Dear Sigrid

Darling daughter, sweet sweet treasure,

PLEASE start sleeping through the night. It's been at least nine months since I got seven uninterrupted hours of sleep, and holy crap, I want those seven hours. That's what you can give me for Mother's Day. Except I'd like my present early, like tonight. You'll never have to get me anything ever again, as long as you can live with the guilt of never honoring me and my sacrifice on the day which Hallmark hath set aside for such an occasion.

Because I am trained as an illustrator, here is a story illustrating my tiredness:

Last night, I was tasked* with making couscous, and I put the water in the microwave and set the timer instead of the cook time. Then I realized my mistake and turned the cooking magic on, and your Daddy started laughing at me, because it turned out that I hadn't really put the water in the microwave, and it was still sitting on the counter, and I was cooking air. And that's why Daddy and I split up.

In sum, the dents between the fat rolls on your thighs are deep enough to hold a pencil in, which means you surely have enough stores to last seven hours without a meal. And your brother slept through the night starting when he was seven weeks old. Why can't you be more like your brother?

All my love,

Mama



*People who know me will be SHOCKED to see that I am fatigued enough to use "task" as a verb.

More Horrible Parenting on My Part

Sigrid took her first forward-facing ride in the stroller today! She seemed to think it was a good thing, what with all her smiling and foot-kicking and lack of crying, but she's wrong. It's stunting her language development, dontcha know. It is my parental duty to interact with her AT ALL TIMES. Even now. She's been napping in the stroller for a good 2.5 hours now, but I should probably be keeping her awake so I can talk to her and keep her on the college-bound track.

Just think how much more verbal Soren could be if we'd kept him rear-facing in the stroller all this time. The mind boggles.

Nickname Tournament

In our family, it's important that infants have a nickname that's good enough to make even the crying during the day's 14th diaper change seem endearing. Kirsten is usually the designated nicknamer, and she does pretty well (Soren was Snuffles a.k.a. Mr. Snuffleton, based on the sounds he made during his first cold). However, Kirsten's absence during Sigrid's first week home allowed competitors to arise, and some of them will not die.

While Kirsten was gone, I dubbed the small, squirmy thing Gridder Critter, which rolled into The Griddler (with associated fussing sounds characterized as "griddling"). Since Kirsten's returned, and Sigrid's picked up a cold, Kirsten's added Schkernky [it's pronounced just the way it's spelled. -Kirsten] to the mix, echoing some of Sigrid's lovely snorty breathing sounds.

Kirsten uses Schkernky almost exclusively, and I mix Schkernky and Gridder Critter. Soren, however, is a firm advocate of The Griddler. Enough so that if he hears Kirsten refer to Sigrid as Schkernky, he says, "No Mama. Don't say that. Say 'Griddler'." Perhaps he remembers the indignity of being referred to as a sound you make when you have a cold, or perhaps he just prefers his sister's nickname allude to one of the better Batman villains.

Helping...as Much as Possible

Shortly after I got home yesterday, Sigrid woke and began crying for dinner #1. Soren was playing nearby. I looked toward Sigrid and said, "Mama will be out soon to feed you."

Soren jumped up and ran toward Sigrid and pulled up his shirt. I asked him if he was showing Sigrid his belly. He said yes, because that's what Mama does to help Sigrid stop crying.

Walking in on My Wife

Kirsten assures me that there's some sort of demand out that for my version of the birth story. So, I'll temporarily suspend my governing principle that whatever the father does during labor and delivery doesn't matter (e.g., boiling water) and give you a little window into my mind.

First, I have to reveal that Kirsten is off on certain elements of the timeline. I can't fault her for this, as she wasn't so much near clocks or paying close attention to them, but as I was teaching at the time, I was keeping very careful track of each minute. In the event of later litigation, I have eight students who can testify as to when I walked out of class.

1:40 (Kirsten pegs at 1:20) My cell vibrates with an immediate second call from Kirsten, which we'd previously agreed was to be reserved for an I-should-walk-out-of-class (one I'm teaching) baby-related scenario. I interrupt trying to figure out how to get through Halton draws before class ends at 1:45 to answer the phone in the hall. Kirsten tells me her water has broken, but since she's not contracting, I don't need to head home immediately.

1:41 I apologize to my class that the "leave immediately" alert was triggered for a non-leave immediately scenario. Go on to explain how Halton draws can expedite numerical integration in the likelihood function of random coefficients logit models.

1:48 Get back to my office after class. Call Kirsten back to see how she's doing, and see if it's perhaps time to let my parents know they need to get on the next plane from Ohio (they're on call to take care of Soren while we're in the hospital). Kirsten suggests that perhaps it's best if I come home now.

1:50 Fire an email to my 2:00 meeting with a publisher rep that I would have to cancel because my wife's water just broke. In retrospect, this is at least as effective as the dead grandmother excuse.

1:52 Call my mother and tell her to get on a plane. She sets off to find my father.

1:53 Shave legs. Why...oh.

1:55 Pack my stuff and walk out of my office for the 30 minute commute home. On the way, I think about what I'm going to do with the inevitable time in labor before we go up to the hospital: the last place you want to be before it's time to be at the hospital is at the hospital, because they just leave you in a poorly-designed waiting room. For Soren's birth, I'd planned a bunch a distraction activities for Kirsten; I was a little behind in that respect for Sigrid.

2:29 Pull into the driveway. Collect myriad empty coffee cups from my car. Throw the recyclable ones into the bin on the way into the house.

2:30 Open the door and slip the non-recyclable cups in the garbage (I recall this specifically...it was important these be properly thrown away).

Pause, as I hear incongruent crying. It isn't Kirsten, and it isn't Soren (who should still be at school). I turn the corner when Kirsten calls, "Chris...", and she's standing in the dining room holding...the crying thing. "What is crying, and why is Kirsten holding that really realistic doll?" ran though my mind (really...that stuck me as more sensible than she'd just had the baby in the dining room and was holding it). Then I saw the umbilical cord and what happened became a little more clear. Kirsten reassured me "She's OK, she's OK," as I'm sure she saw a bazillion thoughts run across my face.

Now, I'm a planner and a strategizer, and I deal with these situations by doing things...what needs to be done. But this was a situation in which I never expected to find myself, and hence I had no idea what to do (though I did remind myself that, in fact, there was no need for boiled water). Fortunately, Kirsten intervened and told me to go upstairs and get a towel...that seemed sensible.

On the way back down, I was true to my academic nature and grabbed the pregnancy book to see what it suggested I do in this situation. It reassured me that sudden, unexpected at-home births were wonderful plot devices, but didn't happen enough in real life to worry about.

Failing to find satisfaction there, I called the OB's office, where are recorded voice informed me I was second in line.

I had hesitated to call 911 because it wasn't a life-or-death emergency, but as I sat on hold with the OB, I realized I was going to have to transport this tiny, tiny baby in my car if it wasn't in a rescue, and somehow getting her into a carseat seemed challenging and inappropriate. Also, if she was going to be more than 28" from Kirsten in transit, the cord was going to have to be cut and a placenta delivered. I wasn't trained in this, and the book clearly wasn't going to be much help. So, I hung up on the OB and called 911.

In the very few minutes while we waited for the ambulance, I did take a minute to hug Kirsten and look at the baby, and even to snap a few pictures. When rescue arrived, there were no fewer than seven paramedics and supervisors in the delivery room, so it was a bit crazy.

I did get to cut Sigrid's cord, and hold her briefly while they wrapped up Kirsten. When they drove off--lights and sirens--with my girls, I rolled up the rug, set about making after-school arrangements for Soren and took off for the hospital.

I Hope I Don't Jinx Anything With This Post

Thanks for all the comments :^) My self-esteem is at an all-time high. Which is helpful, because I've been, shall we say, riding a bit of a bummer for the past few days. First, the good news: Sigrid comes home today!!!! News previously thought to be bad, but was really just caused by a false alarm: she's still a patient here at the hospital (for another hour or so), which you may have guessed already, unless you thought she was coming home today from her first Caribbean cruise or something.

Because Sigrid really can't get enough drama -- she got addicted to it with that first preterm contraction -- she decided to test positive for a blood infection on the evening of the 21st. It was a lovely scene; I was watching Jeopardy with Chris, holding little Sigrid as she snored and squeaked, and then an RN came in, told us she would have to stay in the NICU for a week due to a positive blood culture, and TOOK HER AWAY. There was more sympathy and explanation than I'm recording here, but that's mainly what I remember. They took a second blood sample to rule out contamination in the original culture, but were going to start her on IV antibiotics and put her on monitors until Friday the 28th. I was, shall we say, a wreck.

The next morning, after some sleep and a few visits to the nursery, I felt more sane and was able to look at the positives. First, Sigrid was not showing any signs of illness, so they clearly caught whatever-it-was early. Second, even though I was being discharged, the hospital was going to allow us to stay in our room as boarders, FOR FREE. Plus, it turned out, they were going to continue to give me meals. They'd move us or kick us out if a patient needed the room, of course, but wow -- what a generous policy. I guarantee that we wouldn't have had that option if we'd ended up at Women & Infants' (as we'd planned before the whole "birth plan" went out the window). Third, there was a chance -- a small chance -- that the second culture would come back negative, and she'd never really had an infection at all. We tried not to get our hopes up too much on that front.

So, in short, I prepared for a week of nursing Sigrid in the NICU and pumping and storing milk so I might be able to come home for a night or two (also as insurance in case they had to kick me out of my free room).

In the end, obviously, the second blood culture still hadn't shown any growth after 48 hours, so she's been given a clean bill of health! And we get to go home! To a different kind of madness, I'm sure (since we'll suddenly have to start taking care of two kids at the same time), but it will be our own sweet family madness, and Sigrid will finally be allowed to wear cute clothes. And isn't that what's truly important?

Intro-Deuce

We are pleased to introduce Sigrid Isabel, the newest member of our family. She was born at 2:20 this afternoon. She is 6.6lbs, 19 3/4 inches long and wispy, curly hair. Mom and baby are resting happily.

There is a birth story that is Kirsten's to tell. Suffice it to say that I am awed to silence by my wife.