Thanks, Maura!

Last Christmas, I mentioned that my friend Maura makes all manner of inventive, inspired crafts. Allison Clare has been the beneficiary of her generosity--see her below in a onesie made from one of Maura's papercuts, printed onto fabric.

Happy Easter

It's late Easter morning, and we have said good-bye to our weekend houseguest, one of our favorite people in the whole world. The Reverend Doctor drove up on Friday, and when she arrived, she gathered AC into her arms before even taking her coat off, so that she ended up wearing the coat for a good part of the evening as the two of them basked in each other's radiance. Over the weekend she cuddled the baby, brought me pillows and sodas and friendly gossip, danced around with the two of us at our evening dance party, relieved Sam from having to distract/entertain his girls, and generally filled the household with sweetness and light.

We aren't going to church today, having settled on waiting until the Munchkin is a month old before taking her out among "crowds" (pediatricians' advice seems to range between 1-2 months . . . this seems long, but it's only a few more days, so I've barely noticed 'til now). Missing our Easter service might have made me a little sad, but at home now, the sunroom is bright with the uncharacteristically lovely weather outside and the cheer of our dear friend's recent presence.

Peep Show

A little spring amusement, courtesy of Clare.

Update: No, Clare did not make the Peep Show--just forwarded it!

Dairy Queen

I think I'm addicted to milk. We have these pint glasses, and I usually drink about 3 a day at least. Sometimes more. I love milk plain, as chocolate milk, as hot chocolate, especially with sweets, but also with certain other foods (like peanut butter or a banana) or just on its own. It's my beverage of choice with meals, and sometimes stands in as a snack on its own. There is simply no substitute. Consider the Oreo, alone. Enough said?

But something in my diet appears to be giving my baby massive gas attacks (could the drinking of milk be incompatible with the making of it? O cruel irony!). Gas is terribly painful for newborns because they don't know how to release it, so they clench up--our baby writhes, screams, and grasps at you, with these desperate, frantic eyes, for hours at times. Our internet searches keep turning up dairy as a possible cause.

So I've glumly embarked on a few milk-free days, after moving through several of the five steps (denial/anger/bargaining). I realized the extent of my addiction after Sam retired upstairs last night, when I found myself struggling with an intense compulsion to sneak a glass. Then I pictured my baby screaming and only had a few sips. For the whole day!

I Get Around, Get Around, I Get Around . . .

AC has various modes of transport. For rides around the house while Mommy's putting groceries away, the Peanut Sling from Aunt Katie:


For tooling around the neighborhood, like a trip to Babies-R-Us to buy a baby bathtub (woo-hoo!), the Devon carseat from Aunt Julie and Uncle Jason:

Family Resemblances

My family doesn't have many pictures of me from before I arrived in the US at 5 months old. There's the picture that the adoption agency sent my parents, of me when I was a few months old, and then one time going through some papers, I found that my visa for entry into the US included a photo from when I was pretty tiny, maybe a few weeks old. I'd like to find that picture now since from my vague recollection, Allison Clare bears some resemblance to it.

I've been thinking some about my connection to her over the past 12 days. It's odd to have such an intense relationship with someone you don't really know--even odder still given that she doesn't exactly give a lot back quite yet. She doesn't even recognize her own hand, much less her name, or our faces. I think developmentally she's aware of our voices as familiar, and of my smell (which they imprint pretty early I guess), but that's about it, and she has no way of really showing that familiarity. She can't really smile yet, though she gives a good imitation when she's just filled her diaper.

But two things are surprising to me when I think about my relationship to her: one, she might actually look like me (this seems to be the consensus, though I think she has Sam's mouth), which is a connection that I don't have with anyone else (that I know). And two, she's not adopted, so in some sense, the way our family has been established is more conventional and yet less familiar to me than my relationship with my own parents. I don't mean to imply that either relationship is less authentic or deep, but just that they're different, and that I don't really know how this one works--somehow, the biological connection is significant, just as the connection established through my parents' experience of the adoption journey is also significant.

I love the memories of having had Allison in my belly, especially now that I know what she looks like and can imagine her better in there, and the memory of her birth (the "birth amnesia" phenomenon where the pain of labor loses its immediacy--totally true!). She will be told that she looks like her mom or her dad, something that only happened to me once, when I was 8 and a girl from my ballet class said that I looked like my mom (?!). I can't imagine what that would be like, though I also can't imagine not having had the adoptive relationship. It's as if having given birth to her creates one bond between us while it also means that another one, based on shared experience, is impossible. Not that that matters too much--she'll have a million experiences that I won't have. I've just been thinking about this one, about how the story of her origin and arrival will be so different from mine--and so much more like other people's.

The Gory Details

(Edited for TV version. But look, it's still a birth story, so don't read it if you'd rather not know!)

As I posted earlier, I went in for a regular appointment last Thursday, February 28. The doctor found I’d dilated to 5 cm, was 80% effaced, and was having contractions during the exam (as I had been for weeks--yawn). She suggested scheduling an induction (“things could happen very quickly, and they’re predicting snow”), and even if I didn’t want to do that, she wanted me to go to the hospital to get onto a monitor to track the contractions.

I was disinclined to induce and hesitant to get excited over another false alarm. I also figured we only live 5 minutes from the hospital (and Sam’s truck has 4-wheel drive!), so why worry about getting there? But I went to Sam’s office and we decided he’d teach his next class and I’d get my things together, and then we’d head over to the hospital since the doctor had suggested it so strongly.

So we made our way over there, got checked in around 5:00, and found that I was now dilated to 7 cm. Still no real discomfort. Our childbirth educator had told us to come to the hospital when the contractions were intense enough that you couldn’t walk or talk through them, but mine had never gotten that strong. I got hooked up to a monitor, and after a few more hours, when they checked again, I was dilated to 8 cm. By this time, Sam and I were sort of snickering in disbelief (incredulous over our luck) and the doctor was pronouncing this a Very Unusual Labor.

At 10:30, the doctor returned to say that if we wanted, the next step would be to break the bag of waters and help the baby descend further down. He offered me an epidural, but it sounded absurd--I still wasn’t feeling any pain. He explained that the epidural mostly functions to anesthetize you during the first stage of labor while you are dilating to 10 cm, and then during the pushing phase, they back the epidural off so that you can feel to push. To be honest, it just seemed like a lot of hassle for a short period of relief since I was already almost at 10 cm—they’d need to put an IV and hydrate before doing the epidural itself, and then I’d possibly have a longer and more difficult pushing stage. So, against all my plans, I opted against it.

They broke the bag of waters, and for a few minutes, I didn’t feel much change at all. “A hundred years ago,” the doctor said (immediately piquing my interest with the promise of a little historical lesson), “you would have had a really easy labor—you would have just suddenly felt the urge to push.”

Sounds benign, doesn’t it? “The urge to push”? But it was a sudden, crushing pain that I absolutely needed, without knowing why or knowing how I knew, to relieve by bearing down. It hit me within literally minutes.

A side note: For the rest of my days I will thank God that my doctor that afternoon sent me to the hospital where the water was broken in a labor room, instead of my having had it happen out shopping or something somewhere and being catapulted instantly into the pushing stage of labor, say, on the floor of the Gap, or the side of Rte 19.

Anyway, at that point, I realized another thing that was different from what we’d learned in childbirth class (the class, I think, was excellent—my labor was just pretty far out of the ordinary): in class, they’d said contractions might typically be a minute or so long, with about a minute in between that we’d use to catch our breath and focus for the next one to push effectively. But my contractions were coming with only 10 or 20 seconds in between; I had no time to rest and focus, and sometimes I didn’t even know when to stop pushing—if I stopped too early, the pain was unbearable; if I pushed longer than I needed to, I might miss the few seconds of relief I could experience.

I’ve never been completely out of control due to physical pain before, but within those few minutes, that’s pretty much what happened—and why I’m so glad it was in the privacy of a room with my husband and an immensely kind nurse. I pushed for about 2 ½ hours total. The first 30 minutes were difficult as I learned how exactly to push, but rewarding because by the end of those few minutes, Sam and the nurse could see the baby’s head and had already told me about her dark hair, making it real to me that this was our baby coming (!).

But then, she sort of got stuck. Without being too indelicate: she was pointed downward, and needed to come upward a few degrees to come out. So all of my pushing, which could only be directed one way (you’re bearing down), was fruitless for the next hour and a half—I kept pushing as hard as I could, but I couldn’t push her into the correct position to make her exit.

I was feeling very faint, especially by the end, and then I heard Sam say to the nurse, “Isn’t there something else you guys can do? Maybe the vacuum extraction? Because I don’t think she can keep pushing for much longer.” And the nurse said that the doctor didn’t want to do an intervention because it would be uncomfortable without anesthetic. Then Sam said, “I completely respect his expertise . . . it’s just that I know Tara, and I know that she can’t go much longer.” The nurse said, “Yeah, I can see she’s pooping out.” And from my state of vague consciousness, I thought simultaneously, “I love this man!” and “I wonder what they’re going to do when they realize I can’t push this baby out?”

Then the doctor was standing over me and saying very gently, “Now, I can help you, but it might be a little uncomfortable.” I felt as if it were the kind of offer you get from Jesus, and to be honest, at that point, if he had handed me a knife and told me to perform my own C-section, I’d have grabbed it and begun without a second’s hesitation.

So then there was a quick set change—they broke down the bed for delivery and moved some lights around, the baby nurse came in and got into position by the bassinet, and I thought, “Oh, this is good—at least they think something is going to happen now.”

The doctor applied this little electric suction cup and vacuum pump to the baby’s head and guided her upward and out as I pushed. The cup came off once or twice, and I felt the “discomfort” (tearing) but didn’t even care—in fact, I didn’t even want to react because I didn’t want the doctor to stop what he was doing—it felt like my last hope of getting the baby out. And within about 20 minutes, to my complete disbelief, her head appeared.

That’s the moment where people have all kinds of beautiful revelations about their love for their child. But all I could think was to try desperately to calm myself: “You don’t have to push her head out anymore . . . you don’t have to push her head out anymore . . .” and then suddenly, with another push, they placed this little warm damp animal with its mop of dark wet hair and its expression of unabated shock onto my belly, and I thought, “Wow—there’s a person there!” And I got to touch her—I just couldn’t believe that an actual person had come out of my body.

That was at 1:50 a.m. February 29. In the next few minutes, Sam cut the cord, and I vaguely remember the doctor saying soothingly that he would do the rest of the work, and I felt this strange pulling sensation as he delivered the umbilical cord & placenta. Then I saw Sam holding this little be-toweled bundle and heard him burst out laughing, “She looks bitter!” Allison Clare’s eyes were wide open, and she just looked so surprised, and then I got to hold her, and my parents came in.

Afterward they cleaned us up and got us moved over to the room where Sam and I would stay for the brief time remaining of the night. I’d never been injured or hospitalized or anything before, and I felt pretty ravaged and very shaky, but also exhilarated.

I still can’t believe that our bodies can actually make people . . .

Week 1

Thanks, everybody, for sharing our joy! Sorry it's been a while: Allison's first week has been rather more eventful than we had expected. She had severe jaundice and ended up being hospitalized all this week (Monday through Friday). She's fine now, but it was harrowing from our anxious, sleep-deprived, hormonally chaotic new-parent perspective.



It's normal for most babies to have a mild case of jaundice (the buildup of extra bilirubin)--they're born with extra red blood cells that they no longer need after birth, and the breakdown of those cells produces bilirubin as a byproduct. But our baby is, as Frank would say, an overachiever. Her bilirubin level was three times what we had been told was acceptable, putting her at a risk, however remote, of brain damage--scary words for us to hear, along with others that followed, like "lumbar puncture showed elevated white blood cell count" and "rule out the possibilty of bacterial meningitis." But thankfully, the wonderful doctors and nurses at St. Clair Hospital treated her immediately, intensively, thoroughly, and incredibly kindly; we have every reason to believe that she's escaped any longterm consequences; and all her other tests ultimately came back negative. So we got to have our second little coming-home-from-the-hospital party today.



She looks like her beautiful self again--all rosy and pink. Her personality has also changed quite a bit since she was sick those first couple of days at home, though we didn't realize it, and was also feeding poorly. She was a creature of repose and serenity during the daytime, but at night she was by turns restless, furious (screaming herself purple and waving a fist in the air like some out-of-control military dictator), pathetic (clutching desperately at your chest as if in the worst pain imaginable), and cunning (looking at you out of one sly eye, as if to gauge whether you’re worth opening the other for as well). We'd spent her first night at home on Saturday bemused by our complete infatuation, but horrified by the discovery that our baby only slept when held. It turns out that it was probably irritability caused by her jaundice and feeding issues; she's a whole new baby now, eating well (her genetic heritage), sleeping contentedly, and interacting sweetly and playfully.



So all's well that ends well. The worst of it was Monday, when we first arrived at the hospital and all the scary outcomes were still on the table. I had a teary moment after Sam and my parents left (mothers of newborns get to stay at the hospital with them to nurse), but I talked to the Reverend Doctor, the beloved friend who performed our marriage ceremony, and somehow, she righted my sails a little. She didn’t just tell me that everything would be fine (because who can know? And I’ve had people tell me that before and be tragically wrong). She reminded me through her grace and the assurance of her faith, without even saying so in words, that even if it wasn’t “fine,” even if our worst fears came true, Allison is watched over and loved by a God to whom she belongs—even more than she is loved by and belongs to Sam and me.

A good lesson to take to heart at the start of her life . . .

Welcome, Allison Clare

She made her entrance into the world at 1:50 a.m. on February 29, weighing in at 6 lbs, 8 oz., 18.5 inches. As you can see from the pictures, she has inherited lots of dark hair from her mother and a dose of good-natured skepticism from her father.

As the first Leap Day baby of 2008, Allison had her picture in the local paper this morning. To handle the attention of the paparazzi as a result of this most auspicious distinction, she has hired a press secretary, who arranged the following exclusive interview with Grace Notes.

GN: So, Allison Clare, where does your name come from?

AC: My first name, Allison, just appealed to both my parents--not too trendy or outlandish. My middle name comes from two places: It's the name of one of the loveliest people my mother knows, and it's the name of my dad's favorite county in Ireland, the one they flew into and out of on their honeymoon this summer.

GN: You've recently experienced a number of changes. Tell us about them.

AC: Well, as you know, I transitioned from an aquatic to a land-based creature yesterday, and in doing so, faced a number of challenges. My former home had a number of advantages--constant temperature, filtered lighting, softly muffled sound, a meal plan. But the quarters were a little small, and I had only taken a 9-month lease. It took me a while to decide, but I finally settled on moving out rather than continuing to fight with the landlady for more space and time. Since then, I've been working hard at learning to breathe, eat, and open my eyes.

GN: Wow! That sound like quite a day. What are your plans for the future?

AC: My biggest current goal is to fall asleep on my own. My parents have encouraged me in this direction for my entire life, and after all, I owe it all to them.

;)