A Letter

A letter I wrote, before Penelope was born.  (Originally addressed to Paige, which is what we were pretty sure she was going to be named.)

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Dear Penelope,

This is my first letter to you – ever. Tina, your mommy, told me she heard that girls become mothers when they get pregnant, and boys become fathers when they see their child. Other than a little ripples in mommy's belly, I haven't seen you yet. So I'm sure I'll know more what to say then, when I watch you literally come into the world, from... not nothing, exactly, but from your pouch where you're growing right now, inside mommy's womb.

I love you. I know that I love you with all of my heart, and I know I'll look back after you're born and wonder what I ever meant, because now I'll really love you in a way I could never have felt or described before – but already, I love you more than I can figure out how to put in words. I don't know what you look like – I've only seen pictures of your bones and your little, lumpy, curled-up body, still growing into a full human being. I'm sure you'll be the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.

You were made, literally and figuratively, by mommy and daddy loving each other, very much. As soon as I saw your mommy for the first time, it was only minutes until I was so comfortable with her, my whole body and soul just relaxed and just became happy and okay with everything around me. I've never been really relaxed before – you'll learn very soon that your daddy has a lot of energy, and that he's very restless. Your mommy makes me – not calm, exactly, because I'm just not calm, and mommy would never change who I am, just as I'd never want to change her. She makes me content, though. I'm still full of energy – but the worry is gone. I just am who I am, and mommy is my best friend for life, and we can be ourselves with each other for that long.

I hope – I believe deep within me, but I hope – that you, and someone else who does that for you, and that you do that for, will find each other someday. Part of you and that person finding each other is just being a beautiful, brilliant, and amazing person – which I know you will be. But part of it is hard work. You'll probably have some relationships that start out really nice, and then hurt really bad because they end. That's just the work we have to put in. It sucks, but it gets SO much better. In the end, it's so worth it!

And you'll be amazed how easy every day is, from the day you find that person on – not easy as in no work, but easy as in simple, like you've found your right place and you can just be you. The work never stops in life, at least not that I can tell. Life is all about feeling really good about the work you're doing. A great partner is a key ingredient of that, if and when having a partner is something you want.

For now, you have so much to learn and explore and discover. Me and mommy will try with everything we have to keep you from pain, to fill you with happiness, to make the growing-up process fun and rewarding for you. Babies aren't born able to do everything – humans evolved to make us into a mostly blank slate when we're little, so we can learn things from our mommies and daddies based on the lives they've had so far. Me and mommy will be helping fill some of that blank slate in for you. But there will never be anything you can't think. There will never be anything you can't do, as only you can do it. In other words, you'll always be the best at being Penelope, out of anybody in the world.

I hope we do really well for you, like you deserve. I hope we help you to find your natural strength, and give you some of our own. I want to be a father you can always look to as an example – not that you have to do everything the way I do it, but rather that looking at me helps you figure out the way you want to do it. You'll be your own person, and mommy and me are lucky enough to help you take the first few steps, and to be there as your mother and father for as long as all three of us live.

You can always ask anything – there's no such thing as a bad question. You can always count on us to love you and to support you. And you can always trust that we'll do everything we can to give you the best life we can give you – and then, increasingly, you'll take it from there. But there's a long way to go until you need to take over completely, and I'm so excited to have that time with you to start you off!

I'll tell you more about my own feelings about growing up, and why I was so excited to have a little girl, and why we love you so much. I'll tell you all of that, soon, and then more after that, and, I'm sure, more, forever after that.

But for now, get some sleep – you still have to get a little bigger before you come out and join us! Not too much bigger – poor mommy, she still has to give birth, which is really challenging – but as big as you want and need to be. We'll take care of you the second you're here. So will your really wonderful aunts and uncles, grandparents and great-grandparents, and all the great family and friends mommy and daddy have for you. I can't wait to meet you, I love you, and have as easy a birth as you can!


See you really soon,



- Josh (aka Daddy)

Always eat breakfast...cause you might end up having a baby.

   

        Well, we started this blog to write about what being pregnant and then having a baby was like, and then promptly got too busy having a baby, to write about it! Josh covered the basics in his last post, so I'll just fill in a bit here and there, starting on the morning of December 18th...

       I went in for a sonogram, because our little Blueberry had been breech. It turned out that she had flipped back over, and all the technician had to say, was that my fluid (Baby's swimming pool) was a bit low. I left in good spirits, and went across the street to the Labor and Delivery floor of Albany Med, to pre-register us, since we knew we were due very soon, and  I'd been told that pre-registering saves you from having to bother with it when you come in, and are in labor. I passed by some guys working on fixing hospital beds in the hallway, and one asked me, sounding quite shocked, if I was in labor, and remarked upon the fact that I was walking by myself. I reassured them that I was not in labor, pre-registered, and then headed to my doctor's appointment (they'd scheduled the sonogram for the same day so the doctor could see the results, and me, in the same day).

       I walked into the office, sat down to check in, and the doctor came over to me. This is the point at which things started moving very quickly.

      "Do you know that your fluid is low?" she asked me.
       "Yeah, she mentioned that, actually-is that bad?" I hadn't thought much of it, but clearly from what she said next, the doctor very much did.
        "Well, your water broke! I'll take a look at you to be sure, but we'll probably send you over to the hospital tonight or tomorrow."

WHAT.

       I sat down to wait, not believing the doctor was actually going to do that..my disbelief was unfounded, because after a very brief exam, she left the room, and came back to say "My friend, you're going over to the hospital now. You're having a baby today!"

       I'm pretty sure my face looked something like this-

       After repeatedly asking different forms of the word "Really?", and being told that no, I could not eat lunch first, (hence the title-I didn't having anything but "clears" for the next 5 days). I started making phone calls and hopped the bus. We walked back into the very part of the hospital I'd left not hours ago, and were led to my (private!) room. Even at this point, they weren't sure they were even going to keep me (there was still some debate about whether or not my water had broken), but eventually, they determined that I was staying.

         To make a long story shorter, that was the beginning of 3 days of inducing labor, asking (screaming) for pain medicine, and finally, on the afternoon of Saturday, December 21st, 2013, the doctors decided to give me a c-section. Within the next two hours, our little one came into the world, and at 4:40 p.m., we became parents!  Josh was not embellishing when he said that the staff at Albany Med was wonderful. They are some of the best people in the world, and I will be grateful to them for the rest of my life. They were helpful, knowledgeable, efficient, and most of all, kind to me when I needed it badly. We couldn't have chosen a better place to have our baby!

       I'll stop here for now, but I'm bursting with stories from that week-we stayed in the hospital for the customary 4 days after the birth-be back later!

December, Penelope!

Look at this face.  Just LOOK at it.

Hi, readers! I'm Penelope Malala Miller-Hyman.

This is why people HAVE babies!  She's tiny, she's healthy, she looks like a little cross between the two of us - in other words, she's beautiful.

As I type this (at 5am on a Sunday into Monday), that perfect little creature is several feet to my left.  She was fussy tonight (because the landlady still needs to fix the heat in here), so we fed her, changed her and put her in the carseat, which she loves to sleep in, though we almost never put her in it to sleep. (NOTE: That's because infants sleeping in car seats is not generally recommended, which is why we're taking turns being awake and why we have her right next to us.  Their little heads sometimes aren't able to stay up really well unless they're flat on their backs, which then could impact their breathing.  So every breath is not only adorable, but a nice reassurance that we haven't harmed our new daughter.)

In the background, we have a (very softly playing) mix of nice music, from Natalie Merchant and Fiona Apple to Cornershop, Gotye and Nick Drake, Vince Guaraldi, Dave Brubeck and the Wailin' Jennys.  I can't imagine little Penelope not growing up with eclectic music taste, unless her mother gets too much up in her play list.  Then she might get so much Gaga in her ears, there won't be room for aught else.

This is Penelope Malala Miller-Hyman, named for my troublemaking, wonderful, brilliant grandmother Pearl, and a sixteen-year-old girl who is possibly the bravest person in the world.  She is sweet-tempered, friendly, loves to stare at people and things, and is one week and one day old as of this past four-forty in the afternoon.  Her birthday is December 21st, as per the wishes of her auntie Sonali, who wished very strongly to share a birthday with our new baby, and had no problem delaying her birth by putting that wish out in the Universe several times on Facebook.  (Love you, S!) :)

Penelope was delivered by C-section, after three excruciating days of attempted labor inducement.  Birth, it turns out, is a somewhat inexact science, and no one could quite figure out whether Tina's water had broken slowly or was still intact, until it burst two days after she was admitted to Albany Medical Center.  The staff at Albany Med were truly excellent, a term we don't use lightly here.  They were good-natured, knowledgeable, big on explaining everything, and really big on making sure everything happened as quickly and cleanly as possible.  Even the best staff, the best woman and the best little baby in the world can't always make the perfect birth happen.  Sometimes God / stork / time / whatever ($5 to whoever gets the reference first) decides that a baby's route into this world will be circuitous.

Other than a small, rapidly-healing scar on Mommy's belly, though, we have nothing to complain about.  Literally, nothing.  Mom and her new husband, Stan, the baby's Opa (German for Grandpa), brought us furniture from downstate, helped Tina through a very trying time, babysat for a few days, and even photographed the whole venture.  I have a job, the Albany community made sure we had spiffy clothes and great gear for little Penelope - and we're home, settled and just learning to love sleep deprivation.

We love you, Penelope, very very much.  We hope you don't mind that we wrote this blog to tell the world all about your beginnings, and who knows?  If it's successful enough, someday you may be able to type an entry yourself!

In the meantime, here's some more warm baby fuzziness for the folks at home.  Enjoy, and thanks everyone for following along with our new adventure.

 

It's jiggling...NOT shaking.

        We've learned a lot over the past 8 months; what we REALLY needed to buy vs. what looked pretty and wouldn't be used for more than a year, how long mothers really should be breastfeeding, how to put a bassinet together, etc. But in Infant Care, we got a Very Special Lesson. We talked about how important it is not to shake an infant, and how to safely swaddle and calm a baby. The teacher mentioned that she had a video about soothing babies that she wanted to show us, and that the other couple in the class had already seen, so at the end, we stayed behind to watch.

          I should give the teacher credit at this point, btw, for very openly taking this video with a grain of salt. It was made by a pediatrician who'd worked on techniques to soothe babies, for years, and then went on to make what he clearly meant to be an ode to himself; the man could not have been more obviously in love with the sound of his own voice. Some of what he said was valid (I've heard enough about swaddling at this point, to believe in it), but other stuff, not so much. A big core principle of what he does, surrounds 5 steps you can take to soothe Baby. There's the swaddling, but then there's the soothing. It's the soothing and then the shushing, that I would like to discuss.

      Dr. LoveThyself (so nicknamed for the deep affair he's surely involved in with himself) says you should hold Baby on her side and-his words not mine-jiggle her. This means turning her on her side and doing what looks a lot like shaking to me, only with minimally more support to the neck and shoulders. He clarifies what he's doing in a voice that doesn't at all make me think he's going to demand that I either put the lotion in the basket lest I get the hose again, he says,

"It's not shaking...it's JIGGLING."

     Oh. Well then that makes it so much better. Meanwhile the babies DO quiet down..probably because they've become frozen with fear and/or are plotting their escape. Some still continue to cry though, and for these babies, the good doctor recommends continuing on with something he calls "shushing". This is not as gentle and lullaby-esque as you'd think. It involves loudly making a "SHHHHHHH!!!!!" sound at about the decibel of basketball player sized mosquito, while being super close to Baby's ear, and doing the jiggling. Almost every baby who was at this point still fussing, almost immediately goes still and appears to be "asleep". Smart babies; if it were me, I'd pretend to be asleep too. The video rounds itself out with a few more tips, then testimonials from parents who say it works like a charm, etc etc...probably because from the way the video is edited, the good doctor is in their homes UNTIL IT WORKS, and they'd really really like to eat dinner without him trying to soothe anyone who raises their voice.

       Suffice it to say, I won't be using this method on our Blueberry-yes, we'll rock her, and yes we'll make ACTUAL soothing noises at her, but we won't be doing anything that resembles this "tried and true" method. I think I'll stick with things that won't make me worry that my baby hates me and would love to make her first words "Put me down, you spaz-and for the love of God, why do sound like a white noise machine filled with elicit amphetamines?!"

Thank you, Thanksgiving! (And not just for the stuffing!)

       Hi all! It's been a week since the last time you heard from us, so I figured while Josh catches up on a bit of sleep, I'd check in. We just spent the week with the most amazing in-laws a girl could ask for, and had a Thanksgiving full of family, talking, and STOVE TOP STUFFING. I can't even. I could not have imagined, one year ago, that this is where I'd be, or that this is what I'd be doing, but here I am, and here it all is!
       Baby is moving more than ever-Josh and I spent a good amount of down time just watching my belly, and feeling her wiggling around, getting in some exercise and growth before she makes her appearance in about 3 weeks. I'm a few days late on this, but I thought that here might be as good a place as any to do my list of things I'm thankful for this year:

1) My new family. They are just mind-bogglingly wonderful people; endlessly generous, welcoming, and friendly, I could not have dreamed up a better group of Grandparents, Uncles and Aunt, for our little Blueberry.

2) Josh. I've said it many times to him, and I'll delve into a bit of mushiness for a moment if you'll forgive me, in order to say it again. He is the best man in the world, and I am so, so happy that he's going to be raising this little one with me.

3) My job. Without getting into specifics I'll just say that I learned so much, and feel so loved having done it for so many years, and I can leave (never forever, but never the same again) knowing that I did a good job and (hopefully) had a positive impact; I do know that it had an incredibly positive impact on me.

4) My baby, my baby, my baby. I've wanted to be a mother for about 14 years, and to be here, so close to meeting our child face-to-face, is even in this pregnancy's fattest and sickest moments, incredible.

5) Charlie. A little more than a year ago, he came into my life and made me a Mommy-he made me happy when I needed it, gave me someone to love and take care of, and is our furry little son, keeping our house lively and our scraps eaten. I can't wait to hug his little body and feed him scrambled eggs!

-There are so many things that I'm thankful for this year (our apartment, the people here in Albany who've helped us in so many ways, our health, and things I know I'll think of later), but I'll stop here, at least for now. It's been a roller coaster of emotions for me this week, and I can't wait to start getting ready to meet little Baby Miller-Hyman!

Jingle Bells, No One Cares

Holiday Songs (Pregnancy Hormones Edition)

1) Jingle Bells, No One Cares

2) We Wish You A Merry LEAVE ME ALONE CAN'T YOU SEE I'M TRYING TO EAT CHICKEN IN BED!?!!

3) I'm Dreaming (Of Putting My Shoes On Without Assistance)

4) Walking In A Winter Wonder If I'll Ever Be Able To Lean Over With Ease Again

5) Silver Smells of Food Cooking Make Me Feel Ill

6) Little Drummer Boy or Girl?

7) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (Good, But I Ate The Cookies Already)

8) All I Want For Christmas Is To Get This Baby Born!

9) Have Yourself A Wary Little Christmas (I Could Start Crying At Any Time)

10) Hark How The Wells (Of Tears Come Out OF My Eyes-Why'd You Call Me Round?!)

"Anybody ever tell you, you gotta big head?"

       As a matter of fact, yes. Yes, I have been told over the course of my lifetime, that I do indeed, have a big head.

        It started at a pretty young age, when my mother started to notice that it was getting difficult to buy hats for me. As a small child, I'd had lots of hats, but around middle school, it became apparent that hat shopping was not going to be a huge part of my life. Slowly it became harder to find me a baseball cap that didn't look ridiculous, and by the time high school rolled around, the only hats my head would even pretend to wear with comfort were those shapeless knitted winter hats (think burglar hats), and the occasional beret. Then came the event that solidified it in my mind, had there still been any doubt. The World Series, when I was in the 10th grade.

       For several reasons, I had decided rather randomly that I cared about baseball now. Specifically, I cared about the Yankees beating the Red Sox. Could have been because we girls were all obsessed with our teacher, and he was a diehard Sox fan, who knows? Nonetheless, I took my babysitting money off to the mall, to buy a reeeeal Yankee cap. Where else to go but Hat World? I decided to be open with the gentleman helping me, so I said,

"Hi...I want a Yankee cap, but I need the biggest one you have-the largest size!"

(too many times had I been burned by "One size fits all"-how about one size fits NORMIES)

He obliged me, and brought out a large men's size cap. It perched atop my head like an urban fruit basket, and no further. He sighed quizzically, and brought out "The biggest hat we have-will fit ANYBODY-is elastic!!"

     I should have known what was coming, but I eagerly took the hat, and optimistically put it on.

It would not go on. IT. WOULD NOT. GO ON. This elastic-banded, deliberately big hat was not going to go on my head. I took it from atop my bird's nest-ahhhh hair, and handed it back to the salesman, who then gave me a piece of advice I would never forget.

"There is no hat for you. No hat in the world!"

       Seeing as this was coming from the man who ran "Cap World" I took it to heart, and only occasionally after that tortured myself by trying on hats that I knew wouldn't fit. Then came the horseback riding.

        I hadn't been in years, and so when I went a few years ago on the way back from a wedding in Pennsylvania, I rightly figured that to go on a two hour trail ride through the woods, I ought to wear a helmet. I pre-signed a form saying that I was ok riding without one despite risk, in case the helmets didn't fit, and followed the drawling ranch worker out towards the horses and helmets. Because I told him of my head, he sauntered past the smalls and mediums, which were actual horseback riding helmets, and stopped in front of the largest, which were simply bike helmets. You'd think they'd fit just about anyone.

      I tried it with the pads still in. Nope. He took them out, and placed the helmet back on me. Nothing. Finally, he and his mullet looked down at me and said, "ANYBODY EVER TELL YEW, YEW GOTTA BIG HEAD?" Oh, he knew not what he said.

       I tell you these two stories, readers, to get pity. No, no-I tell you these two stories as a backdrop to explain why, at our ultrasound the other day, I asked the technician, with hesitance and a bit of fear, "How big is her head?"

      I expected a number. I expected maybe a big number. What I should have known based on the past (pour some out for one's Cap World), was that the answer was going to be this:

     "Umm...well....she'll have a lot of...brains...."

      That and the fact that as a 35 week old fetus she has a 37 week old's head sizewise, was the most concrete answer I could get out of her. This makes me afraid. And little daughter, I promise you...if you truly do have a big head, Mommy will order you the prettiest little hats ever-from a big head internet store. There will be a hat for you, Baby Miller-Hyman. Any hat in the world.