In Hebrew:

"My God has answered me."

And suddenly, what was originally just a pretty name to me became the perfect, personal answer.

I cannot imagine a more fitting title for our greatest gift. Most of you know that her presence on this Earth was hard-fought for.

(Little did I know that a month after I wrote that post, I would be pregnant. Not a coincidence, I think.)

My God has indeed answered me: with his Grace.

One Month

For her one month birthday, Gracie surprised us by:

1. Sleeping most of the night in her co-sleeper instead of in bed with us (!!!!!!!)

2. Smiling at me for the first time.

You can tell me it wasn't a real smile all you want, that she's too young, but I know what I saw! To say my heart melted would be the understatement of the century.

Birthing a Soul

I don't know about you guys, but whenever someone blogs about their birth experience, I grab a snack and comfy chair and settle down for some awesome TMI. I just love reading them. Hopefully Gracie will stay sweetly snoozing beside me so I can pound this out, because this is just as much for me as it is for you guys.

For me, birth was nothing at all like I expected, though to be fair I didn't know what to expect. I have no idea how women do it without pain meds.

Friday, March 29th

I am awakened by what feels oddly like period cramps. I don't think much about them at first and I drift in and out of sleep until 4:30 a.m., when they become so painful that I can't stay still through them. It finally dawns on me that this might be it; I might actually be in labor. I get up to use the bathroom around 6. Christian is awake when I return to bed and he asks jokingly, as he has every morning for the past week or so, "You in labor yet?" I tell him I think so, and he's all "WHAT!? Really??" and I'm all "Yes darling, PS contractions really hurt and I am not a fan."

I don't remember when but eventually we get up and get showered since who knows when we'll be able to again. The contractions are getting pretty intense by this point, at least for me. I can't stand up through them and I alternate between slow-dancing with Christian, leaning forward on the bed, sitting on the Pilates ball, etc...none of the recommended positions seem to help much and I'm not sure if that's because I'm just a wimp (probably) or because for whatever reason they really were much more intense than usual. I have no frame of reference so who knows.

We are timing the contractions and they begin averaging 5 minutes apart by probably 11:00 or so. We call my doctor. She thinks it's odd that I have no "bloody show" yet but agrees that this is probably the real deal. Getting ready to leave for the hospital takes an eternity because 1) I didn't have my bag packed, and 2) I have to stop every few minutes and contract. We finally get to the hospital around 1:30 and they put me in triage (like the ER for pregnant ladies). I am only measuring about 2 centimeters dilated but am 90% effaced, so they decide to keep me in triage until I show signs of progression.

This is me, having the time of my life. Oh wait, it was the worst.

I end up sitting in that stupid bed for like 4 hours. My cervix is apparently uncooperative and I stay a 2 that entire time even though I am now crying through most of my contractions. It is the worst. I do not like pain. The bed is super uncomfortable and my tailbone hurts, so eventually the nurse takes the monitors off me and we walk around the halls to see if we can get things moving.

It must have done something because when the doctor checks me again around 5:30, I am (finally!) a 3. (Side note: who knew getting checked for dilation could be so painful??)  It isn't much, but it is progression, so they can finally admit me to the hospital and give me a room (and an epidural).

Getting settled into my room takes far longer than I would have liked. I tell them I want the epidural ASAP. I realize I am only at a 3 and my plan had been to wait until I was a 4 or 5, but apparently I am much more of a weenie than I realized. I got the epidural sometime in the 6:00 hour and it felt really weird but didn't exactly hurt and pretty soon I was feeling great. The anesthesiologist was the nicest guy, and I'm not just saying that because he returned me to the land of the living.

Excuse my lack of neck, I was preparing to give birth ok? But this was after the epidural so I was feeling pretty good. I was probably posting that Facebook status at this point.

I go on laboring through the night. I felt like I slept ok except people kept coming in every few hours to check on me. Also there was a lady giving birth in the next room over with the loudest cheerleader of a man ever. Like, he was hollering at the top of his lungs, "YEAH! YOU CAN DO IT! OH LOOK! YOU'RE ALMOST THERE! KEEP PUSHING!" Seriously.

Things are great until the night doctor comes in, tells me my blood pressure has been high for a while now and she thinks I have preeclampsia. So she wants to put me on blood pressure medication and magnesium, which is to prevent the seizures. She wants to do this without even waiting for the results to come back on the blood and urine tests. If I could do it over again I would have said absolutely not. But Christian and I are both caught a little off guard and bewildered, so we consent to the treatment.

Magnesium, you guys, is the worst. They warned me that it would make me feel like I had the flu, I'd feel weak and limp and like my body was on fire. (What they failed to mention was that it can slow down labor. But I'll get to that in a sec.) When they first hook it up to me, they start out with what they call a "bolus" dose, which is basically a super dose I guess to get it working ASAP. I feel it in my veins immediately. I'm pretty sure I know what it feels like to turn into a vampire-according-to-Stephenie-Meyers now. You guys, it burns. Like, my veins are on fire. And then I start feeling really, really lightheaded. So while I am lying there not sure whether I'm going to pass out or throw up, another nurse enters the room and announces that she's here to draw my blood. Is there any particular reason they couldn't have done that BEFORE I got injected with the juice from hell? I can tell Christian is angry. He asks if they can possibly wait until my bolus dose is done. She says she isn't sure, they just told her to come up here now.

(You see, for whatever reason, getting my blood drawn makes me really woozy. I have no idea why. Shots don't bother me and I can watch House all day; I am generally not the squeamish type. But blood draws are another story.)

So she sits beside me and wraps the rubber thing around my arm and I turn away and hold onto Christian for dear life. By the time she is finished, I am done for. I can feel it coming. The thing that hasn't happened to me in nearly 10 years is forthcoming. I tell Christian to get me a bowl and he holds it for me and I throw up, pregnantly and miserably and druggedly. I feel wretched.

Sometime later the same night doctor shows back up and decides she wants to break my water because my labor has slowed down as a result of the magnesium she put me on. How ironic. Only, she tells me this as she is seated between my legs checking my cervix. And then 2 seconds later, before Christian or I have time to react, she grabs the hook and voila, Gracie's birth is suddenly on a timetable. We are furious.

By the way. My blood and urine tests for preeclampsia? Both were negative.

Saturday, March 30th

In the morning we get two new nurses and doctors. Our nurses are Ginger and Ellen, and Ellen is wonderful. She is also upset that they put me on magnesium so quickly and says she is sure that's why my labor has ground to a halt. Magnesium is a muscle relaxer. Again, furious.

Sooo many drugs.

I don't remember exactly when, but I remember being a 4 at one cervix check, and then I was a 6, and then I was an 8 for hours. Sometime in the afternoon they decide to put me on Pitocin because I haven't progressed in so long because of the magnesium, and this is a problem mainly because my water has been broken and broken water means the baby needs to come out sooner rather than later. We are not happy about it but I would prefer Pitocin to a c-section so I consent.

I should mention that the magnesium had this unpleasant effect on me of making it really hard to focus my eyes. A result of the muscle relaxing qualities, I suppose. Also my eyes stayed half-closed.

At some point they decide to put me on oxygen as well, because the baby's heart rate is down. That mask was super uncomfortable and the bridge of my nose redirected the air upwards so that my eyes got really dried out.

Finally, sometime in the 4:00 hour, I was fully dilated and ready to push. That announcement was strangely anticlimactic. It didn't feel real. Pushing out a baby is very weird. At first I was so afraid I was going to poop that I didn't push as hard as I should have, but by the end I sort of lost all capacity for rational thought and pushing became less of a choice. (Yes, even with my epidural.) They set a mirror up down there so I could see Gracie's head. "Look at all her hair!" they kept saying. Her heart rate sped up whenever the doctor touched her head, which they all found hilarious. (By the way, we had a different doctor at this point. We liked her much more than the one from the night before.)

Getting ready to push! (See what I mean about the half-closed eyes?) (Also, Ellen took all these pictures by the way.)

At first I had a hard time knowing when to push. But by the time Grace's head was pressing against my pubic bone, I was feeling insane amounts of pressure. I could not figure out what to do with myself; it felt like it would never end. All I wanted was for it to stop and every push left me gasping for breath, and Dr. Rochester kept telling me to slow my breathing down. I tried to listen to her and it took all the rational thought I could muster. My mouth was so dry and poor Christian kept offering me ice chips and I kept swatting his hand away even though when I did accept the ice chips my mouth felt better. Like I said, no rational thought.

Grace was coming out face up, which explained the huge amounts of pressure I was feeling, but eventually she got herself turned around and came out the right way. By the end I couldn't keep my eyes open through the pushing to watch her descend, so I didn't get to see her birth. All I knew was that  the urges to push became more and more irresistible and got so close together that I didn't get any breaks. They kept telling me I was so close, so close, and all I wanted was for the pressure to go away, so I pushed as hard as I could over and over again even when the doctor told me to take a break, and then all of a sudden the pressure was gone and I felt a warm wetness on my belly and I looked down and there was Gracie, all blue and cone-headed and squashed and writhing.

Christian started crying and I'm sort of sad to say that all I felt was relief. But then they took her away to dry her off and weigh her, and I laid there getting stitched up (third degree tearing, so awesome. I guess that's what happens when you don't heed your doctor's warnings to slow down) and listening to them suctioning out her lungs (she had fluid in them). And then they brought her back to me all pinked up and fluffy-haired and eyes wide open, and I could not stop looking.

She was alive. She was breathing. I grew her, and she was beautiful.

And at least for a little while, she is ours.

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

Well, I did it. I successfully brought another human being into the world, and she is stunning. Maybe I'm biased, but seriously, see for yourself:

Gracie arrived promptly on her due date after nearly forty hours of labor. Giving birth was the hardest thing I've ever done. I look at this baby and wonder how the heck she was inside of me and then came out and now she's a living, breathing little person, completely separate from me and yet part of me at the same time. And I think of all the things she will do someday, the opinions and thoughts she'll have, the choices she'll make. She is so beautiful.

My days go by so quickly, blink and they're gone, but the nights last for centuries. (Though recently we have discovered that co-sleeping, which I swore I'd never do, seems to have solved that. Another post for another time.)

Grace literally changes every day. It is amazing to me and so bittersweet. During the hard times, I find myself wishing time would pass just a little faster because this whole no sleep, no schedule, house never clean thing is torture for me. But then I look at pictures of my baby and watch her sweet face as she dreams and I wish time would just stop. I feel so much love for this tiny girl already that I can hardly breathe.

It's true what they say, you know. Having a baby changes everything.

The Silent Party Speaks

Hi readers,

I imagine many of you have been waiting with bated breath for news about the delivery and the new baby from Heidi's witty and descriptive perspective. With that in mind I mournfully must disappoint everyone by announcing that this is Christian writing (for the first time!) and that Heidi agreed to let me commandeer the blog for a few paragraphs. We've actually talked quite a bit about me contributing occasionally (even often), but prior to now there's always been reasons and excuses not to participate. Having a child really changes one's outlook though.

Outlook Changed

I just wanted to express a few thoughts from the viewpoint of a new father, thoughts that I am sure many with children have shared to some degree. When our daughter (and subsequent children) read this blog, I want her (and them) to know that I was just as excited and nervous and scared as her (and their) mother was. I want her (and them) to know that I was just as leveled by the instant love I felt for her (and them too, presumably).

Instant Love for Rockstar Hair

Somewhat surprisingly, I knew these emotions were forthcoming, and yet they still caught me off guard. I've seen plenty of people become parents, I've observed the changes in behaviors and attitudes, and I fully expected similar changes to occur in myself. But still somehow I was ill prepared for the intensity of these emotions. Even my love for Heidi couldn't brace me for the raw devotion I encountered upon seeing Grace; it was inherently different... not more or less necessarily... just different. In retrospect, I can see how there was no way for me to prepare for this, that the steps into the role of parenthood have a singular gait. Part of me wishes that there had been a better way to prepare and that I knew what that way was, but on the other hand (read in the voice of the great philosopher Tevye the Milkman) I feel that the powerful changes that accompany becoming a parent should indeed be overwhelming.

Absolutely Overwhelming

We had decided on the name Grace ages ago. I'll let Heidi explain more about that and about Grace's middle name, Eliana. Grace, in our faith's understanding, is defined as "divine means of help or strength" and it is bestowed upon the seeker primarily through the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. In other meanings, grace connotes fluid and beautiful movement, poise under duress, and strength of character. I want to help my daughter discover and internalize those traits. I want to help her navigate a successful, meaningful and grace-filled path through a life that can so often be ungraceful, base and cruel. I want her to see her future as I see it: boundless, masterful and luminous. I want to inspire her to epitomize every meaning of her carefully selected name.

Supposedly, long toes indicate graceful movements

What I am shocked to discover though is how the opposite has already commenced: she has taught, motivated, and lifted me. I see in her a divine means of help and strength for myself. I find myself wanting to be more noble, more kind, more precise. I feel myself being cleansed from my own maladies, just by being near her, by the contact with her skin and the sharing of her breath. I see our Grace as a direct manifestation of the love and mercy of a personal, caring God and a material, reliable Savior.

Divine Gift

Grace has enkindled a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. She has calmed my countenance and brought light to the beclouded parts of my soul. Even the pain through which she was brought into the world has profoundly expanded the affection and dedication I feel towards my dear wife. Heidi's willingness to endure pregnancy, labor, delivery and recovery just for a chance to endure the many pains that accompany parenthood has more than once left me awestruck.

Constantly in awe of this gal

As Gracie continues to grow and discover, I will remain in a deep state of reverence towards the feelings she has imparted and in a state of humility over the role with which God has entrusted. I already love our dear Grace acutely and am passionately grateful for her presence in our family.

Contemplatively,
Christian