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one week old
The kidlet has now been around for one week (minus a few hours). So far, he's pretty cute.
The birth was fast - and painful. I was induced, which I find means that you go from nothing to IN LABOUR in a ridiculously short amount of time, and your body tries its best to compress all the attending pain into the shortened timespan.
I went from 1cm to 9cm dialated in about 2 hours. It hurt.
The hospital was rather awesome. I had a spa bath, and a big beddish-tableish thing, and a whole lot of other things I could have used if there had been time. They were clearly happy for me to do my thing in whatever way I wanted.
...what I wanted? No idea. What happened? Mostly me sitting up and SCREAMING at the top of my lungs. I literally could not stop myself from yelling, mid-contraction, unless I was allowed to push. (My voice took a few days to recover.)
The kidlet, meanwhile, decided that the best pose for giving birth was "The Superman": one hand artistically placed over the head. While I applaud his heroic ambitions, I am less appreciative of his timing; he got stuck halfway down the birth canal, and had to be vacuumed out.
He was awfully cute, though, so I didn't really mind.
I really do have the cutest son.
So far, he spends most of his time sleeping, pooing, eating, and wailing about wanting to do one or all of the above. We're gradually getting the breastfeeding down - already dropped from a one-hour latching-on time to about ten minutes - and improving at not getting unexpectedly wee-ed on, mid-change.
We took him to get his passport photo yesterday (for our trip home), and the photo guy pointed out that official passport photos of infants need them to have their eyes open. Those of you who are experienced wranglers of children will appreciate the difficulty involved in trying to get a sleeping (ie, eyes closed) baby to awake and happy (eyes open), without accidentally landing on grumpy (eyes closed). And then in holding him upright to have his photo taken without any of our fingers ending up in the photo...
He hates wearing mittens and hats. This morning, we took him out for a walk in the nearly-winter weather, and naturally dressed him in both. He quickly figured out how to remove the mittens, and then tried repeatedly to remove the hat - but instead kept pulling it forward over his face, and then getting rather confused.
Currently I am watching his daddy hold him, as the kidlet drifts slowly off to sleep. If you'll excuse me, I have some photos to take...
The birth was fast - and painful. I was induced, which I find means that you go from nothing to IN LABOUR in a ridiculously short amount of time, and your body tries its best to compress all the attending pain into the shortened timespan.
I went from 1cm to 9cm dialated in about 2 hours. It hurt.
The hospital was rather awesome. I had a spa bath, and a big beddish-tableish thing, and a whole lot of other things I could have used if there had been time. They were clearly happy for me to do my thing in whatever way I wanted.
...what I wanted? No idea. What happened? Mostly me sitting up and SCREAMING at the top of my lungs. I literally could not stop myself from yelling, mid-contraction, unless I was allowed to push. (My voice took a few days to recover.)
The kidlet, meanwhile, decided that the best pose for giving birth was "The Superman": one hand artistically placed over the head. While I applaud his heroic ambitions, I am less appreciative of his timing; he got stuck halfway down the birth canal, and had to be vacuumed out.
He was awfully cute, though, so I didn't really mind.
I really do have the cutest son.
So far, he spends most of his time sleeping, pooing, eating, and wailing about wanting to do one or all of the above. We're gradually getting the breastfeeding down - already dropped from a one-hour latching-on time to about ten minutes - and improving at not getting unexpectedly wee-ed on, mid-change.
We took him to get his passport photo yesterday (for our trip home), and the photo guy pointed out that official passport photos of infants need them to have their eyes open. Those of you who are experienced wranglers of children will appreciate the difficulty involved in trying to get a sleeping (ie, eyes closed) baby to awake and happy (eyes open), without accidentally landing on grumpy (eyes closed). And then in holding him upright to have his photo taken without any of our fingers ending up in the photo...
He hates wearing mittens and hats. This morning, we took him out for a walk in the nearly-winter weather, and naturally dressed him in both. He quickly figured out how to remove the mittens, and then tried repeatedly to remove the hat - but instead kept pulling it forward over his face, and then getting rather confused.
Currently I am watching his daddy hold him, as the kidlet drifts slowly off to sleep. If you'll excuse me, I have some photos to take...
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Somehow it seems weird taking a passport photo of an infant - if it is more than a week or two, at most, before you travel it won't look like him anyway.
You would think they might just take your word for it that this is the one on the birth certificate - or use a footprint or something if they needed some way of being sure of it!
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it'll be fun to use that passport in a couple of years when kidlet doesn't look anything like this anymore :)
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Gabrielle
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(By the time you get to my age, you know this about being induced, from shellshocked friends. I guess it's kinder not to tell you in advance?)
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Can't wait to see the photos ... and to know his name!
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Lachlan Geoffrey. :-)
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Personally, I still think I'd prefer a two-hour OMG labour to the 12- 23 hours I've had, with constant ever-increasing pain... :-/
Jinx on the silly-stuck-baby-vacuuming- did he have a funny-shaped head for a few days? luckily that passes pretty quickly.
Glad to hear that all is well and that you're all getting to know one another. Enjoy these first special weeks! I'm already missing the floppy-sleepy newborn stage, but am delighting in the grinning-cooing-head-lifting stage, too. You just have to enjoy the stage you're at. :-)
(...and take photos and write a journal, as you'll never remember it all, no matter how much you think you of course will. :-) )
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