So Far: About Evelyn

My guess is that most of you will skip this entire post for this part, which I had originally added at the bottom, so I might as well make it easy for you.

Click here! See pictures!

And now, if you're still here, I will continue with The One About The Baby.

I slept for twelve hours last night with my newborn, four day old baby. You may send hate mail at will. I have no idea how I could have gotten through these last few days without M. You know how new mothers always say that they instantly began sleeping so lightly that they can hear their baby's tiniest movement? Yes. Not me. M hears her every movement, though, and he gets up and brings her to me. I'm not secure (or skilled) enough to feed her without sitting up* right now, but she arrives in my arms when she's hungry, and I can sleep knowing that she's okay. My mommy says that I can't hear her because I know that M is listening, and it will come to me gradually. M says I am recovering from major surgery and duh, of course I'm not at my most alert. Either way, I fell asleep before ten last night on the couch before my guardians (M and my mommy) made me go to bed--I was trying to stay awake until she woke up for me to feed her--and I got up on my own just before ten this morning. I was up twice for an hour or so each, and I woke up a few times when she made noise. That's it. The first night was the same. And if I should have learned anything about having a baby from the blog world, it should have been... never brag about a sleeping baby.

So, this whole post is really pushing the boundaries of good sense, but I can't help myself from writing it. We have such an amazingly good baby so far! She sleeps! She sleeps enough that we sit around hoping that she will wake up cause we miss her. Her biggest awake "play time" (as her granny calls it) is in the middle of the night, and she will wake up and look around, and just be incredibly content with life. Right now she's sleeping on my shoulder because I couldn't stand it anymore and went in to pick her up. I put her down again at 7:30 this morning and it's 11:30. [or it was when I started writing this.] It's funny how at the last ultrasound (two weeks ago) they kept calling her content. She IS content. That's the best word for her.

Also, she has the cutest little voice. She squeaks and squawks and makes these little breathy whimpers. Ahehh. Except for the terrible, awful ride home on Tuesday, she barely cries except when she's hungry. Her little noises have been compared to the entirety of the baby animal kingdom--duckling (of course) to kitten to puppy (popular choice). It's sooo sweet.

There were three little baby-health things going on at the hospital. First, her blood sugar was too low after she was born--not by much, but enough to cause the pediatrician to begin monitoring her levels. It's pretty common, and the worst part (in the end) was that they kept sticking her little heels, or pressing on previous needle sticks to make them bleed again, every couple of hours. She got a bit of formula (with our permission--the other option was an IV) but hated it and basically refused to eat it. One of the nurses, who is also a lactation consultant, spent quite a long while with us explaining what we could do, and this is where it is lucky that the breastfeeding was going so well. She would eat for an hour at a time, and I had plenty of colostrum to give her, as I have been leaking copiously since week fourteen. The amount and ease of hand-expressing (which we only needed to do once) was something else that made the nurse blink and tell me how very, very lucky I was. Believe me, I know. The nurse was wonderful, and she knew without me saying anything how very much I wanted this to work. She was totally an advocate for both the health of my baby and my success at breastfeeding, and helped us figure out a feeding/testing schedule that would (if approved by the ped and if it was successful, which it was on both accounts) avoid any more formula... especially since she hated it so much. And there's a cute little picture of her drinking from a tiny cup. Her pediatrician in the operating room and working with her on her blood sugar levels was wonderful. He stood with my mom during the cesarean and explained every move they made to her, and was extremely pleasant and knowledgeable.

On the second day, a new pediatrician from the group practice came in in the morning. He was the cheeriest, friendliest human being I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. He told us that she looked really good, everything was fine, but he did hear a heart murmur and she had become jaundiced. He was pretty unworried about either thing and telling us that he really just wanted to make sure we explored the possibility now rather than later, if it turned out to be something, because he will always tell you what he worries about. Can you say a doctor after my own heart? He ordered an ultrasound done on her heart for later that day. It came back perfectly fine--vessels that normally close at birth were still working on it, just as he had suspected. I know jaundice is extremely common, and hers is very mild, so I am not worried about that either. He would have been okay with letting us go home a day before we did without doing further tests. As it was, when he did let us go home, he just asked us to make an appointment for the next day to have it looked at again.

So, we took her to her first pediatrician visit yesterday morning, to which the doctor (the first one again) was fabulous some more and answered questions like he was perfectly happy to sit there all day with us. She had lost thirteen ounces in total--I knew they lost weight but I didn't know she had lost that much, but again, the doctor was still okay with it. Afterward, we took her to her first restaurant visit at Pizza Hut so we could get a bite to eat before we went home again, and that was pretty funny because four of my co-workers came in and so they got to see the baby. :) Unfortunately, the group didn't include my two LJ-readin' friends--sorry, guys. We also ran into a department store to buy a pillow, because we left my costs-the-earth pillow at the hospital. (Not good.) So, she ate out and went shopping at four days old. At least we didn't take her to WalMart? And by the way, we didn't find the right pillow. I bought a different, similar one. It is weird but better than the one I was using the night before. We'll see. M might be getting a new pillow if I don't like this one. ;)

Let's see. What else? Last night, she roused herself from a sound sleep to watch Emeril. We can't get the child to wake up for us, but she opened her eyes and focused them on FoodTV. She is already showing herself to be a tiny geek! She was perhaps not honestly all that tuned in to what she was looking at, but we were sleepy and it was very funny. She has her first crush already! Her fingers are long and thin and look just like my brother's and my niece's did as babies, which makes me happy. Everyone is pretty much saying that she looks like me. I am bad at seeing resemblances in babies but even I can see it. Her eyes are very, very dark--so dark that you almost can't see that her pupils are any darker. They look a little lighter today than they have before. It is extremely unlikely, biologically speaking, that they will turn out anything but blue. My whole family is blue-eyed, and M... well, he is Swedish, after all. :)

*I have fed her laying down, but not while I am also very sleepy. I'm afraid she'll fall off the edge of the bed, or I will squish her.