I’m not a social network user: I have neither myspace nor Facebook. I’m probably just way too lazy to deal with all the social friendingness (I say it’s a word) of it?and myspace is dang ugly and annoying. But here’s an example of the consequences of all that friendingness. I don’t have the knack for melodrama to deal with defriending.
I may be way behind on the pop internet technology stuff?I may not have a Myspace account or a Facebook account?but I have discovered hulu?and it is awesome. I can watch everything from Buffy to the A-Team on demand. Watched the entire first season of Roswell?over the last few weeks during pump time. It’s not as good as Buffy, but it is from the same era. Too much melodrama, not enough campy comic action, but decent (and it has Julie Benz from Buffy and Angel).?
I’ve made a decision. Next thing I’m watching is the Veronica Mars (not on Hulu, on my own DVDs). I’ve been procrastinating on it for months, literally, because it’s depressing to watch dead shows and if I like a show, it becomes a dead show. Seriously, if I like a show, it’s cancelled.?Happens over and over again to me: Dead Like Me, Dark Angel, Firefly, Dresden Files (OK, I only watched two episodes, but still), Veronica Mars.?And then it’s depressing to watch it knowing that it’s going to end very soon. But I’m ready to finish out seasons two and three. And the spouse just informed me that there’s a movie in the works. So that makes it better. Now let’s just hope they don’t cancel Chuck just because I watch it. . . .
Interesting article on the TARP plan
Veronica is officially three weeks old today and I’m up to five or six hours of sleep at night. I can handle life with five hours of sleep.
Grandma Swinyar is visiting and, between her and the spouse, I have changed only three or so diapers in the last two days (and those were the 3 a.m. diapers when everyone else was asleep).?Grandma Swinyar is visiting. She has been changing the baby’s diapers. The spouse has been changing the baby’s diapers. Grandma Swinyar and the spouse have been changing the baby’s diapers. Consequently, I have not had to change very many of the baby’s diapers. I only have to change the baby’s diapers when Grandma S. and the spouse are asleep.
Babies smell wonderful, like sleep and spilled milk.
Ate chocolate mousse with vanilla cream at the Patisserie yesterday. Yummy.
Spouse is tentatively planning a Super Bowl party at our house, but that depends entirely on the big screen TV arriving this week in time to be set up. And on whether we can pick up digital signal well enough to get the game, since we have no cable.
The spouse talked about giving V a mohawk; I made it an action item.
Up half the night, but I’m staying up to watch the inauguration. Hurrah Obama!
At 9:06 a.m. according to my computer’s clock, we have a new president!
I took my Sabbath very seriously yesterday: I slept pretty much the whole day. We had intended to go to church, but the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. alert cycle Veronica is currently enjoying kicked my butt. So we slept the whole day instead. And I took a nice, long nap today as well, so I feel wonderfully awake.
Today, I am increasingly cynical about the financial world. Not my personal financial world, in which I authorized a TV purchase for the spouse, but the national financial world. Friedman hit my sentiment in his editorial today. “For too long the government has been taking the banks at their own words, which is one reason we keep getting surprised with demands for more bailout cash. The Treasury needs to be doing its own brutal, burn-down analysis of every major bank?s balance sheet ? and then acting accordingly.” Get in there, figure out what the bottom of this should be, and then let’s fix it once and for all.
And, what’s more, the banks need to have restrictions on any further money they received. Henry Paulson may think it’s awesome to give money away with no guidance on how it must be used, but from all the articles that have been popping up, the indication is that banks aren’t using the money ?to lend out and now they need even more money. I say, No more free money! I’m not saying banks should lend money recklessly, as they did before, but don’t sit on the money either. I’m not going to second guess individual lending decisions, but there should be some way to measure the lending activity for banks. And this hodge-podge approach of throwing money at the “too-big-to-fail” institutions is hogwash. Do something systematic or we’re never going to fix the systemic problem.
OK, rant done.
Haven’t posted in a while. To catch up, here’s a summary of life over the course of the last (approximately) one week, with heavy emphasis on the nitty gritty details of Veronica’s progress during her first week of life.
Monday Veronica decides that in keeping with her Roman numeral name pun, she should be born on V-day, January 5. We spend the day in the hospital, sleeping and holding baby V., and then, in the afternoon, making some phone calls. The pediatrician, Dr. W., does his first check-up on Veronica and says she looks just fine.
Tuesday We are still at the hospital. Dr. W. does his second check-up on V. and says we can take her home. My doctor has been at the hospital again very early in the morning delivering another baby, so she doesn’t come by until around noon to give me my check-up. By the time we finish up the last of the paperwork and Veronica gets her heel sliced open for bloodwork (standard procedure, but oh so painful looking to me), it’s late afternoon. We get home, only to find we forgot to do the dishes before leaving for the hospital Sunday night, so the whole house smells like dirty dishes. Blech. Our first visitors arrive moments after we do, so they also have to endure the smell while Ted takes care of the dishes and tries to air out the house. Burtmiah and his ladies bring us a basket of food, which we eat for dinner. More food offerings arrive (my friends: you are awesome) and we are set: we won’t have to cook for days. We have our first diaper explosion. (It’s true, as some say, that a baby’s chief export is poop, but at least it makes for great stories. Well, maybe mildly interesting stories.)?
Wednesday I feel tired from too little sleep, but optimistic about the whole breastfeeding thing. V. and I seem to be getting the hang of it and by Wednesday night, my milk starts to come in.?Ted bakes Veronica a birth day cake. He is an awesome daddy.
Thursday?We go by the title company and sign our refinance paperwork, then stop by the parents’ house for a few minutes before our two-day checkup at the hospital. Get to see my cousin K. very briefly before we have to run away to our appointment. My milk continues to come in. At the hospital, the nurse can see V. is having a hard time latching because I’m engorged, so she helps me pump while she does V.’s checkup. She’s down to 6 lbs. 12 oz. and has low to moderate jaundice of 12.4. Dr. W.’s office says it’s OK as long as the baby does not get any ?more jaundiced, so we’re told to make sure she’s feeding every two to three hours and making as many wet diapers as she is days old, up to seven. Thursday evening, we set up the breast pump I got free from a coworker who never got around to using hers. It’s awful. Ted calls all over town trying to find the Medela pump, but no one carries it. He finds a cheap single electric pump; it’s also awful. We go back to the hospital to use the pump there, and that works temporarily, but an hour later I can’t get V. to eat again because she can’t latch. We get hardly any sleep as we try to get V. to eat.
Friday We go back to the hospital to see the lactation consultant because I’m worried I’m too engorged and I also need to pump again. The l.c. gives me some tips for latching. Later, Ted drives to T-C to buy a Medela pump. It’s over 9000 times better than either of the others and I’m feeling more optimistic about getting the whole breastfeeding thing back on track.?
Sabbath We’re exhausted again because we wake up every two hours to feed V. She’s able to latch now, but falls asleep after only a few minutes. She’s still not making enough wet diapers and I’m getting worried about her being dehydrated. Another point of failure: I can’t get her to take a bottle of pumped breast milk. I take a hot shower to give myself some perspective and consider whether to call in reinforcements. Meanwhile, the spouse proves his fatherhood skills by getting V. to take the bottle. (The bait and switch tactic: he gets her sucking on the binky and then quickly pulls it out and replaces it with the bottle.) We spend the day and night feeding V., logging her ounce intake?trying to get her to drink 1-2 oz. extra at each feeding?and catching naps. Her diaper count increases and I’m once again feeling optimistic.
Sunday Visitors! W. and M. stop by, just back from Mexico, as well as Ted’s co-worker and boss and great-grandma C. My little brother is in town for work and comes to visit as well. Veronica is now up to full diaper count and I’m feeling more confident that Dr. W. won’t yell at us at our appointment on Monday.
Monday Veronica goes to her first well-baby appointment. She’s back above birth weight (now 7 lbs. 5 oz.) and Dr. W. says we’ve done fine with the supplemental bottle feeding. In the evening, we take Veronica to the grandparents for a couple of hours so we can take a CPR class at the hospital. It’s been over 10 years since either of us took a class and we both want to be knowledgeable about infant CPR and anti-choking.We push our feeding schedule to closer to three hours between and we both get more sleep, finally.?
Tuesday Feeling much better rested today. The warm, sunny weather is awesome. If it stays like this much longer, the lilacs are going to start budding. Even feeling good enough to think about creating a new Quicken file to replace the crappy file that melted down a week ago Sunday, leaving us to re-enter half of December’s data after restoring the file from backups. But I think I’ll do that tomorrow. For now, I’m going to sit in my chair and cuddle with Veronica.
Apologies for my lack of posting. I have been sleep deprived and busy. I promised to post the labor story, so here it is. Don’t read if you don’t want to know details.
Sunday evening, the 4th, while chatting on the phone with Krista at about 9:30 p.m., I feel some cramping and then a large gush of water. I excuse myself from the phone conversation to go to the bathroom, where the continuing gushing convinces me that my water has just broken. A half hour later, we have the last minute items gathered up, and we’re headed for the hospital to verify that labor has begun.?
By 10:30 p.m., our nurse has confirms that we should settle in for the night. Since I haven’t felt any major (i.e. painful) contractions yet, the nurse says labor probably won’t start in earnest until morning. I opt out of pitocin to start labor sooner and we get situated to try to get some sleep before the big day.
By 12:30 a.m., contractions are coming approximately three minutes apart and are more painful. Between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., the nurse preps the jacuzzi tub for me so I can labor more comfortably (having opted to labor naturally at least until I can’t stand it anymore).?
Periodic checks confirm that I’m dilating: at first check, I am 5 cm; next check 7 cm. We call my parents and tell them to head over to the hospital because things are moving along reasonably quickly. The nurse has called my doctor (who is not on call, but always comes to deliver for her patients as long as she’s in town) to inform her of my progress so she can come down to the hospital to deliver.?
At 5 a.m., I’m 9 cm dilated and extremely uncomfortable. Since I’m so close to being done, and since it would take at least 30 minutes to get the epidural in order (and since I hate the idea of having a large needle inserted into my spinal column almost as much as I hate the pain of the contractions), I decide to stick it out. I have Ted on one side (not passed out!) and Vicki on the other, helping me through the contractions. My doctor comes in and tells me to relax, that I’m fighting the contractions. I work on going limp through each contraction and Ted gives me water in between contractions. The doctor has me turn on my side and tries to help me stretch to 10 cm but it hurts like hell and I’m sure I’m just a whining, tired mess.?
Not long after laboring on my side, I feel the pressure increase so that I feel like I really need to push. Doc checks me one more time and confirms I’ve finished dilating. The pushing is exhausting as well, but Ted keeps giving me water between contractions and I have two nurses, two helpers and the doc encouraging me to bear down and push the baby out. At some point, another nurse takes my dad out of the room to the post-delivery room. I’m completely unaware he’s gone. I haven’t noted him on the birth plan as being there for delivery?just Ted and Vicki?because I don’t want him to see the business end of the birth, but I mistakenly think that the privacy screen the nurses put up is so he could stay in the room without really being there.?
When the head crowns, everyone starts talking about how much hair the baby has. I push for an eternity, and get a little snipping help from the doctor as I get more and more exhausted trying to get the baby’s head out. Finally, the head comes out; we pause while the doctor suctions out the baby’s nose and mouth, works the shoulder out, and then suddenly it’s over: after 53 minutes of pushing, at 6:31 a.m., my daughter is born. Vicki cuts the umbilical cord.
I’m practically limp while my baby girl gets rubbed down, bundled up and then set in my arms. She is beautiful.?
Doc helps me birth the placenta, then stitches me up (I tore a little beyond the episiotomy incision) while V.’s very proud father takes video and pictures of her getting weighed and measured; he helps the nurse give V. her first bath. He also starts the phone calls to get the announcement out.
All in all, I labored for approximately six hours, which is much shorter than the average first birth labor of 12-14 hours. I really don’t know if I could have done 12 hours without an epidural so it’s good that it was only six. Our nurse was awesome, for which I am grateful. My doc was also great. She is very matter of fact / no nonsense and hearing her tell me I was fighting the contractions and I needed to relax helped focus me and get me to the 10th cm. And I was very lucky to have Ted there with me the whole time?he didn’t pass out once (even when the doctor showed us the placenta) and helped me focus when I started to melt down. Having Vicki on my other side during the hardest part of the contractions and during pushing was wonderful: I had a hand to grab on either side of me to help me through.
After working hard on Sunday night and Monday morning, I have been lazy and pampered. Been home from the hospital a little over 24 hours and I have done nothing “useful.” The spouse ran errands today, including grocery shopping for iron-rich snacks for me; cooked me lunch; has been doing laundry; is video taping adorable baby V. sleeping in her bassinet.
The spouse is awesome. He has been reading Veronica stories, singing her silly songs, and he is currently working on her birthday cake. He picked up ingredients at the store and is making cupcakes to celebrate Veronica’s birth. He even got a “0″ candle and little sugar letters to spell out her name. I’m sure photos will be posted on his blog when he is finished.
I have been napping and spending quality time with Veronica. I think we’re getting the whole breastfeeding thing figured out. It took some practice, but today was better than yesterday and I am hopeful the trend will continue.?
Had our first diaper explosion yesterday evening (caught it just as it happened so it wasn’t too hard to clean up) but today she’s very low on her diaper count. I gave her a talking to. She’s been eating plenty when I can wake her up to eat, so I have no idea where she’s storing it all. (She must take after her father, who sleeps so hard, it’s like waking the dead to get him up. Her father, incidentally, is much better at getting her to wake up than I; when I get her up, she snuggles into my shoulder and immediately falls asleep again, which defeats the purpose of the feeding exercise.)
I’ll write the long version of the birth story at some point, but for now, I’m going to be lazy and take a quick nap before V. wakes up again.