Lavendar brings out her eyes
Posted by E-George on October 17, 2008
Fresh from her evening bath, Evelyn slips into the little lavender butterfly outfit from cousin Barb Kraai. A quick burp, and then onto the dinner nursing before falling asleep for the first 3 hours of the night.
Filed Under: Evelyn - Comments: 2 Comments to Read
Leaking, stinging, napping, changing, laundering…
Posted by E-George on October 15, 2008
I realize there is lots going on in this world, but my personal universe has become quite small, revolving entirely around Evelyn. The adjustment to having a baby has been far more intense than I had originally expected.
On Monday, Evelyn will be 1 month old. We’re still struggling with our breastfeeding, but since my mom’s visit, it has notably improved. Now we’re dealing with the whole milk regulation aspect, and the soaked shirt fronts that go with it. I successfully trimmed her little nails myself today without nipping her finger tips.
Evelyn is a dream baby. Not very fussy, except where justified. She’s grown easily 1-2 inches, and has to be over 8 pounds by now. I’m hoping that soon we will have settled into a routine and I can come out of the fog of being a diaper-changing chuck wagon and start being able to go back to a new definition of normal, perhaps with a little bit of old normal thrown in.
Filed Under: Thank you, and GOOD NIGHT! - Comments: Be the First to Comment
In a couple of weeks…
Posted by E-George on October 10, 2008
That is the supreme answer for everything in this new world of Babydom, I’ve learned.
“When will I stop feeling so damn sore in places I didn’t know I could be sore?” In a couple of weeks…
“When will I stop practically blacking out every time Evelyn latches on to nurse?” In a couple of weeks…
“When will my milk supply level out so I don’t look like a lopsided porn star?” In a couple of weeks…
“When will I be brave enough to try clipping her fingernails myself?” In a couple of weeks…
OH, the list goes on. Evelyn is approaching 3 weeks old, and it’s been a hoot and a horror simultaneously. A hoot in that she’s such a really nicely tempered baby - save for those moments when she’s hungry or needing a new diaper. A horror in that I’ve become a TMI factory with respect to some difficulties with our nursing that were compounded by the normal features of post-delivery recovering. Feeling overwhelmed would be one way to put it. Feeling alien in my own body is another. This was a feature that I never thought to research, and no one ever discussed with me, but in talking with other experienced mothers, I’ve come to refer to this first 3-month post-womb period as the Fourth Trimester. So far, it’s been a series of discomforts and incredible pains that often feel completely dehumanizing. So much so that I finally couldn’t figure out what to do next to make (at a minimum) the nursing aspect go better and I asked my mother to come stay with us for a few days. It’s made the world of difference to have her here, too. My mother, holding the impressive credentials of a woman who birthed and nursed five (5) of her own babies, was also the president of the local La Leche League - or, as my father called it, the Titty Committee - and has a Santa-sized sack of tricks to try to make the nursing go better. Slowly, we’re making progress. And, just about when I think I’m going to lose what’s left of my brains Evelyn nurses herself into a boob coma, leans back into the nursing pillow with that one-of-a-kind loopy baby grin and a milk beard, and I’m completely besotted.
That’s why God made babies cute. For those times when the pain seems too overwhelming to keep going. And damn, if my baby isn’t cute.
Filed Under: Evelyn, Happiness is - Comments: Read the First Comment
Evelyn Letha Bohnsack
Posted by E-George on September 27, 2008
An epic saga worthy of much retelling, the story of Evelyn’s birth. But, first, we will sum up:
Birth: 22-Sept-2008, 8:24pm
Weight: 6lb 11oz
Length: 19 in
Hair: Light brown
Eyes: Dark smokey blue
Nails: Long and freakishly sharp
This is her:
These are her long nails:
This is Evelyn and her new daddy:
This is Evelyn and The Godfather:
There’s a whole grand array of images from her first whopping 5 days outside of the womb here.
Note of warning: There are details. Gory details in the writing that follows. If you’re squeamish, or TMI sensitive, I’d advise stopping here.
Now, for the full story. Not that it’s all that dramatic, but hey, it’s still worth sharing. We had planned on having a home birth. Note the use of the phrase “had planned” here. One may rightly assume that we were unsuccessful, but through very little fault of our own, and certainly NOT for a lack of trying.
Saturday, 20-Sept 9:00pm - my water breaks. A little. Enough to have very noticeable and breathtaking contractions start within the following half hour. We called the midwife and she gave us some tips on how to deal with it: Go back to bed and try to sleep as much as possible. Matthew promptly obeyed. I, however, was more miserable laying down than I was up and wandering about leaking various fluids. So, that’s what I ended up doing.
Sunday, 21-Sept 6:00pm - the midwife and her assistant arrived to the house and began setting up for the birth. I’d spent the entire night trying to “release to the birthing process” by breathing and talking to myself in a calm and reassuring manner. The mental wrestling match proved more astonishingly difficult than the contractions, which surprised me some, as I’ve always been pretty good about being able to talk myself off the ledge of hysteria when it came to pain management. This, however, was a completely different ouch-marathon than I’d ever experienced before.
Sunday, 21-Sept 12:00pm - all my water has broken by now, and we saw that it was muddied with meconium (brace yourself, that link has pictures). The notable thing about this time was that was roughly when the midwife had expected me to be pushing Evelyn out. No dice. When she checked my cervix, it was only 3cm dilated. We were still in early labor - we hadn’t even moved to active labor. No one was more disappointed by that than me, because that meant that this pain that was mounting and more difficult to manage was going to get worse. We began to think of ways to start improving the dilation process and tried all of the following: walking, kneeling, hands-and-knees, bending over a balance ball, standing in the shower, NOT standing in the shower, rocking in the recliner, and finally, around 4pm, the midwife brought in…THE POOL. Let me clarify by stating that THE POOL is actually a child’s inflatable play pool the outside walls of which are perhaps 3.5 feet high, and the internal wall height being approximately 3 feet high. It was clear (as in, see-through), except for the cartoon fish which generously festooned the entire apparatus. The sidewalls were inflatable, as was the bottom portion that also contained a raised ring, clearly designed for the width of a child’s ass, not for that of a beached pregnant woman’s ass. I relented about THE POOL for two reasons: (1) I had developed a muscle cramp laterally across the ribcage along my left side wrapping around to my back that was starting to eclipse contractions in terms of pain, and (2) I was only 5cm dilated by the time we got THE POOL out, but the cervix was so damn swollen that I might as well have still be 3cm dilated. What was worse, the cramp was interfering in my ability to relax in between contractions enough to stay calm to “release to the process”. Worse still was I knew that the fewer contractions I could release to, the longer and harder labor was going to be. We filled THE POOL with warm water and I crawled in and felt some relief. It was really quite blissful, and when a cool cloth was across the back of my neck I sincerely thought that THE POOL might be just where we may have ended up birthing Evelyn. Perish the thought.
Sunday 21-Sept 9:00pm - I’m out of THE POOL. It was such a miserable process to get back out of the stupid thing that I never wanted to go back in. I continued to labor along and it was worse. Much worse. But, I was consoled by the midwife who assured me that we were FINALLY in active labor. A quick cervix check showed that I was now 5cm dilated. That’s right. No further along than when I was in THE POOL. The only noteworthy thing here is that the cervix isn’t as swollen. So, it was appearing as though moving around and being active was a problem for the progression of labor, thus I ended up laying in bed on the side that’s cramping and proceeded to labor there for the next 5 hours.
Monday 22-Sept 5:00am - We have gotten NO. WHERE. I’m at 7cm, but the cervix is swollen again, worse than before. Membranes have been ruptured for damn near 30 hours, and the baby’s heartbeat has suddenly gone from being in a safe range to going tachycardic. My blood pressure has been climbing this whole time, and my own pulse has been steadily increasing. I’m exhausted. The midwives are exhausted. Matthew has had so little sleep I feared he may have actually been seeing double and just not saying anything. I’d failed. But, I hadn’t given up - obviously, the baby had to come out and there was no going back now. The options were: (1) stay home, keep laboring, and hope the baby can withstand the stress; (2) go to the hospital, get an epidural, get some rest, and try again. We opted for (2).
Monday 22-Sept 7:00am - We arrived to UNM Hospital and check in to OB Triage. Here’s where it gets fun. I’ve consented that the only way I could finish this process, given the persisting muscle cramp problem, is to have an epidural, get a nap, and push this kid out. I’m in the stupid hospital gown, looking like a shit storm that’s just made landfall, laying on the horrid examination table and learn that we’ve checked in EXACTLY at shift change. SHIFT. CHANGE. There will be no examination until after shift change. There will be no drugs until after shift change. There will be no nap until after shift change. Finally, an OB doc showed up (who, incidentally, proved to be a marvelously supportive and exceptional human being), did an examination and found that I had reduced to 5cm. I wanted to cry. They moved me to the labor and delivery ward, and almost as soon as I got there the anesthesiologist was there and gave what was probably the most perfect epidural in the history of epidurals. After the epidural, one loses the use of their legs, so a foley catheter had to be installed. Also, as part of monitoring for the power and frequency of contractions, some sort of pressure doo-hingus was put up into the uterus. I recalled thinking that it seemed odd to have so many various apparati going up an area where something much larger is trying to come down. The hospital staff saw the fetal tachycardia sprout up again, but after a quick bolus of fluids back into the uterus everything calmed down. They suggested they may just not bother letting me progress enough to deliver vaginally, but force a c-section. I replied that I wasn’t interested, and any further discussion about it was going to have to involve more immediate peril to me or Evelyn before I’d submit to that. They (surprisingly) acquiesced. And, in exchange, they hooked me up to a Pitocin drip. I got a nap. The midwives got naps. And, Matthew got a nap (and more importantly something to eat and some coffee).
Monday 22-Sept 6:00pm - The baby’s heartbeat kept doing bad things. We’d endured another shift change, so I had a new doc who would be doing the delivery. She was OK. Not as great as the one before, but beggars can’t be choosers. We start pushing.
Monday 22-Sept 8:25pm - It was interesting to note that right before Evelyn crowned, my delivery room suddenly seemed to be TEAMING with people. Someone introduced himself as the, “On Call doctor from pediatrics”. I wouldn’t ordinarily have noted that, except he did so right as I was bearing down on a big ol’ push and wondered if he thought I was rude for not responding to him. There were no less than 10 different faces staring up my action trying to get the best view. It didn’t matter. I pushed Evelyn out and got to feel the whole thing (sans the eye-popping pain). Turns out, the cord was wrapped around her neck, her shoulders, AND her body, explaining the tachycardia. One could only imagine how she managed such a feat, but given that part of her genetic makeup is from me, we’ll not delve into any deep speculation. They untangled her, handed her to me right away, and we haven’t been apart since.
I have NEVER been poked, prodded, stuck, bossed, jammed, monitored, and generally observed in all my life. And, as I had been assured since learning I was pregnant in the first place: It. Was. Completely. Worth. It.
Matthew was wonderful throughout and continues to be attentive and amazing in his post maternity care of both of us girls. I could stare into her beautiful little face all day. She’s a prodigious eater. She’s a prodigious farter. She’s a prodigious charmer. OK. One more picture.
Filed Under: Evelyn, Happiness is - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
Whale Ho!
Posted by E-George on September 14, 2008
It was advised to me that it would be nice to have some documentation that showed the progression of my pregnancy through some means other than oratory and writings. I thought I had been as successful as the chupacabra at evading photographic capture, but a dip into the household NAS’s photo archives has proved otherwise. So, I present for your viewing amusement: George grows a MiniSack.
This first image is when I was just wrapping up my first trimester (~3 months), and was just starting to feel like I could eat again without wanting to puke and/or kill myself in an effort to puke. The picture was taken at my parent’s house for Easter dinner, and, if you look closely you’ll see that I’m wearing one of Matthew’s shirts. At this point, it had become more comfortable to wear his clothes than mine, since mine were starting to fill out in all the wrong ways. Shortly after this picture I purchased my first (and only) pairs of maternity jeans.
This next image is at 4 months. We had taken the Tram to Sandia Peak with Spenser and Amy who were in town visiting for the weekend. Two important features of this experience: (1) This was my first time on the Tram, despite having lived in Albuquerque my entire life; and, (2) that was the last time my jacket was able to be worn AND zipped. After this weekend, the jacket was worn OR zipped, but neither at the same time when on my body.
5 months. You may wonder why there are so many of us staring at the motorcycle as if it were some alien space craft. The truth is, it was driven by the worlds smallest motorcycle rider and we were all taunting him. Not really. We were doing corporate portraits, which Matthew was taking, and he snagged this candid.
Time marches onward, and so did my girth. Here is at 7 months. We had gone to Colorado to visit Spenser and Amy for Independence Day weekend, and were hiking around various stops along Rocky Mountain National Park. At this point, mobility wasn’t an issue, but breathing was. As was the persisting requirement for bathroom access.
Finally, we have 9 and 1/2 months. I can be readily described as B3 (Boobs, butt, & baby). Mobility is definitely an issue these days, and I now have the privilege of being able to feel every twitch, every nudge, every hiccup, every sock to the bladder, and every shove of the rib cage all while watching the slow, outward progression of my navel. Soon, I’ll be the brunt of those stupid “Your belly button looks like one of those turkey timers! HARHARHAR!” jokes and because my arms are too short to do any harm I will be unable to strike the imbecile for their impudence. The reason my hair looks like that is because there was an incredible amount of wind in the park, and I had to find a pose that showed off the belly while staring into the sun and still keeping the hair out of my eyes, nose, and mouth. This is one chief reason why I’ll never be a supermodel. That, plus being rotund and stubby and generally unqualified.
All that’s left is the race to the finish. Our estimated due date is 30-September, and as some may know, Matthew and I are planning to have a home birth. It made the most sense to us, and was the most comfortable option of those I had available. Naturally, we have a contingency plan, should it be required, but we don’t anticipate needing to invoke it. We have an extremely well-qualified CNM (certified nurse midwife) who has been attending births since 1981, and her pragmatic personality and calm demeanor are exactly what I was wanting in a caregiver and birth attendant. We are fully pursuing what we feel will give us the most rewarding birth experience possible.
Technically I’m on maternity leave now, although I still have a lot of work I have to wrap up. I’ll be going into the office a couple of more times next week, but hopefully I’ll be able to walk away and take a break before the critter makes its debut.
Filed Under: Lookit, Thank you, and GOOD NIGHT!, hur-hur - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
Doesn’t look a day over 49
Posted by E-George on September 13, 2008
The integrated circuit turned 50 yesterday! Learn more about modern integrated circuits. I love this sort of thing. It feeds my repressed inner nerd which is maybe not so repressed as I would like.
Filed Under: Lookit - Comments: Read the First Comment
Pillow Geometry
Posted by E-George on September 9, 2008
Matthew can be quite patient, given the correct scenario. Take, for example, my hijacking of every pillow from our bed (save his normal sleeping pillow) for elaborate pillow geometry constructs designed to provide me with enough support and comfort to sleep while doing so at a an angle that minimizes heartburn and the effort required to heave myself upright to go to the bathroom at the top of every hour. And he patiently endures the grunting, the heaving, the sighing, and the general thrashing about. In exchange, he teases me mercilessly about the elaborate nature of my pillow structures. He would have to admit, though, that my pillow geometry skills are increasing with each passing week. Below is a series of diagrams that shows the evolution of the pillow geometry that has evolved over the past 6 weeks.
Construct 1: This was a simple scenario where I could still lay flat on my back, and use one of the spare pillows for belly and arm support when laying on my side:
Filed Under: Thank you, and GOOD NIGHT! - Comments: 5 Comments to Read
It’s like a moshpit for blue-hairs
Posted by E-George on September 3, 2008
Matthew and I are pretty excited about this whole McCain/Palin business. Matthew figured out where to get tickets to see them at the rally in Albuquerque this coming Saturday, so it looks like we’ll be going, along with my parents. Hopefully it won’t be too chaotic. Standing and walking are becoming increasingly difficult since I’ve transitioned into a perfect sphere.
I am curious to see if Matthew and I represent far-field demographic data. I have this predisposed visual stuck in my head that there will be all these blue-hairs wearing all manner of Republican buttons, sashes, and wee hats kicking in the convention center doors so they can rush the stage in a clatter of canes and walkers. There’s nothing better than a bunch of righteously-indignant elderly folks with a nursing home day pass and a free Saturday night. I’m going to ask Matthew to bring the video camera so we can film it, if it actually happens!
Filed Under: Lookit - Comments: Be the First to Comment
Crisis? Confusion? or Negative Self Indulgence?
Posted by E-George on August 31, 2008
This has been a time fraught with reflection and, pardon the cliche, soul searching. Not so much regarding having a baby or being a parent. That is its very own compartmentalized panic attack that I only take out and play with when I’m overly tired and know I won’t be able to control it.
No, what I’m talking about has to do with my professional career. If one could call it a career. It’s really been more of a series of dares and dumb-luck payoffs that demonstrated whether or not I had the guts, curiosity, capability, tendency, or vague skill to blob a solution together and pass it off as a success. I’ve always felt conflicted, though between what it absolutely takes to be mad-dog-style successful and whether or not my real passion lies along that road. Then, there’s the compounding conflict about what my real passion is. There was one time when I thought I knew what my passion was, but I was helped, shall we say, to see that pursuing that passion was impractical. So, in seeking out that which was practical I found myself on a strange, circuitous road lasting these 10 years. Reflection of those 10 years I can see giant doors and windows of opportunity for advancement or education that I somehow idled past or convinced myself weren’t appropriate for me at the time or even simply ignored. Now, with all the embarrassment that hindsight provides, I’m kicking myself for not making the sacrifices then that would be helping me now. I’m 31. Only just marginally competent. No degree. No real prospect of being able to complete the engineering degree I started. Not sure if I would be capable of finishing an engineering degree. Not sure if I want to. Not sure what it would gain me, except the possible obligation to stay in the workforce.
The crux of the matter is that I find myself increasingly frustrated that, no matter how hard I feel and believe I am working, no matter how much comprehension I try to apply to the work, the reality is that I’m always 10 steps behind where I need to be in order to secure complete success. I keep finding myself in a terminal loop of asking myself where I belong: Do I want to stay in the “technical” field? If yes, why aren’t I making the “correct” decisions to do what it takes to be successful? If no, what do I want to do? What am I even qualified to do?
To be successful in what I do (or nominally do, I should say), I know exactly what it takes and here it is:
- The heartfelt desire to spend every waking moment learning about the work. How to do it. How to do it better. How to do it best.
- The single-focused drive to sit in front of a computer all day at work, all night at home, and throughout every hour of the weekend reading, practicing, trying, learning, searching to the near-total exclusion of all other things. One could describe it as rooting around the internet like a truffle pig, and like the truffle pig, doing it because it is what I am trained and like to do.
- Replace reading for pleasure with reading for education and restocking the nightstand with applicable technical books.
- Foregoing personal relationships or the maintenance thereof in favor of learning how to do this work, because socializing interrupts the flow and application of study.
- Acknowledging that this is a permanent, ongoing behavior pattern that cannot be interrupted or slowed. It is a permanent fixture of my future until the day I retire from the workforce. (Moreover, it should be an example of how I should approach all other endeavors that may erupt along the sidelines.)
Now, here is the fully-funded-retirement question:
- Is it worth it, to me, to take those steps to be the best at my job?
And, here’s the follow-up 25%-return-on-investment question:
- Am I lazy, a loser, or a quitter if the answer is, “No.”
Career crisis? Hardly. Career confusion with a small dollop of negative self-indulgence is probably more accurate. I have to get to the bottom of this, and soon. Currently, I am far too dependent on smarter people than myself to ever advance on my own and it this dependency dangerously strains those relationships. It’s got to be career-style fish-or-cut-bait time within the next year or so.
Filed Under: Misc - Comments: Be the First to Comment
More baby as produce
Posted by E-George on August 27, 2008
I had cataloged the list of produce (or grocery store) items that a baby website associates to the growth schedule of a gestating infant. I thought I’d update the list to where we are, as of this week: banana, length of a carrot, spaghetti squash, a large mango, length of an ear of corn, the average rutabaga, length of an English cucumber, head of cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, butternut squash, head of regular cabbage, 4 naval oranges, a large jicama, pineapple, an average cantaloupe, honeydew melon.
Filed Under: Thank you, and GOOD NIGHT! - Comments: Be the First to Comment
« previous top next »