Getting to know you...

Home really is a different place now. Isabella is almost three weeks old, and almost every aspect of our lives has changed. Jen is still home, and Suzanne is still here to provide support for both of us. Much needed support, I should add. I’m back at work, and have had a hard time readjusting to regular hours and regular interaction. Even typing is coming a slowly these days. And I just filled my car with gas, something I hadn’t done in two-and-a-half weeks.

At home, Jen has no schedule. Everything is set by Isabella. If we’re lucky, she sleeps for three hours, then gets fed, then a change of diapers, then burped and held for a half hour before she goes back to sleep. That is the ideal scenario, and leaves us with about two hours to sleep before its time to start over again. Of course, that scenario happens a few times a day. The rest of the time, she feeds for a while then falls asleep, then needs to eat again in a half hour or an hour. Or she’ll stay awake, get fussy due to gas, cry for no apparent reason, etc. It’s frustrating, especially for Jen who is used to multi-tasking and generally staying on top of things. She basically has one task: care for the baby whenever the baby needs caring for. Anything else she gets done is icing on the cake.

We give Isabella a bottle of milk each day, which usually allows Jen to catch a solid four hours of sleep, though sometimes the bottle is required when Isabella just isn’t satisfied after several short feedings. She has no problem with the bottles, sucking them down heartily day or night. Burping usually takes 10 minutes of patting and rubbing, but sometimes comes within a minute.

She’s also been out of the house several times for walks. Jen and Suzanne sometimes walk around Midway Forest, our neighborhood, and sometimes drive two miles to downtown Decatur where they can also get coffee and window shop. Isabella seems to like her car seat, which fits into a stroller shell. She typically sleeps through any such adventure.

She’s also had two baths featuring partial submersion. Jen and Suzanne gave her the first one on January 9, and report that Isabella screamed at first but once she had water drizzled over her head and tummy she arched her belly up and loved every minute of it from then on.

Isabella also gets tummy time for at least 15 minutes a day on a crazy-color mat that Marshall and Jill gave us. We were impressed that the first time we put her on it she was able to lift her head and legs off the floor and gradually turn her head 180 degrees to face the other way. Jen said that on January 9 she almost turned her whole body over during tummy time. We could be in for a wild – and early – ride.

Changing, burping, changing, burping

[From the Jackson Progress-Argus, January 2, 2008]

Here it is 4:30 a.m. on the eighth day of my daughter’s life and I’m wide awake. Well, I’m awake, but I don’t know that either Jen or I have been wide awake since sometime last week.
We’re home now, so our world has expanded beyond a hospital room, a hallway, and a nursery window. Now we have the bedroom, the living room, the baby’s room, and our own kitchen. Yet the sensation is pretty much the same. I either hear my wife call my name or hear the baby make a sound and my eyes open. More often than not, I am instantly awake, able to throw what covers I have off, and hop into action. The action typically involves holding the baby, burping the baby, repositioning pillows for Jen, or changing a diaper. The bedroom is always lit by the soft light of a lamp we sit on the floor at the foot of our bed and blinds stay down. It could be 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. It could be sunny outside or actually raining. It could be Monday. It could be Friday.
It is parenthood, and I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir to many of you readers. You’re sitting there, nodding your head with a smile. Remembering all those years ago or maybe a few months ago when you were in my place.
The incredible strength and energy you found yourself with after only two hours of sleep. The new body and mind you awoke with after three or more straight hours of sleep.
The panic at the first sign of spit up – is she sick? Did we poison her? The panic at the fifth onset of hiccups in one day – is she sick? Did we poison her? The stress of not being able to figure out why she’s crying – we just fed her, now what?
The poopie diapers that come nearly every other hour, and the joy of cleaning her up after each one. The attempts to perfect an ever tighter swaddle. The struggle to get her hand through the sleeve of a new shirt.
The embarrassment of going to her first pediatrician visit only to find a poopie diaper when you put her on the scale, and have to tell the nurse that you neglected to bring a diaper bag with clean diapers and could you please borrow one. Are we the worst parents ever?
And I thank you for chuckling and nodding your head, because since you’ve been through all this before and asked yourself these same questions, it means we’re fine. Your children turned out pretty well right? They never held it against you that you forgot to bring a diaper bag to that first doctor’s visit did they? The hiccups went away eventually. Right?
Right. It’s all part of parenting. And after these eight topsy-turvy days, Jen and I have discovered that the 23 hours a day we put in fretting, changing, wiping, feeding, changing again, napping and burping our little girl are worth it for that one hour a day she opens her eyes and looks at us. For it is in those precious moments that nothing else matters – sleep deprivation, hiccups, presidential politics, Pakistan, even college football – and we see our child taking in her new world. A world we intend for her to explore, enrich and hopefully save.
And it was in those waking moments when we could look into her steel blue eyes that we asked her what her name should be. None of the five final names we took into the hospital to name her worked once we took a look at her. So we went through a roll call of the 64 names in our bracket, got slight nods of approval or a kind of smirk for two of them – Isabel and Ella – and decided on Christmas Day to combine them and call her Isabella Rose Avett.

Four days at Piedmont

Well, tomorrow I go back to work after two weeks of “vacation.” It’s been 15 days I will never forget, but feel the need to put some thoughts and scenes down just in case.

We spent four days room 255 at Piedmont Hospital. Jen had an adjustable hospital bed and various IV drips plus pain killing drugs every four hours if she needed them – and she did. I had a chair that stretched out into a single bed confined by the chair’s two wooden arms. I’m sure it was not a comfortable sleeping situation for me, but I was so tired most nights that I slept peacefully in that chair. The room had its own bathroom, two or three other chairs for visitors, a TV that got about 40 channels, and large windows looking out over the hospital roof.

Every other hours, a nurse of some sort knocked and entered to check Jen’s vital signs, bring her food, bring her medication, or check on the baby if she was in our room. Then every other hour it seemed like the baby needed to be fed. I was amazed that despite my exhaustion I was usually able to awaken instantly at the sound of her crying or Jen calling my name. Jen worked hard with her to latch and feed, and stuck with to insure our child had the hang of it. We were thankful for that.

The staff was great. And Leslie called soon after the baby was born to recommend the potato soup and chicken quesadillas from the cafeteria. We had each several times over the course of our stay, and they were really tasty. Piedmont had a snack bar that stayed open from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m. and featured all kinds of prepared salads, sandwiches and a hot bar and grill items, plus teas, coffees, and drinks. Jen could order off a patient menu that included just about anything she could want day or night. Everyone was pleasant, so happy for us, and loved to see our baby. One nurse remarked that not all babies are pretty when they are born, but ours sure was. We agreed.

My favorite times during our stay were the late night/early morning feedings when the baby latched on and began feeding. The sound of her swallowing and knowing that Jen was providing for her made my heart swell each time. It was a wonderful feeling that I’m not doing justice to now. Needless to say, it felt like we were nurturing a new life, a new family. It was remarkable.

We had several visitors to our room: Frank came every day, Suzanne had caught a miserable head cold and had to stay away, Fred and Elizabeth returned on Sunday, December 23 with Reid and Claire fresh off a plane from Washington. They all got to hold the baby and take lots of pictures. Jenn Wood and Ryan Evans – who were scheduled to have a boy on January 4, 2008 – came by, as did Leslie Wilson. Mac and Merrill also made an appearance and brought flowers and a stuffed animal for our girl.

Christmas was different. Frank came over mid-afternoon, and Reid and Claire and Fred and Elizabeth showed up soon after with presents and food and a bottle of champagne and a bit of homemade egg nog for me. It was just what Jen and I needed at that moment, a taste of home and smiling faces eager to take turns holding our daughter and posing for pictures. We won’t forget Christmas 2007. Especially since once everyone was assembled we announced that we had chosen a name for our daughter.

Seeing as how neither Olivia nor Mika nor Parker nor Riley nor Lila nor Lola seemed to fit her, we read aloud through our bracket of 64 names to our baby. She honestly smirked when I read two names: Isabel and Ella. We combined them, and arrived at Isabella for a first name. The middle name took a bit of work, but we liked the names of flowers and ended up with Rose. So we named her Isabella Rose Avett on Christmas Day 2007.

Over the course of four days, the nursery wing began to feel a bit like home, and I often walked to and from the nursery in bare feet or in pajamas day or night. But when Wednesday, December 26 came around, we were both ready to go home with our child. I got the car, packed our things and then met Jen at the entrance where a nurse pushed her out in a wheelchair. We loaded the car, placed Isabella in the car seat, and drove off into the world and back to home.

A GIFT FROM THE STORK

From the Jackson Progress-Argus, December 26, 2007

MARSHALL LAW

You were right. Every single one of you who said my life would change forever and for the better. At 5:52 p.m. on Saturday, December 22, 2007, my daughter was born.
For 39 weeks my amazing wife, Jen, and I tried to prepare for the big day when our first child would be born. We sought advice from friends and relatives. We read books and articles, went to classes, and searched the world wide web. We hired a doula to help us through the labor process. We went to a dozen or more visits to the doctor, ate the right foods, took vitamins and avoided anything and everything we thought we should have.
Our bags were packed, our parents were around, and we had a birth plan. But nothing went quite according to our plan and there were some scary moments of pain and concern. When the time came though, as Jen and I were whispering our prayers and hopes to one another, were heard our baby’s first gurgled cry. The relief, the joy, the end of a long journey all poured out of both of us, tears of joy.
We had done it. She was alive and kicking in the outside world, no longer kicking mommy in the ribs.

As I write these words, our daughter is a day-and-a-half old and she is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. Her tiny fingers grasp my finger when offered. She sneezes and yawns. Every little breathe is a precious sound, affirmation that she is alive and very real, flesh and blood. A new person we created, and now must nourish and care for, raise and educate.
She also produces dirty diapers, of which I have thus far changed three. The third one was my best performance yet, so there’s hope. By diaper #100 maybe I’ll have the hang of it. I’ve also picked up swaddling pretty well. Burping her remains a bit of a challenge, but I’ve got some time to improve my technique.
The greatest gift our daughter has given us is her little eyes. She’s been sleeping most of these first 36 hours, but every once in a while she wakes up and opens her eyes wide to look at us. What she is capable of thinking or processing by what she sees, I don’t know. But I know that her mother and I think she is absolutely wonderful. Her eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue we have ever seen.
One other thing we didn’t consider is that the final four names we had chosen to give her don’t quite seem right now that we’ve met her. We’re not counting then out, but we’re also exploring others that dropped out of the bracket of 64. We’ve got another day or two until we have to decide, so hold all bets until then.

I would not be doing these past few days justice without mentioning Jen and her courage and strength and patience. She has been remarkable in her ability to deal with pain, with stress, with visitors, with a stubborn-but-hungry baby, and with a husband who did everything he could think of to make her feel loved these past nine months.
As she just said when we were talking about how to sum up our feelings: “I feel like I’ve been on an air pump for nine months, then ripped apart and then handed the greatest gift ever.” And it is a mix of ecstatic joy and absolute exhaustion. And Jen has handled it so well. I tip my hat to all mothers out there no matter how old your children are. You are all remarkable women.
The staff at Piedmont Hospital has also been remarkable. Everyone from the doctors to the nursery staff and the food service employees have treated us so warmly, and kept a cheerful holiday spirit no matter what the time of day. I also recommend the chicken quesadillas from the dinner menu.
And a word about me, too. I want to thank everyone again who gave me words of encouragement and advice these past months, and also to those who recognized that my mind was often elsewhere in recent weeks in particular.
And for anyone reading these words who aren’t sure about having a child of their own or adopting a young person, we gave it a lot of thought, too. We weighed the pros and cons and went over them again and again. In the end, now that we’re holding this gorgeous little person, everything has been so worth it. Everything. And we’re less than two days into the role of parents.

And baby makes three...

We went into Piedmont Hospital at 5 a.m. on Saturday, December 22, 2007 and set up shop in a delivery room. Jen labored on her own, without drugs for over five hours, and then called for an epidural. That procedure, performed efficiently by Dr. Gilli, ended the pain of the contractions and set Jen on a path for drug-induced contractions via a patosin IV drip. This process continued for another six hours until Dr. Dozier, one of the OBs from the practice we had been going to, came on shift. She examined Jen, looked at the baby's vital signs on the monitor, and recommended an emergency C-section. Something was wrong, and the health of the baby was in jeapordy.

Jen was wisked away to the OR, and I suited up in scrubs. A few minutes later I rejoined her, and sat by head head as Dr. Dozier and nurses manually delivered our child. When we heard her first gargled cry, such a wave of relief and happiness washed over us that we both broke down in tears of joy. Our baby girl was alive and kicking - well, screaming actually.

I followed a nurse with our daughter to the nursery, while Jen was stitched back together. I ran into the waiting area where all four grandparents - Fred and Elizabeth and Frank and Suzanne - were sitting. I begged them follow me, and they hopped up and met their granddaughter in the hall. In the nursery, she weighed in at 7 pounds, 2.5 ounces, and measured just over 19 inches in length. She was cleaned, suctioned and dressed in a Piedmont shirt, and then taken back to see her mother.

The three of us soon found our way to a private room that we would call home for four days as Jen recuperated, and we got to know this little bundle of joy.