Luke - Four Months Old

Well once again I am a bit late on getting your monthly update written but this was a tough month for you and me and your dad. You continue to get cuter by the day and you laugh and laugh. Your dad is the best at getting you to laugh. He can just look at you and you'll start cracking up. Last week we discovered that if your dad said "Howdy Partner" you would laugh as if this was the funniest thing in the world; and so over and over and over your dad said, "Howdy Partner" and you cracked up. It was the sweetest thing ever. I tried it later and you barely cracked a smile so it's something you and your dad share, which is I suppose the first of many many things you'll share. And this is something I am so happy about. Your dad is such a great dad and I know he cannot wait for the day he can hand you your first fly rod and start showing you how to fish; how to pick a fantasy football team, how to chop an onion and so many other things he does so well.

You are working on trying to sit up and for a few weeks you were really starting to try out your voice - yelling just to hear yourself yell, shrieking happily and babbling. You have clammed up recently but I hope the babbling comes back because it was so funny to hear.

These are all memories I am glad I am writing down because I have already forgotten so many details of your first few weeks and there are so many sweet things to remember. But this was a tough month too and I want to remember those too. You still struggle with milk proteins and we had to go get your blood drawn, which was sad for both of us. But while we waited in waiting room, a song suddenly started and I could not figure out where it was coming from until I looked into a far corner and there was a hospital volunteer singing with the loveliest voice I'd ever heard. I suppose she was there to have a calming influence on the scared kids and parents waiting for blood draws and it worked. I sat and held you close and we both listened to that gorgeous voice singing some unknown song. It was one of those rare moments in life when you feel like you lucked into something totally unexpected and beautiful. I was once sitting in an airport terminal and a bluegrass band got out their instruments and put on an impromptu show for the other people at the gate and you felt just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

And then two weeks ago I walked out the door to open the gate and slipped on the ice and dropped you. I won't go into detail but it was truly the worst moment of my life seeing you fall and hit your head. An overnight trip to the hospital followed and you were put into a neck and body brace and poked full of IV's and wires and were an absolute champ about all of it. I just sat and held you and cried and cried. Somehow over four months you have come to fill our lives so completely that the very thought, the most fleeting thought of not having you filled me with a sorrow I'd never felt in my life. It was a pain like no other and I hope never to experience it again. I was reminded over and over that night of a line from Annie Lamott's "Operating Instructions." something like "If I could have just one crummy tiny wish in this world it would be for my son to outlive me." I realize this is pretty sad and scary stuff to put into this otherwise light-hearted blog, but it was my first really hard lesson in parenthood and it is lesson I want to remember on those trying days when you are cranky or you don't want to go to bed or you are screaming your head off in the car. Those are such ridiculously small inconveniences and an easy price to pay for all the other thousands of other happinesses you bring into our lives. 

Three Months Old

Luke, you turned three months old yesterday. I missed your two month birthday. I am not sure why - maybe it was because it was the middle of the holidays and we getting ready to go to Sacramento or maybe it was because we were both sad after your first round of shots. I've never seen you cry so hard. And so I cried too. 

The trip for Christmas was so much fun and you were an absolute champ about traveling. I had been worried about flying with you from nearly the moment I found out I was pregnant. And I know I'll spend your entire life wondering how you will react to certain situations, but in this one, as we took off from Salt Lake, you were completely passed out sucking on your pacifier and were as good as gold - both ways. You were the baby that everyone complimented us on when we got off the plane. It was as if you assessed the situation and decided you would hold off any breakdowns until we were off the plane. We were so proud.

You smile all the time now. When I walk into your room in the morning, you turn your head - the rest of you still swaddled - and break into this huge grin when you see me. It is so unbelievably sweet and gratifying. You like to stand now also all the time. Lying down is so six weeks ago. You stand in our laps and whip your head around on your newly strong little neck looking around all the time. You are just starting to begin to be able to hold things. You tentatively reach for things and just two days ago you started to pull things into your mouth. This isn't surprising because you spend a lot of the day trying to stuff your hands into your mouth. This seems to be a source of happiness and constant frustration to you; I really cannot figure out which. And tonight, as if you knew how happy we all were, you laughed and laughed when I stood you on my lap. It was the most wonderful sound.

So yesterday, January 19th was your three month birthday and today, the 20th is the three year anniversary of your parents' first date. This is pretty important and almost as important, is the fact that today is Inauguration Day. Barack Obama is going to be sworn in as President today and I am sitting here watching the coverage on television. Your Aunt Anne is there and someday she'll be able to tell you what it was like to be there on the Mall today, this most amazing day. But we are watching it on our couch, which seems fitting since we have watched the entire election on this couch - through my entire pregnancy, election night when your father and I cried and held you close marveling that Obama had actually won. And now it looks like millions of people are converging on the Mall and I have cried many times already watching these thousands of people who are so excited and so happy even in the face of this awful economic crisis we are in, this terrible depression that is closing in on so many lives. But in this moment it seems as if these worries are set aside even for a few hours. The pictures are amazing. There are people as far as you can see.  But I am so grateful that you are here with us in this time in history. We have such hope. 

Luke-One Month

Luke is one month old today. One month ago David and I were still reeling from a 30 hour labor that ended in a c-section. That Friday night induction that turned into a Saturday morning with contractions coming every minute, the arrival of Rachel our doula, the decision to get an epidural after seven hours of contractions with absolutely no progress on my part (what do you mean I'm still just 1 cm?) the epidural itself, which was one of the most intense and sad moments of my life, fourteen hours of pitocin and four epidurals later a c-section, chronic dry mouth I was sure I was going to die of, and finally a little baby boy with his stomach and lungs full of meconium, David hurrying to stay with the baby while I got stitched up, lying there in amazement that I had a son and still unbelieving that I had had a c-section. Feeding him for the first time, finally finally getting to bed at 5.00 that morning after his first bath, done inexplicably at 4.00 in the morning, but revealing blond golden hair. Those long days in the hospital filled with visitors and still not believing we had a baby. His second night spent in the nursery freaking us out because he was running a temperature and not eating. Many many hours and many shifts of nurses coaxing him to latch on and feed. Finally getting discharged and going home, discovering that autumn had arrived while I had been in the hospital. The joy of being home greatly tempered by days and nights of no sleep and a very cranky baby and a freaked out mother. And then, somehow, we got to know one another. Suddenly you were sleeping for more than 30 minutes, you were recognizing our voices and you were losing that swollen newborn look and filling out into your own. I know your face will change over and over as the months and years go by and you'll get cuter and cuter, if that it is at all possible, but you are so adorable right now. Sometimes you surprise us with a smile, something you started doing around three weeks. We like to think they are real smiles, but perhaps you are just content or just gassy - both are possible. You are gaining weight like crazy, having regained your birthweight and then putting on another pound in your first two weeks of being here. You shake your head like a crazy person when you are really hungry and you gritch and fuss when you are leading up to being really hungry, but these are all worth it when you finally sigh with content and fall asleep on our chests, your little stomach moving in and out with your tiny little baby breaths. 

election eve

I am not sure when I am going to make this blog available for general consumption, but it is Election Eve and I cannot believe we have finally finally finally almost made it to November 4, 2008. 

It seems like a million years ago that David and I sat on the couch and watched returns for Iowa come in and I watched Obama speak for the first time. I was sold. Completely sold. David had been talking him up for months, but I chalked that up to the fact that Obama had been his Constitutional Law professor back in law school. (I know! How cool is that?) and I still wanted to support Hillary because I still loved the Clintons. But Obama spoke that night and I cried. For this first time in a very long time I actually felt hope for our country. I actually felt a small flicker of pride in our country, something that had burned out in me in 2000. I felt like this candidate could actually do something for us all. And perhaps it was naive to think that then, and perhaps even more naive now, in the face of this crushing economic failure, but I have watched Obama give countless speeches since January and I have cried every time. Sure the pregnancy hormones probably had something to do with it, but each time I heard him speak I was amazed again. His speech on race, after the Reverend Wright debacle, took on race in a way I had never heard a politician do. His acceptance speech at the convention was the last word in acceptance speeches - gracious, humble and a powerful attack on his opponents. I stressed over every debate, sweating every "um" he uttered but I shouldn't have worried. He easily carried the day.

So here we are. Here I am. Sitting on the couch with this precious two week old baby sleeping next to me and tomorrow David and I will go vote for Obama because it's the best thing we can do for Luke, aside from the tangible stuff like yet another diaper change or another round of feeding. It's our best chance to elect someone who cares about the future of this country and cares enough to fight for our country and our world and by voting for Obama we might be able to change the course of history of the last eight years so that Luke will have a country to be proud of. I want him to be able to grow up with the kind of patriotic pride I had when I was little. The kind of pride that led my sisters and me to hang flags out of every window of our house on the Fourth of July. The kind of pride where the putting your hand over your heart for the national anthem meant something to you, not just an empty gesture like a flag pin because everyone else is wearing one. 

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve, wishing and hoping and praying for that puppy under the tree: half scared that it won't be there and half-excited because it just has to be there.

Please. Please. Please. Let him win.

Diving Into Parenthood

It is almost 1.00 on Friday, October 17, 2008 and in a few hours I will call the hospital and they will tell me when I can come in to start the induction process. This process will hopefully lead in short order to a baby. Our baby boy. I cannot begin to take in the magnitude of that statement and how much our lives are going to change in the next 24 to 26 hours. 

How will I spend my last few hours of baby-free life? I am going to the post office to send a very overdue birthday present to my sister, to the library to drop off some books I know will be overdue if I don't drop them off now and to the dry cleaners. Good times. Good times.

On the one hand it's a kind of nice to finally have a timeline for this birth and know that he'll be here within the next day or so, but on the other it does not lend itself well to sleep at all. David and I both spent most of last night tossing and turning with a single thought going through our heads, "Holy Crap. What the hell are we getting ourselves into?"