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28-5-2008 - Letters to baby Emmi

My mood while writing this blog: Ok

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My Dearest Emilyn,

I am creating this little journal for your amusement when you get older and start to become curious about the days before you had memory. It is a limited but heart-felt account of your infancy. I realize that some of this is more for my amusement than anything else, but I hope that at some point you will find this at the very least, entertaining.

Your Birth

I’m sure that you will be told repeatedly about your exciting entry into this world. The shock and amazement will fade from your father’s and my minds, but we will never forget the explosion of thoughts and emotions that hit us that day.

The first time we saw your little body on an ultrasound, we walked away with a new nickname – tadpole. You were also “the swimmer” because of how you bent your little knees to your chest, then pushed off and zoomed around in your little home. You were immediately real to us, and it took my breath away. I couldn’t stop myself from crying at the sight of your little being.

My pregnancy was rather uneventful, with a little first trimester sickness, third trimester aches, and general lethargy throughout. Every day you became more real, and we became more excited to meet you. Daddy was an active participant in my pregnancy, cooking me wonderful meals and making sure I didn’t eat any fish with mercury or bacon. He touched my belly when you started to kick, and talked to you when your ears developed.

At the end my blood pressure became a problem. A little over a month before you were due I was at the doctor’s office and my blood pressure was about 110/160. The doctor sent me to Labor and Delivery at the hospital to monitor me. I lied on my side for a few hours, and your father sat by me and stroked my head the entire time. By the time I left my blood pressure had dropped to about 80/120 (that was the beginning of our learning about the power of lying on your left side!). Over time my blood pressure kept creeping up, until I was put on bedrest on November 29. The doctor watched my progress, and finally he suggested that we induce you on December 10^th because of the complications that could arise from my high blood pressure. We were torn, because there are many things that happen that show that your body is ready for labor, and they hadn’t happened to me yet. I wasn’t dilated, effaced, and you hadn’t dropped down the birth canal. Still, there were risks to me continuing with my blood pressure that high. We waited as long as we could, then agreed to be induced.

So we went to the hospital on Monday, December 10^th at 5:00 p.m. They put me on Cervadil, a drug that is used to help women dilate to prepare for labor. The drug began to work, and so started my contractions. I was pretty much stuck in bed, with fetal monitors on my belly, a blood pressure cuff on my right arm and an IV drip on my left arm. So the evening passed. Dad slept on the chair next to me and I was quiet in bed with my ipod. Even with a sleeping pill, I couldn’t sleep for the pain of the contractions and the excitement in my mind. Then, on Tuesday morning they broke my waters and started me on a pitocin drip – that was a drug to induce contractions. The cramp-like pains got worse and started to take on a sharp edge. Little by little I started to dilate more. Your grandmother Cathy and Great Aunt Sandy came to visit, and Chris took them to lunch. My blood pressure increased with the stronger contractions, so the doctor came in and told me I needed to get an epidural, as this would help my blood pressure. So then…relief. I was able to relax, hold a conversation, and start to look forward to your coming. Cathy and Sandy left at about 7 pm, and I was about 6 centimeters dilated. The nurses thought that I would be ready to push you out by late that evening or early morning. We were getting excited about your coming.

Just a few hours later, Chris saw your heart rate drop and he started reaching for the call button. Before he could push it there was a group of nurses in our room. Your heart rate started to plummet. The nurse felt for your head to check your position, and said “that’s not a head.” Apparently as you started to drop in the birth canal, you decided to change positions. In doing so you blocked the umbilical cord. They quickly moved me from side to side, trying to get the pressure off the cord. It made little difference. In a flash, they unhooked me from all the equipment and told us I was getting a c-section. They ran me down the hall to the operating room, giving me a liquid to drink while I was being carted away – I think it was a drug to stop the contractions. The speed and frenzy with which they prepared me was frightening. This was an emergency c-section, and it was performed in just minutes. Poor daddy was helplessly watching all of this, and was sitting outside of the operating room when they shut the door. But a nurse took him to be suited up, and the anesthesiologist brought him in the operating room to sit by my side. So your daddy stroked my head and talked to me as I felt the tugs and tears of you being pulled quickly from my body. The calmness that I was first able to muster started to fade, and I was horrified when you were pulled out and handed to the pediatrician without a peep. We were so worried that you hadn’t come through okay. Then the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard – your first cry.

Meeting You

Chris quickly went to you (he was torn between staying by my side and going to you and of course I told him to go to you). He later told me that your hands and feet were blue, a frightening sight. There was a swarm of doctors and nurses around you, working to get you to breathe and make sure you were okay. Your first Apgar scores weren’t very good, at 4 out of 10. You were blue, limp and unresponsive. But most importantly, your second scores were much better at 8. For days I worried about long-term damage due to the blocked cord but we were told you would be fine. Once you were wrapped up they handed you to dad. He yelled to me from the corner where they were working on you, to tell me you were a girl. He had known this from the start, but the news was new to me. Learning that you would be little Emilyn (rather than Ezra) was a joy. Then I saw you for the first time. Dad brought you to me, and all that he could manage to say is “isn’t she beautiful”. You were all wrapped up with only your tiny, sweet face peeping out at me. I was seeing for the first time a new being who would become one of the most important people for the rest of my life. You were gorgeous. Dad walked with you to the nursery while my surgery was finished. I was there for a little while because they had to bring in a portable x-ray machine – the surgery was so fast that they didn’t have time for an equipment count, and the only way to know that they didn’t leave anything inside of me was an x-ray. So after that was done they wheeled me to recovery, and your father met me there. I was shaking profusely; it was a common reaction to the drug that they gave me to stop the contractions. The epidural had also worn off so I was given some Demerol to ease the pain, and it was at that point the greatest pain I had ever felt (and I would do it over and over again for you). After some time I was wheeled to the room we were to stay in, and we were both anxious to have you in our room.

We still had a bit of a wait until we could have you, and in the meantime Kim Tabler, our Doula, came to the room. We hadn’t yet asked her to come to the hospital because we thought it would be a while until you were born. Although she missed all the action, we thought it would be good to have someone there to help with breastfeeding and our first handling of you, our newborn baby girl.

A few hours later, a nurse brought you to our room. We held you and really looked at you for the first time. Kim helped me feed you, and took some pictures. Your body was long and lean. You were just under 7 pounds and 20 ½ inches at birth. You stayed all curled up in a fetal position, and loved to be swaddled tightly. You were slightly yellow, had little hair, steel grey eyes. You were the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. Your left cheek had a mark and was slightly swollen – the doctor had poked you with a finger when he was frantically trying to pull you out of me. Mostly you slept, but when you were awake we stared at your and talked to you, and when you cried we were both happy to hear your lovely voice and anxious to find out what was wrong and what we could do to make it better.

We were exhausted but the excitement of being with you trumped everything else. I didn’t sleep at all for the second night in a row; I was just pulsing with energy from the entire experience. Well, and there was the need to feed you every two to three hours. Learning to breastfeed you was much more of a challenge than we had imagined. Mostly we had trouble keeping you awake long enough to feed. You also had trouble keeping your body temperature up, so we had to keep you tightly swaddled or skin-on-skin. That made keeping you awake to feed more of a challenge. At one point a doctor suggested we feed you some formula to get more weight on you to help with the temperature problem. We were hesitant, but did what the doctor asked. So you had a few bottles of formula at the hospital. You were also slightly jaundiced, but not enough to need treatment. In the hospital you received your first Hepatitis B shot, had your hearing tested, and later we found out that your blood type is O+. The day you left the hospital you weighed 6.6 pounds, which was a somewhat substantial loss. We were asked to bring you to the doctor the day after your return home so they could monitor your weight.

Chris slept on a fold-out chair next to my bed and was immediately the care-taker for both of us. He changed your every diaper (I never even got to experience the famous meconium poops). My body was recovering from the surgery: I was in pain, not very mobile, and exhausted. It took months for my body to completely heal. During that time your father was a wonderful help and an amazingly committed father and husband.

The nurses were wonderful and very helpful, although it was a challenge to have someone stopping in our room every few hours to check my blood pressure, to take you for tests, to give me medicine, etc. You had visitors at the hospital, too. Allen came once with a friend Amy and later with Anita, and Malia came as well. The day we took you home, Shana and Buddy drove up from Cincinnati to stop in, and then the flood of visitors came regularly for months.

Finally at Home

All in all we stayed in the hospital for five days. We were offered the choice of staying another day or going home on that day, and Chris was packing our bags before we could even utter a response. I was wheeled out by the one crazy nurse we had, whom I called “The Truck” for her loud and rough manner. Chris had you all bundled and buckled in the car seat, and we were off. Coming home was refreshing; we were ready to start our new life with our daughter Emilyn.

We had set up your crib in our bedroom, but mainly you slept in a co-sleeper that we had right next to our bed. Like most newborns, you slept for all but a few hours of the day. Most of those few hours were spent feeding you. We continued to struggle with keeping you awake to feed, and making sure you were latching correctly. We felt so close to you, like we were a family, once you were home. All of our energies were spent in delighting in everything about you. You would sneeze and we would giggle, you would poop and we stand at the changing table, staring at the result and having long conversations about it. The bedroom was on the third floor and I had limited mobility for a while, so Chris would bring me food and anything else I needed.

In just a few days’ time you had already changed. You started to lose your newborn cheeks, and your eyes started to turn from a steel color to blue. You grew eyebrows. We started to learn your personality, the active alert times where you would furrow your brow while trying to find your thumb to suck, or the grumpy whimpers you would make before you fell asleep. We would always remark how you were such a good baby. Over time you began to sleep a little less overall, and sleep better through the night. By two months you were on a good schedule, with one six hour stretch through the night.

In the end, the breastfeeding didn’t work out. I wasn’t able to produce enough milk so you weren’t gaining weight. We saw lactation consultants, rented a hospital-grade pump, and I went on a medicine meant to increase my milk that only managed to bring on depression. The doctors told us to supplement with formula, and when after a month I was only producing a few ounces, we transitioned to formula only. It broke my heart and upset me to no end, but there really was nothing else we could have done to make it work. But the formula has done well, at your second month check-up you weighed over 12 pounds and sported rolls on your chunky legs and arms.

When you were seven weeks I went back to work and we brought you to daycare, Bright Horizons on Fourth Street. It was another source of great anxiety and sadness for me, but there was no other good alternate solution. The staff were good and the other children seemed happy, and so we visited you often and made sure to give you lots of attention when you were home (we can’t help but do that, you draw us to you).

It seemed like every day you learned something new. First you saw the shadows on the wall from your mobile, then you could focus on the floating animals themselves, following them with your gaze. Your movements became less jerky and you became aware of your hands. You turned your head to look at us or listen to a sound. You were no longer a new born, and had become our little girl.

And Day-to-Day Life Begins….

One to Three Months:

Nicknames

• At first you were strictly Emilyn, and slowly you became Emmi. We started to spell it Emi, then thought it better to add another m. You were named for Emma, but for some reason you became Emmi instead.
• Little Monkey (usually sung to you)
• Squirrel (for the sound you made like a chirping squirrel)
• Bleedle-blee
• Anything ending in “pants”: sillypants, sugarpants, grumpypants
• Bubby, Wubby

• Other Things of Note
  You LOVE toys with lights and sounds, like your mobile and gym.
• You grunt a lot.
• You light up when your dad talks to you.
• Sometimes you make sucking movements with your mouth in your sleep.
• You often have a very serious look on your face.

Your first smile

The first time you smiled was for daddy. You were two months old. He was kissing your belly while you were on the changing table, and you gave him a big smile. He called me up, but it was a special act done just for daddy. It was a few weeks before you smiled for me, and a few more weeks before you smiled regularly. By three months you were giggling, and we became obsessed with making you giggle. Kissing you on your belly or chin gave the best results. Your next feat was shrieking, that is, a happy shriek. You are one happy baby!

What color are your eyes? Your Hair?

Just as we delighted at who you were at each moment, we were excited and curious about the person you will become. You were born with steel-grey eyes, so beautiful and strong. We wondered what color your eyes will be. Genetic charts suggested blue or green, but that doesn’t tell us if you will have the brown specs of dad’s eyes, or the changing colors of mom’s. In the first few months of life, your gorgeous steel eyes have turned to a bright and shining blue. Will they stay that way or change with time? Your hair is still a mystery. That is, your fuzz, because you really don’t have much hair yet. We stare at the sheet of fuzz on your head and wonder at it. Does it have red in it, will Emmi be a red-head? It would change colors in the light, once looking light-brown and later looking much darker. Will you have straight hair? Curly? Crazy waves? And dad’s question, will she have her mother’s freckles? We can’t wait to discover all of these things!!

Why That Blasted Cold Wouldn’t Go Away…

When you were just under two months old, you caught your first cold. It was torture to hear you cough and sneeze, especially when it got worse at night. Your breathing was pained and difficult, and I wanted to just breathe for you. We pulled your first boogers out of your nose, gave you saline spray, and bought a cold-air humidifier. Still you suffered. Weeks passed, and I took you to the doctor. She said that you could have caught two colds in a row, or it could be a milk allergy. She told me to wait two weeks, and if your symptoms didn’t get better, to switch you to a soy-based formula. Well, two weeks later you weren’t better so we started you on the soy formula. You hated the taste, but would drink a few ounces at a sitting. A few days later I came to pick you up at daycare, looked down on you lovingly, and you threw up. A lot. It was upsetting to see you vomit for the first time. Chris took you to the doctor the next day, who said to wait a week to see how you do, and then switch back to the milk formula to see if you really have an allergy. Well, just two days later you threw up again and that was it! We switched you back to milk. Immediately you had trouble breathing, were coughing and uncomfortable. What to do? The next step was to try a hypo-allergenic formula. That was yesterday at this writing. Let’s see what happens!!!

Now It’s Time to Keep up the Day-to-Day:

May 14, 2008

You are rolling from your back to your side, but won’t go over on your belly. You aren’t too fond of tummy-time, so personally I think you are smart to not put yourself in a position you don’t enjoy. Your favorite things are being naked and looking at mom and dad’s faces. Since you like being naked, you don’t mind naked tummy time so much. Every time you come home from daycare I get you changed and then treat you to naked tummy time, which you will tolerate with a smile. You are starting to notice Grunt and Milton a bit, but haven’t taken much interest in them yet.

You are teething a bit, drooling and making what we call the “old man face”, where you stick your lower jaw out and move it from side to side. You are getting better at holding things and directing their movement. Daddy’s favorite thing is the “pull daddy’s glasses off of his face” game. We love it when you “talk”, babbling away when alone in your crib, or giving excited high-pitched screams when we play with you. We love absolutely everything about you.

You are doing well in daycare, and we are still torn about having you there. We think that KaShá and Keisha are the best teachers, and Renee is okay. There are a few other teachers who move from room to room giving breaks, like Ethel who is often there in the evening, and loves to love on the babies! My favorite part of every day is picking you up…dad has the less happy job of dropping you off.

You are a chunky monkey with rolly-polly legs and a tiny Buddha belly. At 4-1/2 months you weighed 17 pounds. You are in the 95^th percentile. We are proud of our high-achiever. You have taken well to the Nutramigin formula and we have started to feed you rice cereal. You don’t know what to think of it, and feeding you is great entertainment right now.

This past Sunday was my first Mother’s Day. It was a nice, relaxing day spent with you and dad. He gave me a digital photo frame for work, we ate lunch at Pita Delights and bought frames for some art and Rod’s photos that I wanted to hang. The best part of my day was daddy telling me that he also wants a brother or sister for you. We don’t know if we’ll try to have another child or adopt one, but I think you won’t be an only child. You have brought us so much joy, meaning, and togetherness that we know we want more.

May 28, 2008

On May 20 you rolled from your belly to your back twice in a row. Now you’re a rolling fool. You smile at your achievement, beaming up at us as if to say “look what I did!” You love having control over your environment. It makes us happy, too, and a little sentimental about how quickly you are growing and changing.

This past weekend was very full of all kinds of activities and firsts. Your uncle Rod visited to see you for the first time. It was great to see how you smiled for him, and how he enjoyed playing with you and taking portraits of you and the family. The scary part was that he fainted, making mommy call 911 and him spending some time in the hospital. But Uncle Rod seems fine, so he was off to his Oberlin reunion.

After daddy’s work kept him busy for too long, we packed you up and took off for a cabin in the Smoky Mountains – our first family vacation. We grilled out for lunch and dinner, and listened to the cicadas at night. Saturday we went for a long hike with you in the Bjorn, looking up into the trees and smiling at them. I could swear you screamed a happy scream at the waterfall. I think it screamed back, too. The weather was perfect, not too hot or sticky, with a nice refreshing breeze. We drove along a scenic road (full of cars), and saw a baby bear in a tree, then the momma bear, with idiot tourists standing just feet from it. Knowing how I feel about you and your safety, I wouldn’t have trusted that momma bear to not eat me in one smooth bite.

On the way home we talked again about maybe trying for a baby brother or sister for you. We decided to try in December, and if I’m not pregnant in 6 months we may look into adoption. Wow, life just rolls ahead!

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1 Comments on Letters to baby Emmi


lisareader - Wednesday, 28 May
Oh, this just brings tears to my eyes! I love to write and I think I had envisioned myself doing something similar for Ben. I've been keeping track of his milestones - maybe it's not too late!