We be Parents

Four months have flown by quickly and the last month has given us a huge number of changes.  Hazel has changed a lot and is becoming more and more dynamic and interactive by the day.  While she laughed and smiled before, now she seems to be genuinely engaged by toys, songs, and staring at herself in the mirror.  Her occasional laughs and smiles have turned into excitement, infectious smiles, and cracking up.  She’s making a lot more noise, babbling to herself, squealing with excitement, and showing a wider range of emotions through her voice.  She’s getting a lot more control over her hands – grabbing toys, holding onto them, and studying them closely.  She’s almost like a real person!

Here she is holding one of her favorite toys:

She’s still giving us (at least me and the nanny) trouble in the bottle feeding department, but she does cave in and eat from the bottle when she’s really hungry, but still not nearly as much as she should be eating.  We’ve also caved in a few times by bringing Hazel to the hospital to meet Yenari on her dinner break for a quick feed, though we’re trying not to make these emergency feeding sessions a regular affair.

Today Hazel had her 4 month checkup.  We were especially eager to see how she was doing on the growth front since she obviously hasn’t been eating as well this past months due to her battle with the bottle.  The growth charts and the doctor’s comments comforted us – she’s growing just fine: she’s still at the 75th percentile for weight (14 lbs, 14 ounces), around the 97th percentile for height (26 inches), and the 50th percentile for head circumference.  On this visit to the doctor Hazel wasn’t the only one facing down the needle – the whole family got shots…Hazel got her next round of vaccinations and Yenari and I got flu shots…so while we don’t have matching clothes we were wearing matching band-aids today.

Here’s another shot of her from almost 2 weeks ago:

Lastly, congratulations to new parents Joe and Sophia, who welcomed their beautiful baby girl Vera Elizabeth Lampe about a week ago – welcome to the club!

Home alone, but not alone – I’ve got a baby!  Last week Yenari returned back to work, so for the past week there have been big changes in our house.  Yenari works from around 2pm to midnight 3 weekdays a week and then every other weekend.  We have a nanny coming to take care of Hazel for 4 hours on the 3 weekdays, but then I’m on baby duty for the next 6 hours and I’ve got the full 10 hours on the weekends.

So…I went from spending just about no time home alone with Hazel a few weeks ago to spending about 50 hours alone with her over the past week and a half!  It has been an…interesting transition and is definitely taking some getting used to for all of us.

For the most part things have been going really well in my alone time with Hazel.  I’ve been going on long walks with her through the neighborhood – checking out all the parks, exploring the small streets I’ve never been on before, and seeing things I never noticed in the neighborhood when life moved at a faster pace.  I’m not looking forward to the end of daylight savings time and the shortening of the daylight hours – soon enough it will be dark by the time I get home, so the walks will probably be shorter and less entertaining.

My favorite thing though is making her laugh.  Over the past few weeks she’s transitioned from occasional little smiles, to big smiles, to the occasional laugh, and now to all out cracking up.  I just about gave myself whiplash today shaking my head around while she watched me in the mirror, laughing her chubby cheeks off!

It’s not all laughs though.  Hazel still hasn’t caught on to eating from a bottle – she’s eating only a few ounces a day while Yenari is at work and those ounces are painful painful attempts filled with crying and frustration.  She definitely knows how to eat from the bottle – she’s done it for short periods of time successfully – it just seems that she doesn’t want to do it!  So, for now I’m keeping up on trying to feed her, but I’m not trying to push it much – if she fights it I give it a break and try twenty minutes later.  As long as I don’t fight with her on eating she seems perfectly happy and well behaved.  When Yenari finally gets home Hazel goes into eating overdrive and catches up on 10 hours of eating.  Apparently lots of breastfed babies take a few weeks to adjusting to eating from a bottle in daycare, so hopefully we’ll have a better story to tell in a few weeks.

One area she has been very cooperative in is sleep – she’s been able to get to sleep around 9 or 9:30 each night, letting me wind down after a long day of work and then baby herding.  I’ve even led a number of calls for work while she’s been sleeping – though I have warned my colleagues that I may have to abruptly end the calls to soothe the crying babe.

So…things haven’t been perfect by any means, but at the same time they haven’t been a complete disaster.  Hazel and I have been able to spend a lot of time together and as a result I’m getting to know her and to understand her better.  Now if we can just take care of this ‘not eating anything’ issue, all we’ll have left is the fun and games!

Today marked an important milestone for Hazel – her hundredth day since birth!  The hundred days celebration is popular in Korean culture and dates back to the times when infant mortality rates were low and making it through 100 days was a sign that the baby was likely to survive and thrive.  Nowadays the hundred days celebration carries is both a celebration of the baby and the parents…survival is a two way street!  Some people have a big party to celebrate the hundredth day, but we decided to take it easy and enjoy the day with Hazel.

Yenari did, however, dress Hazel up in her fanciest princess dress:

In addition to this being a celebration of her age, today also marked the last day of Yenari’s time off of work.  Tomorrow Yenari heads back to work at her full schedule of 4 days a week at the hospital.  She works the evening shift from around 2:30-11:30pm, so her going back to work will also mean some big changes for me!  On the weekdays we’re going to have a nanny taking care of Hazel until six and then I’ll take over until around midnight when Yenari gets home – scary!

The major part of the preparation over the past several days has been trying to get Hazel used to eating from a bottle.  Shouldn’t be too hard right?  How hard could it be for a baby to eat from a bottle?  Ummm….apparently quite hard!  This has been one of the most difficult times we’ve had in the last…100 days.  As soon as a bottle comes near Hazel the screaming and crying begins.  She’s gotten a hold of it a few times and eaten a few ounces, but she doesn’t seem to remember or want to eat the next time around.

On Saturday we fed her only with the bottle until 9pm…she probably drank a couple ounces of milk over the course of the day – a tiny amount compared to how much she normally eats.  On Sunday we tried to follow the schedule that she’ll have once Yenari goes back to work – breastfeeding until 2pm and then the bottle until midnight.  We all survived it, but there was lots of crying and Hazel only ate a few ounces.  It’s really difficult as a parent to watch your baby cry because she’s hungry and to not give in and let her breast feed.

Over the last week we’ve done our part in supporting the economy by purchasing just about every bottle and nipple on the market…from the local Babys R Us to the local Japanese market…we’ve seen them all.  None of them have provided the miraculous breakthrough we were hoping for, and I’m guessing that we won’t find one that will provide that miracle.  Hazel seems to be able to eat from a bottle when she needs to, she just doesn’t seem to want to do it too often.  My hope is that with more practice and with the reality of no mommy in site, Hazel will resign herself to eating from the bottle and overcome this challenge for all of us!

So, here’s to Hazel’s hundred days, a good return to work for Yenari, productive eating for Hazel, and me surviving with Hazel at night 4 days a week!

Double post Sunday!  Today Hazel celebrated her 11th week…or maybe it was we who celebrated – she pretty much just tagged along with us all day.  She slept in late and let Yenari get some rest while I caught up on some work in the late morning.  We decided to celebrate with a lunch at Yenari’s favorite sushi restaurant in the Bay Area: Pink Godzilla in Santa Cruz.

So we made the not so long, but long for lunch trip down to Santa Cruz for our late lunch and Yenari ate like a champ, taking down all of the sushi that she couldn’t eat when she was pregnant (still staying away from the high mercury stuff).  Lunch was excellent and Hazel slept the whole time, allowing us to devour the food without having to keep her happy.

After eating, we drove up to Felton to visit Rebecca, Troy, and their 4 week old baby boy Ewan.  We hadn’t met Ewan and they hadn’t met Hazel, so it was a big baby fest!  Ewan’s a big boy – despite her 7 week head start, Hazel is just about the same weight as Ewan and his feet are even bigger than hers!  Here they are together with their mommies followed by the foot comparison shot!

Yenari thinks that in this picture Hazel is checking her watch to see if it’s time to wake up Ewan!

In the foot comparison Hazel’s on the left and Ewan’s on right.  Though they’re about the same size, it’s amazing what a difference 7 weeks makes – Hazel feels a lot more ‘solid’ and obviously has much better control over her head.  On holding Hazel, Rebecca said that Ewan is a lot more ‘floppy’.  Amazing how much they change over the course of a few weeks.  We had a great time visiting with Rebecca, Troy, and Ewan…trading baby stories and just catching up.

Normally when we go to Pink Godzilla we stop at the nearby A&W to pickup some root beer floats.  We hadn’t done that earlier, and Yenari was eager to fulfill our eating destiny, so we decided to stop in Campbell to pickup our root beer floats (and a bacon cheeseburger for me!) before heading home.  Tastey tastey.

We topped the evening off with a visit from my mom and Duncan who had just gotten back from their weekend excursion in Monterey.  Here they are, playing with Hazel on the couch:

And lastly, here are a couple nice smiley photos I took today:

So, it was a very fun-filled day for us today…we’ve finally realized that we can actually go places and do things and she doesn’t go wild and crazy, so here’s to more fun-filled and exciting days to come!

Last Saturday didn’t start off in any spectacular way – I made Yenari French toast for breakfast, got a haircut (had to make a good first impression with the baby), and just hung around the house.  It was nearing dinner time and we were debating where to go for dinner – we had been going out to dinner almost every night, doing it while we still could!  We eventually decided on a Jamaican place in Palo Alto.

We left for the restaurant around 6:30pm and Yenari almost immediately started having some light contractions.  She had similar contractions the previous night and the previous Monday and thought that like those, these weren’t the real thing.  We got to the restaurant and ordered – a jerk burger for me and a hearty jerk chicken and oxtail combo for Yenari.

Oxtail and Jerk Chicken (picture from Yelp)

As we waited for our food the contractions got stronger.  Our food was delivered and we started chowing down.  We had the stopwatch on my phone tracking the contractions and Yenari was tapping it closer and closer together.  She had to get up from the table to walk around outside – for those of you who have seen Yenari eat, it is certainly a rare circumstance to see her leave a plate of food she likes still full – this seemed like a big sign!

Yenari came back inside, had a couple more bites of food, and then said that she was going outside again and that I should get the check and have her food packed up.  I got everything settled, Yenari went to the bathroom, and as we left the restaurant the manager said (innocently) ‘Hope you have a great night’!  I slowly led Yenari back to the car, and we drove back home, tapping the stopwatch every 5 minutes or so.

Once home, Yenari asked me to give her the leftover jerk chicken from the restaurant and began eating it between contractions.  Once done, we decided to take a short walk as we’d heard that if it is false labor then walking will reduce the pain/duration of the contraction.  We made it about 100 yards before we had to turn back because of the pain.

Yenari paged the doctor and got a call back a few minutes later.  Our medical group has a bunch of different offices and they share the OB on call duty across the doctors.  We had seen the 3 OBs in the Los Altos office, but that night a doctor from Portola Valley was on call.  Yenari explained to her how she was feeling and the length / duration of the contractions.  At this point they were coming every 4 to 5 minutes, but they weren’t exactly regular.  The doctor thought that Yenari was in early labor and suggested that we head to the hospital within the next hour.

Because we live about 20 minutes from the hospital (Stanford’s Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital), we started packing the remaining things into our hospital bag – toothbrushes, cameras, etc.  Yenari was still unsure whether this was the real thing and kept telling me that I didn’t need to really pack everything up because we’d probably be turned back at the hospital.  Yenari hopped in the shower for a few minutes, we packed up the car, and we head out to the hospital at 9:21pm.

On the way to the hospital Yenari started feeling much better, the contractions seemed to slow down and were lighter, so she was sure that this was a false labor and that she’d be embarrassed at the hospital when she (a nurse) would be sent home.  We made it to the hospital by 9:42 and found our way to the labor and delivery unit by 9:50.  At the nurses’ station they asked her ‘And you’re here for?  Ultrasound? Did your baby stop moving?’.  When Yenari said she thought she was in labor the woman behind the desk almost rolled her eyes, as Yenari looked happy as can be, still joking around, and definitely not like she was in labor.  They asked if this was her first baby, she said yes, everyone seemed sure that this wasn’t the real thing, but they wanted to check her out anyway.

Our nurse, Rose (who was super nice throughout the whole night), brought us into the examination room, attached a fetal heart monitor and a monitor to measure the contractions and started them up.  She confirmed that the contractions were about 5 minutes apart, regular, and of the appropriate intensity then she did an internal exam which showed she was still 4cm dilated.  She left for a minute to call the doctor and came back to tell us that the doctor wanted her to stay – this was the real thing.

After a while we were led down the hall to the delivery room, a big room with the delivery bed, lots of monitors, all sorts of gizmos for taking care of babies with problems, a flat screen TV, and a nice window seat for me to sit and rest on.  After getting settled Rose explained how everything would work and asked if Yenari wanted an epidural – she had decided earlier that she did, so they had the anesthesiologist come in for a consultation. Rose also hooked up an IV for Yenari so that they could pump her full of fluid (she was slightly dehydrated) and Pitocin (a drug to make the labor move along faster, almost a requirement if you’re getting an epidural).

Yenari in the delivery room

Once Yenari was all plugged in, we decided it was time to call our parents to let them know they’d be grandparents soon – I called my mom and dad and Yenari called her parents in Korea.  The next hour or two flew by without us really noticing.  Yenari was talking with Rose about when to get the epidural and she wouldn’t make an outright recommendation, but did say that people who get it early in labor are often able to sleep or at least save up energy so that they can be in better shape for the pushing.  Yenari thought that saving energy was a good plan and ordered the epidural.  At 1am the anesthesiologists came in, prepped her, and poked her with the big needle to insert the epidural.  Within minutes, the contractions that were causing a pain level of 5 out of 10 had dropped down to a 1.  She was still able to feel the contractions, but she was feeling the pressure of the contractions and not the pain.

Yenari awaiting the epidural needle

For the next 2 hours, we both tried to sleep – I was mostly successful, but Yenari wasn’t – she got rest but wasn’t able to sleep at all.  At 3am, when Rose came to check on her she said that the contractions were progressing really and she turned off the Pitocin drip.  The doctor had asked Rose to do another internal exam at 5am, but since she saw a different type of contraction that indicated ‘active labor’ she decided to do it at 3:25.  She found that Yenari was 7cm dilated, fully effaced, and the head at station 0 (see diagram below).

Baby head station diagram

During the exam Yenari’s ‘bag of waters’ ruptured.  Since her water broke and since things were moving fast, Rose paged the doctor to let her know that is was going to be sooner than originally thought.  She also prepped the room for the delivery, preparing the sterile field with the sterile equipment, verifying the baby warmer / scale were working, and generally getting everything in place.

The doctor showed up at 4:25 and did another internal exam – this time Yenari was 9.5cm dilated (10cm is desired for pushing) and that the head was at station +2.  She said that she would be back in an hour, but that Yenari should call the nurse if she felt a really strong urge to push.  For the next half hour, the urge to push grew, and Yenari told Rose that she felt ready at around 4:45am.  Rose did a quick look and said that she could see the baby’s hair!  And she guessed that the baby would be out at 5:30am.  She called the doctor, who arrived around 5am.

When the doctor arrived she also took a quick look inside and asked if I wanted to see the baby’s head – I took a look and Yenari got jealous and asked if they could bring in a mirror.  They wheeled in a massive mirror and set it up so that she could see.  They tried taking it away after this brief exam, but Yenari said that she wanted to keep it there for the rest of the delivery so that she could see her baby coming out!  The doctor gave a refresher course on pushing and said that first time mothers typically push between 2 and 3 hours.  She said that for many first time mothers the first half hour of pushing is when the mother figures out how to push.  Yenari was shocked that it would take 2 to 3 hours and glad that she got rest.

As the next contraction was coming the doctor said it was time to push.  I was on Yenari’s right side holding her feet up, keeping her head down to her chest, and encouraging her as best as I could.  Rose was on the other side holding her left leg and the doctor was front and center.  She gave the 3 pushes the first contraction and the doctor said that she was doing great…Yenari thought that was just her way of encouraging her to keep it up.  The next contraction came one minute later and Yenari pushed 3 times again.  From the mirror we could both see the head almost all of the way out!

The doctor seemed shocked that things were moving so quickly and asked Yenari to slow down so that she could get prepared to catch the baby.  She wasn’t expecting the pushing to be done in just a few minutes!  Slowing down wasn’t really an option for Yenari – this isn’t something where you can decide to really take a break.  The 3rd contraction of pushing came.  After one push the head was out (with one of her eyes open!), and after the second push the baby was out! All the way! In 5 minutes of pushing!  I think all of us were in shock that it was done so fast.    The doctor asked if I wanted to cut the umbilical cord, handed me the scissors, and I cut it.  The baby started crying and looked to be in great shape.  The clock read 5:11am, the baby was born, and Yenari beat Rose’s guess of 5:30am.

Within a couple seconds, the doctor put the baby on Yenari’s chest while she delivered the placenta – she asked Yenari not to push as hard, but still she managed to get it out in one push.  After the placenta was delivered, Rose brought the baby over to the scale and baby heater and got her stats: 7 pounds 10 ounces, 20 inches long.

Yenari and the baby, just after birth

Heating up the baby!

7 pounds, 10 ounces

The doctor kept on saying that Yenari didn’t know how lucky she was, and that she had pushed for 3 hours in her own pregnancy.  Both the doctor and the nurse said that Yenari was made for having babies and that they’d see her next year!  The whole thing was a pretty remarkable experience and also a lot more civilized than I expected – she didn’t cry, scream, curse, or insult me.  I feel lucky that everything went so well and so fast, I know that it isn’t this easy for everyone.  The epidural certainly made a big difference, but that is not to discount the amazing job Yenari did with keeping a positive attitude and pushing like a champ!

We were already pretty much set with a name for her (thank goodness she was a she and not a surprise he), but wanted to see her face before we made the final decision.  After seeing her we decided to go with it: Hazel Yoojin Neustaetter.  Yenari had basically chosen the name Hazel before she even met me (I guess I was just a means to an end?) and I also really liked it.  We wanted a Korean middle name so that Yenari’s family in Korea could call her by that name and so that she would have a stronger connection to Korean culture.

A lot more happened that morning, but we needn’t bore you with more details – you deserve a prize if you’ve read this far anyway!  We’d like to thank everyone who supported us throughout the whole pregnancy and birth experience.  An extra thanks to Rose, the doctor, and everyone at the hospital who helped us.

The happy family, at least two of us