Memory and wonder

Lucy Kaplansky’s The Red Thread and Paul Simon’s The Rhythm of the Saints are joined in my mind to Adriana’s babyhood. The first week or two after her birth I couldn’t listen to music. The experience of her birth combined with first-time motherhood left me so overwhelmed that music seemed like too much--which seemed strange even at the time, since we always had music on before she was born. A week or two later when I was finally ready to open up my senses again, those were the albums I was drawn to, and now when I hear those songs I am suddenly immersed in the memory of cradling my new baby and the new rituals of our life with her.

Last summer, Adriana found a bottle of Burt’s Bees Buttermilk Lotion. She asked me to put it on her after her bath, and as I rubbed it into her skin, I was instantly, unexpectedly transported back to our place in Alexandria, with he pale sunlight of winter was shining through the bare trees into the bedroom where I was dressing her.

I walked into our living room early one morning last week with Lyra in my arms. Instead of the cool, grey mornings we’ve had, it was brightly sunny, and as I set the baby down on the living room floor with a toy so that I could go pour myself a glass of orange juice, I remembered coming out for my juice on a similarly sunny morning when Adriana wasn’t all that much older, and seeing her and Brian sitting together out on the deck, while he had his coffee and she played with the same pink elephant rattle I had just given to Lyra.

The memories are physical, involuntary, and yesterday I began to wonder what I will associate with Lyra’s infancy--what music, what scents, what light--but right now I can only guess and hope. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to hear Patty Larkin or Josh Ritter without recalling my second baby’s first few months. Perhaps I will remember the way my hands smelled after pitting cherries for Adriana and mashing a mango for one of Lyra’s first foods. Instead of the faded winter sunlight, I want to recall the light that filters through the trees while the baby rolls on a picnic blanket in the with her older sister playing nearby, and the way the sunlight squeezes in around the blinds in my bedroom as I wake up from a nap between my two girls.

Maybe I’ll remember the way Lyra’s silky hair felt tickling my neck while she slept with her head tucked under my chin, just as her sister did, or maybe it will be a totally new memory--the way it feels to go down a slide the baby strapped to my chest while Adriana sits in my lap. Instead of the sound of the baby crying as she wakes and drawing me away from what I am doing, I will have the sound of the baby’s cry followed by the reassurance of my older child as she rushes to comfort her, or even better, their giggles as they look at each other while I give them dinner.

I close my eyes and bask in the memories of just a few years ago, and simultaneously try to imprint forever in my mind what our year so far has been.

Morning people

I am normally the first one up in the morning, but not too much later, while I am still having my juice, I hear Lyra wake up. Sometimes she fusses a bit, but mostly she just coos and babbles, and I go into the bedroom and find her lying in her bed (or sometimes in mine, if that’s where she ended up) gazing at her hands or playing with her feet. I say her name softly, and she turns to look at me and smiles. It is the most perfect thing, that first baby smile of the morning when she is happy to be awake and glad to see me, a wide smile that crinkles her nose and shows her two teeth, and I pick her up and it might be the very best moment of the day.

Six month stats

For the record, because at some point I will want to know and willl check here first because it’s easier than digging out the baby book, at Lyra’s six-month checkup yesterday, she measured 27 inches long and weighed in at 17 pounds 2 ounces (85th and 68th percentiles). She is the same length that Adriana was at this age, but more than a pound lighter. She was wearing nothing but her diaper last night when I mentioned this to Brian, and we looked in amazement at her neck folds and chunky thighs, and wondered how big Adriana had been exactly. We concluded that Adriana had chubbier cheeks. That explains the missing 18 ounces on Lyra, right?

Chatterbox

“Fleet Feet is a funny name. Mom? Did you hear me, Mom? Fleet Feet is funny. It starts with the same letter and it rhymes. It starts with F like firetruck. Do you remember that firetruck we saw this morning? It didn’t have its lights on, but the guy waved at me when I waved to him. Do you remember that, Mom? And firetruck starts with F. Those white flowers start with F. Except those white flowers are jasmine. Mom? Mom? Those flowers are jasmine. Jasmine starts with J. It goes ‘juh juh jasmine’ so it starts with J. Except sometimes G goes ‘juh juh’ like gentle. But mostly it goes ‘guh guh.’ Like Grandpa. Grandpa Ted starts with a T. The Ted part. And Grandpa Andy has an A. My name starts with A. And so do Abigail and Allegra and apple. Let’s buy apples at the store today. The honey apples like in Minnesota. I like honey. Only Dad squeezes the bear right in my mouth, though. You say no. We could put honey on apples. That would be good, don’t you think, Mom? Maybe we could have apple tea with honey in it. If you can have apple tea. I don’t know if there is a thing called apple tea, but it could have honey. In London do they have apple tea? Abigail and Allegra both have G in their name! Guh guh. I don’t like to draw the G. I make you do the G for me. Someday I will write the G. Sam has an A in her name, but it is not her letter. Right, Mom? Her letter is S. Like snake and snail and shoes. But shoes only sort of starts with S. It doesn’t sound like Sam but it has an S. Starbucks starts with S. Mom? Can we go to Starbucks? I need vanilla milk. Are you listening, Mom? This is the sign for A and this is the sign for S. They are kind of the same. And I start with A and Sam starts with S. M for mom is kind of the same, too. See, Mom? This is M for Mom. Your letter is M. Like milk. M is for Mom and milk and Mary and Mark. Big Mark and Little Mark. And Mountain View and Minneapolis and Martinez and moon and Menlo Park. All those things have M first. You have two Ms. M O M Mom. I can write your whole name and my whole name and D A D Dad. And Lyra except you have to help me with the Y. But I can make it in the bath. Lyra starts with L. London starts with L too. I saw Starbucks by the firetruck. T is for truck and Ted. I wrote Grandpa Ted on his birthday card, but you had to write Grandpa and I wrote Ted. Right, Mom? I could have vanilla milk and you could have a treat. Mom? Mom, the moon isn’t purple. You like purple, but the moon isn’t purple. Except for in that book. Then that boy makes it purple. That boy is too silly. Are you listening, Mom? Is that so silly? I am silly too, so I want vanilla milk.”

First food

People have been asking me for a month or so whether I’ve started Lyra on solid foods. I’ve told them I was waiting until six months, as I thought pretty much everyone waited that long. I did discover at a moms group that several of the women were trying their babies--who are slightly younger than Lyra--on some foods, but I decided that was because they were first-time moms and it was a novelty for them. I, on the other hand, learned the last time around that feeding babies is messy and you have to think about what to give them and if they like it you have to keep doing it and if they don’t like it (which was the issue with Adriana) then you have to keep wondering what you should try and when, and . . . no. No, thank you. I am very open about being a slacker, and exclusively breastfeeding fits quite well with my slackerness: I keep the baby with me, and when she gets hungry I feed her, and I don’t have to think about it.

And then Lyra turned six months old, and Brian started asking about it. So I bought a box of rice cereal this week and we tried it out on her this evening.

It seems funny to me to call this “solid” food. A little bit of brown rice ground into powder and mixed with breastmilk? That's solid? That’s food? Seriously?

But she seemed to like it.

Six months

When Adriana was a baby I would say every month, “This month is better than last! I want to keep her this age forever!” And I am doing the same thing with Lyra. Six months seems just about perfect to me. She is sitting up and smiling and cooing. But she’s still not going anywhere (at least not too quickly) or making any mischief (at least not intentionally).

It wasn’t until right at six months that Lyra was sitting up well (and she still can’t get there on her own), while Adriana was sitting well at about five months. But Lyra already seems more mobile than Adriana did at this age. Lyra rolls everywhere, and wishes she could crawl--pushes up, but can’t get her knees under her, and just ends up shoving herself backwards. This mobility is enough that we now have to be strict with Adriana about little toys on the floor. For the most part she’s been quite good about keeping pop beads and doll shoes and various little bits of Hello Kitty-themed plastic off the floor. She’s been dismayed, though, to find that Lyra can get her hands on bigger toys. Adriana has always been pretty good with younger children and toys: she knows that if they take something she doesn’t want them to have, she can usually trade with them for something she is willing to share. But that’s apparently a lot to ask when it’s her own younger sister in question. It just seems unfortunate to me that this issue is coming up at exactly as Lyra has reached an age at which she objects to having a toy taken away.

Lyra has continued to be one of the happiest babies I’ve ever met. She seems very social, always smiling when she sees people, and taking an interest in board books with photos of baby faces. She’s been somewhat fussier the past month as her first two teeth came in. I was surprised by Adriana’s first few teeth; she would just wake up in the morning with a new one. Lyra’s teeth, however, hover below the surface of her gums for several days, and she is vocal about her discomfort. Luckily, she has an older sister who likes to bring her cold teething rings, so most of the time she is still very smiley.

Most awesome sous chef ever

Brian was out so I was the one giving Adriana her bath. I got out the conditioner.

Me: This smells sweet. You're going to smell like a jelly bean when we're finished.

Adriana: I like jelly beans. We should have jelly beans for dinner sometime.

Me: That sounds like wishful thinking. Jelly beans aren't for dinner.

Adriana: Yes they are! I had them for dinner in London.

Me: Don't be silly.

Adriana: But I did! With Abigail!

Me: Oh, you mean beans and toast? Those are baked beans, not jelly beans.

Adriana: But...jelly goes on toast.

***

Adriana was watching me pull vegetables out of the refrigerator.

Adriana: What are we making for dinner tonight?

Me: Ratatouille, and I think some bulgur.

Adriana: Bulgur?

Me: Yes.

Adriana: No.

Me: Yes. You like it. It's been awhile since we had it, but I know you like it. It's like rice.

Adriana: Bulgur?

Me: Bulgur.

Adriana: No. I don't like bulgur. Bulgur is yucky. I don't think bulgur is for eating.

Me: Of course it is. [I get the bag from the refrigerator and hand it to her.] You see? It's a grain, like rice is. We boil water and pour this in and then just let it sit.

Adriana: And...it didn't come out of anyone's nose?

Adriana and I both sometimes have bad reactions to mosquitoes, with the bites swelling up to . . . well, a ping pong ball would probably be an exaggeration, but still. They get big. They make you look deformed. Especially if you end up with two on your face, the way Adriana did this week--one on her right eye and one on her left cheek. I gave her some benadryl on Wednesday night to help bring down the swelling, but by the time I was taking her to summer camp on Thursday morning things still looked pretty bad. But in a way it was a nice test because I could begin to divide other mothers into three categories:

1. Those who look appalled when you compare your own child's appearance to that of Sloth from Goonies.
2. Those who find the comparison apt and funny.
3. Those who don't know what you're talking about.

Guess which are my favorite.

Adriana's birthday greetings for Great Grandpa Ed

Brian's grandfather is turning 96 this week. Adriana made him a card and dictated this letter to me:

Dear Great Grandpa Ed,

96 is a big number. I go to gymnastics on Wednesday. Wednesday is your birthday. I go to summer camp all by myself. Next year I get to go to a school with rabbits and chickens and turtles and a dragon. I like chasing pigeons in Spain. I have a blue scooter and a baby sister. My favorite things are mermaids, butterflies, bicycles, cupcakes, pink and yellow, vanilla, climbing things, and my mom. I don't like juice.

Happy birthday.

Love,
Adriana

Five months

Lyra is ever the happy baby. She smiles at anyone who smiles at her, and chuckles when I bounce her on my lap. We tickle her, too much probably, because we like to hear her laugh. She isn't a baby who never cries, but when she does, it's usually not for long and she is easily soothed with singing or snuggling or milk.

I don't remember noticing Adriana become social, although I do recall that she would smile at herself in the mirror. Lyra does that, of course, but she also just seems fascinated with people in general. She watches everything we do, and loves it when people talk to her. At the library last week Adriana got out a board book with photos of baby faces, and Lyra seemed to be paying attention to the pictures and smiling back at the babies in the book as we showed it to her. And I've noticed that when she is nursing she wants my attention. If I am reading or writing while she nurses, she keeps stopping and fussing and wiggling and grabbing at my face, but when I stop everything else and just look at her and talk to her, she settles down and looks at me and nurses.

She wants to move, and can roll easily across a bed now, so I am careful where I set her down. When I set her on her playmat she occasionally reaches up and pulls on the toys, but she usually rolls over onto her belly and lies there kicking and wiggling, as if swimming. She grasps my fingers and lets me pull her up to stand, and she can sit unsupported for a few seconds before she topples over to the side.

Lyra's sleeping and eating are starting to become more organized, or would be if she weren't the second child and always being toted somewhere. If we're just at home, I can predict pretty easily now when she'll sleep and for how long and when she's going to need to nurse. But we go out to the park or need to get errands done before we meet a friend at the library or have to go to preschool, and so the sleeping baby is woken up as I take her down to the car or she nods off to sleep because I am walking quickly with her in the wrap, or I know she's tired and would probably fall asleep if I would just let her nurse for comfort but first I have to help Adriana get ready.

Lyra already adores her older sister. It's hard to feed the baby when Adriana is in the room, because Lyra keeps turning to see what Adriana is doing. Adriana jumps on our bed, and Lyra watches with big eyes and her mouth open in delight, squealing when Adriana bounces closer. And no one can get the baby to laugh more easily. Watching their relationship form is one of the best parts of this.

Mommyblogs are not complete without poop stories

One really doesn't need to write about poop on the internet. I know that. But this morning I told my dad this story over the phone, and I realized that even if it's the kind of thing only a mother and grandfather find quite so hilarious, I needed to write it down. And if I'm writing it down, I might as well tell the internet about it.

During snack time at Adriana's preschool, the teacher always reads the children at least one story. A couple of weeks ago, the story was called Not Just Chickens or something like that--all about animals besides chickens that lay eggs.*

That afternoon, Adriana was using the bathroom and afterwards as she examined the contents of the toilet**, she said. "What will hatch from my poops?"

"Nothing," I told her, and began encouraging her to flush and wash her hands.

"But my poops look like the same shape as eggs! And eggs come out chickens' bottoms and poop comes out my bottom!"

"Nothing will hatch."

"But if they do, what will they be? Baby poops? Or baby Adrianas?"

And I gave up on trying not to giggle.

*On a non-poop related note, when the teacher read that platypuses are the only egg-laying mammals, one little boy volunteer that mammals were animals with hair, and I was quite proud when Adriana said it meant animals with "mom milk." And I was amused when she pointed out that platypuses aren't the only mammals who lay eggs, because fairies do too.

**When do they stop doing that? I am so over the conversations about her waste products.

Barcelona with babies

I walked down the street in Barcelona toward the flat we were renting for a week, and spotted one of my favorite people, waiting with her husband and chidren. We hugged and then spent the next three days together. We nursed our babies and played with our three-year-olds. We ate churros and drank thick Spanish hot chocolate on Las Ramblas. We drank too much sangria at lunch and laughed all the way home. We caught up on gossip and struggled to put into words the way we feel about putting our careers on hold to have this time at home with our children while they are young. And then we hugged again as she and her family left to return to London.

I slipped onto the enclosed balcony and looked out the window in the middle of the night, watching the rain come down and laundry blowing on the lines, noticing flats around the courtyard that still had lights on. In the morning when the rain had stopped, I stood there again and watched a little boy across the way playing on a balcony and spotted his mother just inside folding laundry. I sat on the balcony with Brian, drinking the hot chocolate he had brought me while he had his coffee and we planned our day. And I sipped wine and wrote in semidarkness while I listened to Brian read a bedtime story to Adriana on the couch behind me.

Adriana chased me on her scooter as I hurried back toward our flat. She let me lift her onto the trunk of a statue of a wooly mammoth and then mugged for the camera. Adriana fell asleep on Brian's shoulders, leaning down to rest her head on his. She stared with amazement at the magic fountains and yelped with happiness when we got close enough to feel the spray of the water.

Adriana and Abigail jumped and danced in the doorway of a closed shop on a Sunday afternoon in L'Eixample. The chased pigeons on the Place de Catalunya. They stood on the balcony of our flat, watching swallows circling and swooping above. The rode side by side down Passeig de Gracia on their fathers' shoulders.

Little Toby toddled down Las Ramblas, ignoring the living statues in favor of the flower stands that had pots of flowers at his level. He smiled and waved at young women sitting around him on the metro. He peered eagerly at Lyra lying in the travel cot and told her "Hiya."

Lyra napped on my sweater in the grass in the Parc de la Ciutadella. She smiled at old ladies on the metro. She nursed on a Renfe train, in the cafe at Parc Guell, on a patio along Las Ramblas, on the floor in the corner of the aquarium, on plazas and in pizzerias and tapas bars, and in my wrap as I hurried down the street.

Little traveler

Adriana was playing with a toy plane, making it fly to Minnesota and North Carolina (we visited both last summer), and wanted to know which was farther away, so I found a map for her to look at. And then we decided to count how many places on the US map she'd visited. She's up to 9 states now:



create your own personalized map of the USA

I've made it to 35, but I've had a few more years to travel than she has.



create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

Four months

At three months, Lyra was sick with some sort of virus that left her feverish and me exhausted, and I kept thinking of what I should write and never actually put anything down. So now it is a week past four months, and here is everything I can think of all at once, so that I can just post this and not forget what this age is like:

Lyra smiles back at anyone who smiles at her, and we easily coax big, toothless baby grins from her. I've managed to get a few chuckles out of her with little tickles, and one day when it was hot and I turned on the ceiling fan, she sat in her chair laughing at it for five minutes straight. She's been rolling over for several weeks now, mostlly from her back onto her front, though she can go the other way too. She holds up her head easily when I have her in a wrap on my chest, looking around at everything. She doesn't sit unsupported yet, but she grabs my fingers as she lies on her back and lets me pull her to sitting, and seems to like it when I set her sitting on the bed and let her fall gently to the side. She likes to be snuggled against me in a wrap and falls asleep easily that way, but after being wrapped up and dragged around with Adriana and me all day, she always seems glad to be set down, stretching her arms out over her head, straightening her legs, then grabbing her toes and rolling to the side. She studies one hand, opening and closing her fingers, while sucking on the other. It has seemed all along to me that she coos more than I remember Adriana doing, but she has lately become much more vocal, making lots of sweet little baby noises (that are getting a bit louder than they have been in the past). And we have reached the perfect stage of nursing, where she looks at me while she eats, sometimes pulling away to smile at me or to make her funny baby sounds, and she seems happier when I pay attention to her while she eats, so when we are alone I sing to her and we focus on each other's faces and it is perfect and sweet and lovely.

who knew what this would be like

Adriana must have been eight or nine months old. I nursed her to sleep for her morning nap, and sat on the deck in the sun to write. I listened to Gillian Welch and watched hummingbirds come and go from our feeder. I don't know why that memory stands out so clearly in my mind. I suppose because it wasn't just one morning: when she was that age, that was my normal morning routine. I am thinking of it right now, on a pleasant spring morning. I got some time to snuggle with Lyra and get some housework done while Adriana slept in. She woke up happily and came into my bedroom, babbling cheerily about a dream she had--something about an underwater rocket from our house to Abigail's and purple butterflies out the window--and then left pushing a laundry basket of her clothes to be put away. When she came back she was dressed and asking nicely for her breakfast. She ate and we played with the baby a bit and read a story, and now Lyra is sleeping and Adriana is putting together a puzzle, and here I am at the kitchen table, writing and listening to Patty Larkin and watching a bee drifting around the lavender out on the deck.

Once upon a pair of wheels: an addition to Lyra's birth story

As we were driving over Highway 17 on our way to Año Nuevo to see the elephant seals, I reminded Brian that the speed limit past the reservoir is only 50 miles per hour, even though the road is wide and not too windy there. As he eased up on the accelerator, I apologized for my backseat driving, and he told me that that kind of reminder is a good thing. So I confessed that on the way to the hospital to have Lyra, I had really had to force myself not to backseat drive. Because as we'd headed up 101, there hadn't been a ton of traffic, but the two right lanes hadn't been moving as quickly as they might have, and I had spent the time between contractions wondering why he just didn't move over and get there faster. He explained that he'd been nervous and Eva had been following us in her car, and it seemed better to move a little slower.

"I kind of knew that. That's part of why I didn't say anything at the time. And also because I was pretty sure I couldn't say it nicely, so I just kept my mouth shut."

"Okay, you have to add this to the birth story," he told me.f

"You mean admit that I always want to be a backseat driver, even when I'm in labor?"

"Yes."

Consider it done.

Elephant seals at Año Nuevo

For the first month of Adriana's life and then Lyra's I compared myself to an elephant seal. Somehow I had retained knowledge from a fifth-grade lesson and field trip to Año Nuevo that the mother elephant seals lie on the beach and nurse their babies for a month straight, not eating anything. I did at least get to eat (this time around I consumed ridiculous amounts of chocolate milk and peanut butter toast), but it felt like I did nothing but nurse for that first month. Oh, and I remembered that once the mothers go back to sea, the pups that remain are called "weaners" (and that the ones that manage to nurse from more than one mother and get extra big are called "super weaners"). In fact, now that I think of it, I probably only remember the thing about the weaners from the fifth grade. I probably picked up the bit about the nursing eight years ago when we visited the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery on our honeymoon (which I actually enjoyed a lot more than Hearst Castle).

At any rate, I've been feeling a special kinship with elephant seal cows, so when one of Brian's former colleagues who works as a docent at Año Nuevo offered us an "after hours" tour of the beach, I jumped at the chance, figuring that there had to be a way we could manage the hike with a toddler and an infant. We checked a couple of children's books about elephant seals out of the library to help get Adriana interested, and Brian put her in the frame backpack carrier (which had been sitting unused in our closet for at least a year) to confirm that she was willing to sit in it and that he could manage her weight now. It was rainy the morning of the tour, and I read that San Mateo County was closing beaches due to the tsunami watch, but it was supposed to be clearing up by our tour time, and Brian called the visitor center to check that they were still open, so off we went.

As it turned out, the rain was a very good thing, because the sand on the dunes was wet and easier to walk on. Our drive over the hill was very wet, but it was beautifully sunny as we turned to head up the coast, one of those gorgeous days with spectacular views that made me marvel that we are so lucky to live here (and lament that we no longer live at the beach), and we found that we didn't need all the layers of clothing we had brought. I was glad to have a maternity fleece with me, as it fit neatly around Lyra, who I was wearing in a Moby wrap.





The elephant seals were fantastic. Federal law requires that people stay at least 25 feet away from the seals, but they were everywhere, even up on the dunes, so it was sometimes hard to stay that far off. Most of the cows have already gone back into the ocean, so we didn't get to see any nursing mothers. We did still get to see lots of the weaners (and I did not giggle every time our guide said that--not loud enough that i could be heard, anyhow), including getting to watch one play around in the water. We got to hear the belching of the bulls and the funny squealing of the pups.

With the cows gone, many of the pups seemed a little bit lonely: one was snuggled up to a bull (who probably simply hadn't noticed the pup was there), and others were piled on top of one another in cuddle puddles.





We got a few good looks at the funny faces of the males, and the cute faces of the weaners.




Adriana handled the walk pretty well. She liked being in the backpack for a while, but she did want to get out. She had one meltdown that was partly hunger related and resolved relatively quickly with the help of a chocolate Clif bar. She did pay some attention to the elephant seals, but when we did let her out of the backpack for a bit, she was mostly interested in writing letters and building in the sand.



One bonus of going on this "after hours" tour was that when we were heading back we got to see the fog coming in, and, since we were walking straight toward the hills, we saw the nearly full moon rising between the peaks and disappearing quickly into the clouds above, and when we turned to look behind us we got to see a spectacular sunset.

The drive home was gorgeous, too, or at least the part from the reserve back down to Santa Cruz. Everything is so green from all the rain, and the hills to our left were deeply green in the twilight, looking gorgeous against the clear, dark sky with the moon glowing white over everything, making it bright enough still that we had a view of the ocean to our right. I wish I had a picture of that, but instead I will have to just hold on to the peaceful feeling the colors and the light gave me.

Two months

I read somewhere a description of life with kids: the days drag on and the years fly by. I thought that was true with one, but it is standing out so clearly to me now with two. Each day I am going back and forth between two people who need me, trying to balance and juggle those needs, while trying to have fun with them. And at the end of each day we have had fun, but I am tired and watching the clock and wondering if I'll ever be able to get anything more done than just keeping us fed and moderately clean. Still, I'm also shocked to find that it's already been two months. I see the brand new babies of friends, and Lyra, who was 11.5 pounds and 23 inches long at her checkup on Tuesday, seems so big, and I find myself missing having a little baby. I remind myself of that while I try to keep Adriana out of trouble while she helps me in the kitchen at dinnertime, and I catch myself wishing that Lyra were big enough to be carried on my back, instead of on my front, which makes cooking awkward. Then I chide myself for wishing her bigger, wishing away this time with my tiny one.

Lyra spends so much more time awake now, and I know I said that when I was writing a month ago, but at least now she seems more happy about waking up to the world around her. We get big smiles now--beautiful gummy baby smiles--when she is in the bath, when she is eating and pulls away for a moment to look at me, and sometimes when she's just awake and happy. She coos, too, which is interesting and fun for me, as Adriana never did much of that.

There are times when she fusses and cries, of course, and, as with Adriana, I wonder how on earth parents of colicky babies manage to cope, because after five minutes of crying we are usually in a panic, because clearly something must be horribly wrong. Even though the solution is always the same, we still can't quite remember it at first, so I try feeding her again and we change her diaper, and maybe even her clothes, because what if there's a tag or a seam somewhere that's bothering her? And then we rock her and bounce her and start over again, until one of us remembers that Oh! The last time this happened, putting her in the pouch worked! So we get the pouch and drop her in and within a minute of being held close and tight like that, she is content again.

In that way she is very much like Adriana. I remember someone commenting to me when Adriana was only a few weeks old that she seemed to be a very needy baby, always wanting to be held, and even at the time I marveled that that would seem like a very big need. I mean, if being held is all that it took to make her happy, I thought I had it pretty easy. I get the same feeling with Lyra. Yes, she needs to be held a lot, but now with Adriana not wanting to be held some of the time when I would love to hold her (and, of course, demanding I hold her at times when it is highly inconvenient for me), it seems more important to snuggle Lyra while I can. We do still keep commenting on the differences between the two girls, though: Lyra loves her bath and coos when she is happy and awake, as I've said, but she also loves "tummy time," which Adriana generally seemed certain was a terrorist plot, and when I had a dentist appointment last week, Lyra willingly took a bottle the first time it was offered, while we tried for months to get Adriana to drink from one before giving up and wondering why we'd even cared.

Not that I'm going to be giving Lyra a lot of bottles. Nursing is still one of my favorite parts of this stage. I mean, Adriana is still nursing a little bit, too, and that's nice, but there is something special about cuddling a little baby when she is hungry, watching her close her eyes and relax in my arms, feeling how tiny and warm she is, that I can't really explain. I get a little less of that this time as it is, since half the time I'm nursing I'm also reading Pooh stories to Adriana or helping her put together a jigsaw puzzle. And that just makes me appreciate mornings like today, when Lyra and I were the first ones up and we snuggled together in the arm chair while she ate, even more.

Lyra's Birth Story

I believe that when I wrote out Adriana's birth story three years ago, I established that I am prone to Oversharing On The Internet, as well as Using Many, Many Words. So if you read that one and thought it was perhaps a bit Too Much Information, may I suggest some alternative use of time on the web? Because, look, some things just don't change.

On New Year's Day, Adriana was ill, and spent most of the day throwing up and sleeping. By dinnertime seemed fine, but I knew we had a rough night ahead of us because of how much she'd napped. I tried to go to bed at a decent hour, but as I lay there in the dark, telling Brian what needed to be done before the baby's arrival (and determining that I would be ready to go into labor by Wednesday night, giving me five full days to get everything accomplished), I began to panic a bit, and it was close to midnight before I slept. And at 2:30 in the morning Adriana awoke demanding food.

I knew her body needed to make up the calories she had missed out on during the day, so I was sitting on the kitchen floor with her while she ate a banana and a slice of bread with butter, when I realized that my Braxton-Hicks contractions were seeming a bit stronger. I glanced at the clock when one came. When the next one hit 10 minutes later I wasn't suprised, and the next one was exactly 10 minutes after that. I thought about my labor with Adriana, about how I had gone for several hours before finally admitting I was in labor. I wasn't quite ready this time to admit that that was going on, but I knew it was a possibility. Adriana finished her snack and I got back into bed with her, but she wasn't interested in sleeping. I watched the clock while I snuggled with her and rubbed her back. Finally at 4, with the contractions coming anywhere between seven and ten minutes apart and Adriana insisting that she wasn't sleepy, I decided to wake Brian. I was tired and if this was really labor, I needed to rest while I could.

Brian got up with Adriana and told her that when she was tired she could get back into bed and cuddle with me. She insisted I sleep in her room, and I couldn't see any reason to argue. I got into her bed and tried to doze while listening to Brian quietly telling her stories on the couch. I think I slept, and I definitely got some rest, but I also couldn't keep my eyes off the clock for a good part of the time. I would close my eyes and try to doze, but I kept peeking up at the clock, memorizing when one contraction had started and anticipating the next one. By 5:30 they were coming steadily seven minutes apart and I gave up on sleeping and got out of bed.

Adriana had fallen asleep on the couch beside Brian as he told her stories. We started to get ready. I had begun to pack a hospital bag a few weeks before. I had managed to put in a few of the things I would need after the baby arrived--a going home outfit for the baby, a couple of receiving blankets, and a tube of lanolin--and I set about adding in the things I would need during labor, as well as other things for after the birth. It occurred to me at that point that although I'd made plans for Adriana's care while I was in the hospital, I hadn't actually done any packing for her, so I grabbed another bag and threw in her special blanket and doll, her current favorite book, and enough clothes to get her through in case I had a c-section again, although if we were gone that long the plan was to have her stay at home for most of the time.

At seven, we started making phone calls--the doula, to give her a heads up that we'd been needing her before too long (Brian told her the contractions were "seven to fifteen minutes apart," and I corrected him sharply), a local friend with whom we planned to drop Adriana off (who was just back from Christmas with her family in Europe with two jetlagged children of her own--who better to offer an extra kid to?), and the friends who would be caring for her until we were back at home. We then spent a little less than two hours packing bags and tidying the house, stopping every five minutes so that I could breathe through contractions and Brian could apply counter pressure to my low back. Because I was having back labor, just as I had with Adriana. At one point I thought about consulting Dr. Google about this--did it mean the baby is posterior? Is all back pain in labor really back labor?--but I stayed away from the computer, figuring that this time I knew more about what I was doing, and I was feeling the contractions in my belly as well, which hadn't happened with Adriana.

We called Eva, our doula, again, this time to ask her to come over. My friend Trine offered to have her husband come pick Adriana up, but I wanted Brian to drive her over. I couldn't imagine Adriana walking out of our house without us willingly, even with the father of one of her friends, and the idea of Brian buckling her into their carseat and watching her drive off seemed similarly traumatic. (It turned out that Trine thought Brian was leaving me home alone in labor.) I woke Adriana and told her what was happening. We'd been over and over the routine for a few days; sometimes she would ask me to tell her what would happen, and sometimes she would recite it herself: When Mama goes to the hospital to get the baby, Daddy will take me to play with Matilda and Baby Nora, and then Helen and Sami will come get me and I can play at their house and sleep there, and then Mama and Daddy will come get me and we all go home with Baby Sister. So she cooperated well with getting dressed, although we were fighting a bit (as usual) about brushing her hair when Eva let herself into the apartment.

Before too long, Eva was really encouraging Brian to get going with Adriana. I knelt down to hug her goodbye and tell her I would see her soon. Everyone had told me how big she would seem once I had the baby, so I tried to memorize the feel of her little body. And then she went out the door with Brian and I began to cry, because there she was walking out the door in her little blue sweatsuit, with her special blanket and baby doll in a backpack, brave and happy, and I was the one who was scared and crying. Eva hugged me, and another contraction hit and I had no choice but to move on, because I had learned with Adriana, and even before that, when I'd had a miscarriage, that the only way to get through contractions is to focus on them.

I did find this time, maybe because I was actually admitting I was in labor, that I could use imagery to help myself relax, but it wasn't that I was ignoring the contractions. I would stop talking, stop whatever I was doing, and breathe deeply and let a relaxing image fill my mind. So I guess I wasn't focusing just on the contraction itself, but I wasn't exactly trying to get my mind off of it--just let my body relax enough that I could cope with the discomfort. Leaning forward seemed to help, too, so I would lean over the table or the bed or the arm of the couch and while either Eva or Brian pushed on my back, and I would close my eyes, take deep breaths, and focus on one thing. Then the contraction would end and Eva would give me some water or Recharge to drink and we would talk casually until the next one hit. Sometimes they came very close together. "Shit, another?" Eva exclaimed in surprise at one point while Brian was taking Adriana to Trine's. And that contraction was hard to get through because that was somehow extremely funny to me, and I was laughing instead of focusing on the pain.

Eva suggested I get into the shower, but I was hesitant, and she said we could go to the hospital instead and maybe try the shower there. I dreaded going to the hospital at all, but I also thought it might be better to get the drive over with--the sooner I did it, the further apart the contractions would be, so the fewer I would have to have between home and Kaiser. I also remembered that the midwives had clinic hours in the afternoon, which meant if I arrived too much later I would have an obstetrician attending me instead (I was not thinking clearly enough to realize that there were no clinic hours on Saturdays). So Brian loaded our bags (and the infant seat, which I'd meant to install before the baby came) into the car, and I arranged myself uncomfortably in the passenger seat. As we pulled out of our parking place, I remembered that I was supposed to call the hospital to tell them we were coming, so that they could have a room ready for me. Brian stopped the car in the middle of the parking lot and called. After a few minutes of him talking to the nurse on the phone, I got frustrated and told him to just drive while I took the phone. I grabbed his cell phone and immediately moaned into it as another contraction hit (Brian laughed about that later). I gave the nurse the information she needed as Brian headed up towards the freeway.

We pulled up in front of the hospital just before 11, and Brian grabbed one bag out of the car while I leaned against the car through another contraction. Someone saw us and came out of the hospital with a wheelchair, but I had just spent nearly 20 minutes sitting down and didn't want to have any more contractions in that position, so we waved him away. Eva came up from the parking lot and we went up through the hospital to Labor and Delivery, with me stopping to lean against the wall for contractions a few times on the way.

Once we were in our room, the nurse I'd spoke to on the phone gave me a hospital gown and a specimen cup and sent me into the bathroom. Brian and I looked at each other, and he said something about our having just given up control of the situation, but I went into the bathroom with Eva and I did as I was told, and Brian went to move the car.

When he got back, the nurse was trying to put the external fetal monitor on me, and I was giving her a hard time about it. She explained that it was policy to do continuous monitoring, and that I would have to sign a form in order to avoid it. The midwife came in then, and, after she and Eva greeted each other in surprise, since they knew through a mutual friend, we told her that we didn't want the continuous monitoring. She asked that we let them get "just one good strip," and sent someone to get the form for me to sign. The nurse fitted the belt around me, and then we could hear the baby's heartbeat. I did like the sound, but the belt was uncomfortable (which I didn't remember from Adriana's birth, but I had been in labor for 24 hours by the time I got to the hospital with her, so I was pretty out of it--and I got an epidural not too long after I arrived so it hadn't been uncomfortable for very long) and I was glad to have it gone after the nurse had entered all my information into the computer and she had her strip that recorded my contractions and the baby's heartbeat. The midwife, Sheri, checked my cervix, and declared me six centimeters.

Another nurse drew some blood, inserting a heplock into my wrist at the same time, just in case I needed an IV later. They put a rubber glove over that hand so that I could get into the shower without getting it wet. The nurse had a few more forms for Brian and me to sign, but soon after that the room was down to just Brian, Eva, and me. Eva started the shower for me, and I went to stand under the hot water. I was in there for an hour, trying different positions on the shower stool, standing and leaning against the wall, and holding onto the bar on the wall to support myself during squats. That bar was exactly what I needed--it gave me something to grip as I did a series of squats through each contraction. I must have looked ridiculous, but suddenly the only thing that made sense to do during contractions was to raise and lower myself, just as we had in my prenatal yoga class. I joked between contractions that my quads would be killing me the next day and that I would have bruises on my back from the counterpressure, until I couldn't even joke between contractions anymore. Brian brought me more of my Recharge, and I looked at him as though he were crazy, because he was handing me something yellow in what appeared to be a specimen cup, and he told me what it was so that I would drink it. Something about the way I was gripping the bar was bending the heplock in my wrist, so that it was hurting, and I found myself focusing on that instead of the contractions. I began sitting down between contractions and caught myself nodding off a few times. Eva and Brian chatted with one another and took turns pressing on my back, and for the most part I tuned them out and usually wasn't even aware who was the one supporting me.

There were times in the shower when I considered giving up on natural childbirth and requesting an epidural. I never mentioned it out loud, and instead talked myself silently through it, reminding myself that I wouldn't be able to move, that the last time I had had one I had also ended up with a c-section. Sometimes that wasn't quite enough. Sometimes I would have to ask myself, "Do you really want to have to admit afterwards that you gave up?" And it was that worry, the worry about the injury to my pride, that kept me going. ("Women have their own kind of macho," Brian said, when I told him about it later.)

Once I was out of the shower, Eva offered to go get Sheri so she could check to see what kind of progress I was making. Brian and I both hesitated. It was only one o'clock, so I hadn't been at the hospital all that long, and we were remembering labor with Adriana, and how discouraging it was after several hours of labor, some of it very intense, to discover that I'd only gained one centimeter and hadn't actually reached transition. So we resisted the idea, but only for a little bit. I was hopeful that something was happening, and it also just seemed like something to do. Sitting there waiting for the next contraction to hit, and leaning against Brian through the pain was actually kind of boring. I wanted something to happen. I suppose I hoped she'd tell me I was fully dilated and that I was going to have a baby any second now.

Instead she told me I'd progressed one centimeter.

She offered to break my water for me, telling me that that sometimes would make things progress more quickly. I declined, not wanting to have any unnecessary interventions. I went back to sitting on the edge of the bed between contractions and experimented with different positions to get me through them. I tried listening to music, but several songs into the playlist I'd made of relaxing music, I gave up. I liked the music between contractions, but during I found that it distracted me from focusing on the contractions when they hit. I put the iPod aside and just perched on the edge of the bed, standing and hanging on Brian during each contraction. Half an hour of that and I asked that Sheri break the bag of waters. I wanted things to progress, and again, it just seemed like something to do.

Around two o'clock, I started wondering how long labor would go on (which strikes me as funny in retrospect, given how short the labor had been compared to my experience with Adriana) and was back to considering whether I could actually manage labor without an epidural, Sheri checked me again. I was dilated to nine centimeters and feeling the urge to push. She told me I could bear down a bit with contractions to see what happened.

For the next two hours, I pushed with contractions. It was harder work and I already felt tired, but it also was exciting and a bit energizing. My memory of those two hours is hazy and scrambled. I know I was surprised to find that, as much as it was a relief to feel that something was actually happening, time was also moving more slowly: sure that I had been pushing for an hour, I looked at the clock and discovered it had only been ten minutes. I know Eva and Sheri were having me move around to try different things. I knelt on the bed and leaned against Brian, and then the back of bed was raised up so that I could lean face-first into it, and I tried that, as well as the hands-and-knees position I had already tried laboring in. Finally, Sheri had me try sitting and leaning against the back of the bed. I resisted, but she and Eva seemed to think that this would help, and I did what they suggested. I know that at one point someone confirmed that the baby was posterior, but that later on they said they could see her turning. And I know that at some point I became very noisy, basically yelling my way through contractions. I felt a little silly when I was resting, but then another contraction would come and I was grit my teeth and yell through it. And then, as many of the contractions ended, I would protest that I couldn't do it. Brian, Eva, and Sheri would tell me that I could, and sometimes that informed me that I not only could I do it, I was doing it already. I still hadn't full dilated, but Sheri was holding my cervix back, which also helped me focus my pushing.

Soon they were telling me that they could see the baby, that her head was "right there." "She's right there," Sheri kept promising me. Eva looked and assured me that this was true. But then it went on and on. Finally I gave up listening to them when they told me so. But there came a point when someone told me the baby was almost there, and I started to say that they'd been telling me that for well over an hour when Brian interrupted me.

"A bunch of people just came into the room," he told me. Until then we'd been attended just by the midwife and the same nurse with her obnoxious fetal monitor (she didn't try strapping it to me again, but would periodically use it to listen to the baby's heartrate). But suddenly there were half a dozen more people in the room, and we began to realize that now they were serious. I felt myself become self-conscious for a moment, but contractions and pushing left room for no other thoughts in my mind, and soon I was able to tune out the fact that they were there, focusing just on the sound of Eva's voice.

Eva was the one coaching me through the last stages. "Don't yell with the next contraction," she ordered me at last. "I want you to put all your energy into pushing, not yelling." And she had me grab onto my knees and pull them toward me as I pushed, and not yelling seemed like the hardest thing ever. She told me I was doing great and to do the exact same thing for the next contraction.

"I can't," I told her. "It's too hard. I can't do this anymore." I was exhausted and the burning feeling that came from all the pushing seemed like too much.

"You can," she assured me, with Brian echoing her. And then she told me. "You are going to pull on your knees and not yell, and I'm going to count to ten and you are going to push the entire time I am counting." At that moment I wasn't thinking about the fact that I had told her when we first met with her about hiring her as my doula that I probably needed someone to boss me around during labor, but looking back it seems as though I was right, and that she was good at doing exactly that. Because when the contraction came a moment later, I pulled my knees and didn't yell, and pushed as I listened to her count to ten.

"She's right there," Eva said again.

"She's not, she's not," I said. "This is too hard. It's taking too long." But another contraction came, and Eva counted, and I pushed. And then I rested for a moment and protested again.

Everyone reassured me again that I could do this, and someone asked if the baby had a name. I hesitated, not sure if we should tell anyone before she was born, but Brian told them, and several people in the room were saying "Lyra!" as I pushed with the next contraction, and then something changed and the burning feeling was gone and Sheri was telling me that I could reach down and feel the baby's head.

I don't remember pushing any more after that, but a moment or two later, Sheri was lifting a wet little Lyra onto my belly, and my hands were on her and I was holding onto my own little baby.

I was in such a haze, then. I didn't hurt anymore and I had a baby, and I felt so good.

Brian got to cut the cord, and I heard someone saying that the baby had been born at 3:57. I was given an injection of Pitocin to help deliver the placenta. I asked to see the placenta, and Sheri asked me if I wanted to keep it, and I told her happily that I was not that much of a hippie. But then it's even more of a blur than the end of the labor. We were covered in towels and blankets while I marveled at how tiny Lyra seemed, and someone laughed and said that she was a big baby, and Eva told me that yes, she was small compared to Adriana, but she was not a tiny baby by any means. Everyone in the room was guessing that she was at least eight pounds, and when they finally took her from me to weigh her and she was eight pounds one ounce. I had some second-degree tears, and Sheri stitched those up while I chatted with her and Eva (and asked if I could go home soon), and Brian stayed close to Lyra while she was examined in the corner of the room. I felt exhilarated and almost drunk--I couldn't stop talking and I kept asking to hold the baby again and apologizing for all my yelling and wondering when we could go home. (The answer to the last one was that I probably could go home that evening if I wanted to, but it was a much better idea to stay the night and get some rest, and they would discharge us first thing in the morning.) I kept asking to have the heplock removed and was told that it needed to stay in until later that night, in case I hemorrhaged and needed blood; I assured them I had no intention of hemorrhaging this time around, but that was disregarded. Eva got me drinks and snacks, and I realized how thirsty I was. The baby was cleaned up a bit and then wrapped up tightly and we had a chance to nurse. More and more people cleared out of the room, and I asked Brian for his phone, so I could call our parents. The nurse who had come in to give Lyra a more thorough bath knew exactly where we'd gotten the name, which I thought was nice, even as I wondered whether my baby needed to be scrubbed so thoroughly right then.

About two hours after the birth, I was seated in wheelchair and Lyra was placed in my arms and we were wheeled up to the maternity ward. Brian went with the baby while the pediatrician in the nursery examined her, and a couple of nurses got me settled, while I explained that I needed food and to have my heplock removed. And finally it was just Brian and Lyra and me in the little hospital room, all settling in for the night, and everything seemed so easy.

Me, Lyra, and that awful heplock.

Happy Valentine's Day

And, for comparison's sake, here is Adriana 0n her first Valentine's Day:

One month (and a few days, because honestly, I have TWO now--nothing happens on time)

Coming home with a new baby a month ago seems so far away. Was it only a month? Really? But then again, I can't believe it's been a month already. Lyra seems so big already, so much sturdier. We all seem to be getting used to having her here. We are finding a sort of a rhythm--albeit a chaotic one--as a family of four, and it's hard to remember exactly how things worked before she was here.

In some ways, she is very much like Adriana. I suppose all newborns are mostly alike--they sleep, they eat, they poop. Lyra looks looks like Adriana did as a baby, with chubby cheeks and her head of wild, dark hair. Like Adriana, she's happiest when she's being held snug and upright, close to us in a pouch or wrap. She doesn't seem to be as big a fan of being swaddled as so many newborns I know. If we swaddle her up in a blanket, she usually fights her way out of it quickly and then calms down. And like Adriana she so far seems to refuse to be very regular in her eating and sleeping patterns. But there are differences, too: Adriana screamed about baths for at least the first month (enough to traumatize Brian enough that after the first few baths, he didn't give her another for a good year and a half). We put a fussy Lyra in the tub when she was a week old or so, and remembered that my friend Lyndelle had suggested making Adriana more warm and secure in the bath by putting a washcloth over her body. I did that and Lyra instantly calmed down, but I think it was just being in the water that was calming for her. Now popping her in the tub is the quickest way to make her a happy baby. She waves her arms and legs around while I pour water over her, and just generally seems content.

She is spending more time awake now, and she seems unhappy about it. I had forgotten how much new babies sleep, and spent the first couple of weeks wishing Lyra would wake up more so that I could see her eyes and maybe interact with her a bit. But now that it's happened, I'm unsure what I was thinking. Interact? She doesn't do much when she's awake. And when she is awake she's mostly fussing for something. Still, we do get to spend some time playing with her little hands and feet and tickling her cheeks and chin to get her to make funny faces.

She is growing well. She has been a good nurser from the beginning, but I was still anxious about her weight gain, so I put her on the scale when she was two weeks old, since we were at the pediatrician's office for Adriana's three-year check-up. At that point a baby should have regained her birthweight, and since that was all I was really hoping for, I was pleased to see that she was 12 ounces over. She still seems like a little baby to me, having been born three inches shorter and almost two pounds lighter than her sister, but Lyra is finally filling out the clothes that fit Adriana at birth. And I can already see her emerging from what a friend called "the potato stage:" she tries to hold up her head (and is sometimes successful; she gives little smiles that at this point I think are real; and I watched her eyes track the cat all the way around the edge of the cosleeper last night--all little things, but things that weren't happening a month ago. Then I watch Adriana jump off the couch and give me my line in the game she wants me to play with her and it's so strange to remember that she was a little lump like this once, too, and to imagine Lyra in a few years as an active, creative little girl. I'm looking forward to that day, but for now I'm mostly enjoying this feeling of having a newborn again. This time I am so aware that it's not going to last long.

Three

Sunlight and singing

Lyra Noelle

January 2, 2010

3:57 PM

8 pounds, 1 ounce

19 inches

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

more than anyone on the earth and i

like you better than everything in the sky

--sunlight and singing welcome your coming

although winter may be everywhere

with such a silence and such a darkness

noone can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year--

and if what calls itself a world should have

the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such

sunlight as will leap higher than high

through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each

nearerness)everyone certainly would(my

most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love

-e.e. cummings