Nickname Tournament

In our family, it's important that infants have a nickname that's good enough to make even the crying during the day's 14th diaper change seem endearing. Kirsten is usually the designated nicknamer, and she does pretty well (Soren was Snuffles a.k.a. Mr. Snuffleton, based on the sounds he made during his first cold). However, Kirsten's absence during Sigrid's first week home allowed competitors to arise, and some of them will not die.

While Kirsten was gone, I dubbed the small, squirmy thing Gridder Critter, which rolled into The Griddler (with associated fussing sounds characterized as "griddling"). Since Kirsten's returned, and Sigrid's picked up a cold, Kirsten's added Schkernky [it's pronounced just the way it's spelled. -Kirsten] to the mix, echoing some of Sigrid's lovely snorty breathing sounds.

Kirsten uses Schkernky almost exclusively, and I mix Schkernky and Gridder Critter. Soren, however, is a firm advocate of The Griddler. Enough so that if he hears Kirsten refer to Sigrid as Schkernky, he says, "No Mama. Don't say that. Say 'Griddler'." Perhaps he remembers the indignity of being referred to as a sound you make when you have a cold, or perhaps he just prefers his sister's nickname allude to one of the better Batman villains.

Conversations with Soren

It seems like Soren has become a Really Big Boy all of a sudden, at least conversationally. He's been talking really well for a long time now, but I find myself wondering at the complexity, or at least the eloquence, of his statements lately.

We're enjoying a snowy day at home, so I lit a fire and turned on the Christmas music. I was puttering around a little, and Soren said, "Mommy, can you come in the living room?" So I poked my head in, and he was lying on the couch, looking pretty content. "Will you sleep on the couch with me, Mommy? There's room over there to be comfortable for you. You can put your head on that pillow and I will put my head on this pillow. And then we can look at the fire. It's nice to sit and look at the fire to make it warm and comfortable for us."

Well, then. Hard to say not to that.

So we lay on the couch together for a little while, and although he'd mentioned sleeping and asked me to close my eyes, we seem to have moved on from that plan to a different plan wherein he takes balls of yarn out of my knitting bag and pulls them all over the house to make an enormous tangle. Hey, at least it isn't the yarn I'm using at the moment. Maybe untangling everything can be our family activity for the evening.

Helping...as Much as Possible

Shortly after I got home yesterday, Sigrid woke and began crying for dinner #1. Soren was playing nearby. I looked toward Sigrid and said, "Mama will be out soon to feed you."

Soren jumped up and ran toward Sigrid and pulled up his shirt. I asked him if he was showing Sigrid his belly. He said yes, because that's what Mama does to help Sigrid stop crying.

Walking in on My Wife

Kirsten assures me that there's some sort of demand out that for my version of the birth story. So, I'll temporarily suspend my governing principle that whatever the father does during labor and delivery doesn't matter (e.g., boiling water) and give you a little window into my mind.

First, I have to reveal that Kirsten is off on certain elements of the timeline. I can't fault her for this, as she wasn't so much near clocks or paying close attention to them, but as I was teaching at the time, I was keeping very careful track of each minute. In the event of later litigation, I have eight students who can testify as to when I walked out of class.

1:40 (Kirsten pegs at 1:20) My cell vibrates with an immediate second call from Kirsten, which we'd previously agreed was to be reserved for an I-should-walk-out-of-class (one I'm teaching) baby-related scenario. I interrupt trying to figure out how to get through Halton draws before class ends at 1:45 to answer the phone in the hall. Kirsten tells me her water has broken, but since she's not contracting, I don't need to head home immediately.

1:41 I apologize to my class that the "leave immediately" alert was triggered for a non-leave immediately scenario. Go on to explain how Halton draws can expedite numerical integration in the likelihood function of random coefficients logit models.

1:48 Get back to my office after class. Call Kirsten back to see how she's doing, and see if it's perhaps time to let my parents know they need to get on the next plane from Ohio (they're on call to take care of Soren while we're in the hospital). Kirsten suggests that perhaps it's best if I come home now.

1:50 Fire an email to my 2:00 meeting with a publisher rep that I would have to cancel because my wife's water just broke. In retrospect, this is at least as effective as the dead grandmother excuse.

1:52 Call my mother and tell her to get on a plane. She sets off to find my father.

1:53 Shave legs. Why...oh.

1:55 Pack my stuff and walk out of my office for the 30 minute commute home. On the way, I think about what I'm going to do with the inevitable time in labor before we go up to the hospital: the last place you want to be before it's time to be at the hospital is at the hospital, because they just leave you in a poorly-designed waiting room. For Soren's birth, I'd planned a bunch a distraction activities for Kirsten; I was a little behind in that respect for Sigrid.

2:29 Pull into the driveway. Collect myriad empty coffee cups from my car. Throw the recyclable ones into the bin on the way into the house.

2:30 Open the door and slip the non-recyclable cups in the garbage (I recall this specifically...it was important these be properly thrown away).

Pause, as I hear incongruent crying. It isn't Kirsten, and it isn't Soren (who should still be at school). I turn the corner when Kirsten calls, "Chris...", and she's standing in the dining room holding...the crying thing. "What is crying, and why is Kirsten holding that really realistic doll?" ran though my mind (really...that stuck me as more sensible than she'd just had the baby in the dining room and was holding it). Then I saw the umbilical cord and what happened became a little more clear. Kirsten reassured me "She's OK, she's OK," as I'm sure she saw a bazillion thoughts run across my face.

Now, I'm a planner and a strategizer, and I deal with these situations by doing things...what needs to be done. But this was a situation in which I never expected to find myself, and hence I had no idea what to do (though I did remind myself that, in fact, there was no need for boiled water). Fortunately, Kirsten intervened and told me to go upstairs and get a towel...that seemed sensible.

On the way back down, I was true to my academic nature and grabbed the pregnancy book to see what it suggested I do in this situation. It reassured me that sudden, unexpected at-home births were wonderful plot devices, but didn't happen enough in real life to worry about.

Failing to find satisfaction there, I called the OB's office, where are recorded voice informed me I was second in line.

I had hesitated to call 911 because it wasn't a life-or-death emergency, but as I sat on hold with the OB, I realized I was going to have to transport this tiny, tiny baby in my car if it wasn't in a rescue, and somehow getting her into a carseat seemed challenging and inappropriate. Also, if she was going to be more than 28" from Kirsten in transit, the cord was going to have to be cut and a placenta delivered. I wasn't trained in this, and the book clearly wasn't going to be much help. So, I hung up on the OB and called 911.

In the very few minutes while we waited for the ambulance, I did take a minute to hug Kirsten and look at the baby, and even to snap a few pictures. When rescue arrived, there were no fewer than seven paramedics and supervisors in the delivery room, so it was a bit crazy.

I did get to cut Sigrid's cord, and hold her briefly while they wrapped up Kirsten. When they drove off--lights and sirens--with my girls, I rolled up the rug, set about making after-school arrangements for Soren and took off for the hospital.

Fattening Up Nicely

Sigrid, that is. I'm not sure about the other members of the family. She weighs 8 pounds! She's only in the 20th (I think) percentile for weight, which is weird after having a 90th percentile baby the first time around.

Soren is a great big brother -- he's actually actively nice to Sigrid, which is more than I dared hope for. When she cries, he says "It's okay, Sigrid! There's nothing to cry about." If she cries a lot, he starts saying "NO, Sigrid," which isn't as sweet, but we can only expect so much from him. He's also really into helping -- when I ask him if he'll do me a big favor by throwing a diaper away, he says, "Oh! Yes, yes!" and hops right to it. That's just the kind of attitude I like in my child laborers.

Chris is happy to report that he's getting over the cold from hell. I am sad to report that the cold has been passed on to me. Sigrid has it too, but she doesn't have sinuses, so she gets no sympathy from me. She's mainly just more snorty than usual... and her baseline snortiness is pretty high, so there's some major snorting going on around here. Schnerk.

Cute Baby/Big Brother/Daddy/Friends Alert

Some can't-miss pictures!

Back Home Again, Hopefully For a Long Time

We're back from the hospital after an incident-free (if fussy) night.

I'd have to rate Hasbro a 9 for hallway artwork, a 3 for computer access (couldn't get wireless in my room, but the Ronald McDonald House parents' lounge had a couple computers), a 1 for room comfort and privacy (shared a room with an appendectomy patient), and an 8 for food quality and access (there were free snacks in the parents' lounge and a 24-hour Au Bon Pain on campus). Oh, and a 7 for clown availability.

Continuing My Hospital Tour of Rhode Island: a PTSD Story

It's not me this time! It's Sigrid. She's fine, everything's fine, but she had to have a frenulectomy (very minor surgery to correct tongue-tiedness) and is being monitored for 24 hours. At the hospital. And so I'm here with her. At the hospital. It's Hasbro Children's Hospital this time, so at least I get to check another facility off my life list. Very exciting.

So Sigrid's doing well, but I'm a slight mess. When we took her in to the otolaryngologist (nice, huh?) last week, we thought the doctor would just snip her frenulum in the office, since no one [on the internet, natch] seemed to think the procedure was a big deal. Heck, when the pediatrician at Kent noticed Sigrid was tongue-tied, she pretty much offered to get a pair of scissors and take care of it right then with no preparation whatsoever. That seemed a little... barbaric, so we held out to talk to our own pediatrician. He referred us to the otolaryngologist, where, as I said, I thought we'd get everything taken care of.

The doctor looked at Sigrid, agreed we should have the frenulectomy done, and then said, "Here's the bad news. We don't do that procedure here." After two hours of waiting, that's a bummer, but um... OK.

She went on, "You'll have to take her over to Hasbro so she can get some anaesthesia."

At this point, I'd been out of the hospital for less than 48 hours. Hasbro. That's a.... hospital.

"And then she'll need to stay under observation for 24 hours."

Which means I will need to stay with her. In. The. Hospital.

I could see Chris giving me little glances. I may or may not have started twitching.

The night I'd gotten home from Women and Infants', I watched Heroes on TV, and one of the characters ended up in the emergency room. They showed her in the bed, hooked up to the IV, with the little table next to her, and that pink ice water pitcher was on the table, and I couldn't deal with it. I could not look at the pink pitcher. And now, here I am, back in a hospital, and there's that pink pitcher again. I have a real problem with that pitcher.

I cried for a little while this morning when they brought us into the room and put her in the metal crib and showed me to my uncomfortable chair which may or may not turn into a bed. I really would like to go home. I at least have enough perspective to see that this is for Sigrid's good, not mine, and so I need to suck it up, but I'm really looking forward to this night being over. Anyway, at least I'm not hooked up to anything, or wearing a johnny, and I can get up and find food whenever I want, and I brought some knitting, so I can make useless baby socks all day long (the plan is: make a sock, put it on Sigrid, she will lose it, then I will make another one).

After this, I am done with hospitals. Let's hope life cooperates.