Christmas (Part 1)

We're here! We landed amidst blowing snow on Sunday (less than an hour late) and have been having a lovely time catching up with Minnesota friends and family.
Finn spends most of his time either getting passed around...or in his carseat, on the way to getting passed around:
So he's been pretty happy. And we've enjoyed having grandparents and aunts and uncles keep an eye on him so we can spend a little extra time on sleeping, errand running, showering... you know, luxuries like that. Tomorrow we drive down to Iowa for the McGovern & Bennett side of things, where there will be more of the same. There are LOTS more pictures at Flickr if these aren't enough for you, and there will be even more after Iowa.
Hope your Christmas was as merry as ours!

Long night; new movie

Our pediatrician recommended that we give Finn one bottle a day so that he's comfortable eating that way when I go back to work. So for the past couple weeks I've been taking the first late night feeding, and the second time he wakes up Jonathan feeds him a bottle of pumped milk. We both get a little more sleep that way.

Until recently.

Two nights ago Finn decided that he didn't want to eat from the bottle, and that he would rather just scream with the bottle in his mouth, so I (eventually) got up and fed him. He did it again last night, so I stumbled out to the living room and Jonathan handed him over, and he immediately consented to eat. Then when I took him off to burp, instead of his usual sleepy face or the occasional pouty one, I got a series of huge, adorable grins. It's like he knew I was ready to strangle him. And then, just to see what would happen, I tried giving him the bottle, and now that he was calm, he finished the whole thing. Tonight's plan: Jonathan's going to wake up and get the bottle ready before Finn wants it, hopefully circumventing the whole screaming thing. Wish us luck.

So, yeah, he's already started manipulating us. But he's so darn cute!

And here's the movie I promised earlier this week:


It's an example of a) him noticing toys and b) him making the funny little grunting noises we've been calling "snorking" but can't quite imitate. He hasn't done any "ooo" or "aaa" type noises yet, and the snorking is his conversational sound when he's just hanging out and content. About 45 seconds in he also does his imitating-Jon-Stewart-imitating-Bush chuckle. And once or twice he manages to knock the hanging toys around with his hand - but not on purpose.

We're heading to Minnesota and Iowa tomorrow to visit family for Christmas, so posting will probably be even less frequent than usual for the next week or so. The cat sitter's booked, the gifts are shipped, and and the calendar is jam packed, so I think we're all set. Wish us luck on the plane and in the car, and have a great holiday!

P.S. Anybody want to come over and hang out on New Years Eve?

Smiles

We're getting real smiles this past week. Here he is at home with me:
Pretty cute, huh? And you thought he just scowled and looked worried all the time.

Here's a real big one he saved for our midwife, Lin, when we went in for my follow-up appointment yesterday:
I suppose it's only fair, since she brought him into the world and all.
He's also starting to notice toys now, which is kind of fun. I hope to get a little footage of that posted later this week.

Neckxercise

Fresh from yesterday, more Finn Footage. Here he is doing his
morning head lift reps.
Go, Mr. Baby! One more set - feel the burn!

So far he'll only lift his upper body like this when someone's holding
him. If you put him on the floor, he occasionally manages to flip his
head from one side to the other, but often just ends up with his face
pressed into the mat. We could post a picture of that, too, but we
thought he might find it kind of embarrassing.

Dancin'? Shoutin'?

Those of you that have visited my office at the University of Arizona or NASA Ames know that, in addition to usual office stuff, I have one of my prized possessions. "Dancin! Shoutin'! James Brown! " He dances and sings. Finn wiggles and squeaks, which is similar. When I was moving down to my office at UC Santa Cruz this week, I happened to notice that Finn and James are just about the same size. Amazingly Finn has a smaller head than James. Finn's shirt says "I love daddy." He specifically requested it.

Finn is a good traveler, mostly. I think he's getting wise to being put into his carrier though, so sometimes it is struggle. This picture was taken before he managed to rip off one of the monkey heads on his chest strap pads.

One month!

Finn is one month old today. I can honestly say much of it has passed in a blur, thanks largely to the whole finals thing. A quick bit of advice: if you're returning to school after a few years off, and working while you're doing it, probably you shouldn't take three classes your first semester. And if you're having a baby that semester, DO NOT take three classes, particularly if they involve group work. And if you're dumb enough to do all of this, please, for the love o' Pete, don't move in the middle of all this or plan on getting any homemade Christmas presents done. Or, you know, anything else.

Anyway, we've survived and are having a great time, and to celebrate, here are some up close and personal photos. First, the parts of Finn that I see the most of, his cute little ears:
Yes, I can tell them apart, even if you tried to fool me with a mirror or something. And after I get to look at his ears, usually while I burp him I get to look at his super soft hair, which it appears he's going to keep:
He's got a cowlick. It goes counter-clockwise. And finally, as a special treat for you blog readers, something we almost never get to see, the palms of his hands:He usually keeps them clenched pretty well, which is why you can see our fingers prying them open, and why, if you look closely, you can see the lint he stores between his thumb and forefinger in one of the shots. At least once a day I take a wet washcloth while he's semi-distracted by eating and say, "Finn! Give me that hand cheese!"

Baby Juggling

One thing that no one ever tells you about having a baby is that they are a lot of work. They like, can't even do anything for themselves. :) This weekend Katie is trying to finish a giant final paper for her last library class, so, being a good husband and father, I am fully in charge of Finn. Except when he has to eat. And except when I have to go down to Santa Cruz for an astronomy meeting. And except when I have to go to the Vikings/49ers game with Rolo this afternoon.

We had our 2nd restaurant outing with Finn yesterday. The first was Thanksgiving. We went out to brunch with a group of 10. He mostly slept until it was time to start yelling for a new diaper. I took him over the men's room and laid him down on his changing pad right across the sinks. Mostly things went well but at one point I realized that he was sliding off the top of the pad and his head was hanging down into the sink a bit. No harm done! I wish they'd have had a baby changing thing, but I suppose that is fairly rare. I'm also glad that no one wanted to use the sink.

We're coming back MN/IA for Christmas, so Finn will be flying at age 6 weeks. I think that he'll be a trooper about it. We've got seats near the back of the plane.

Dinner for one

Feeding your baby is an amazing thing. I think since I've been doing it eight or ten times a day (often half asleep) I've started to take it for granted, but last night Jonathan got to feed Finn for the first time, and being outside the process and watching how the experience affected Jonathan was a good reminder of what it felt like for me the first few days. You realize as you watch them struggling to manage the apparently highly complicated task of integrating swallowing with breathing that very simple things you do, like picking them up or giving them a little food, are the biggest things in their world. They depend on and trust in you for everything, and you just might be up to it. And they just might manage the whole swallowing/breathing thing without drowning on milk. Really, I had my moments of doubt last night - Finn was going nuts with that bottle.

Plus it's unbelievably cute when he's done eating and snuggles up into a ball on your chest and makes his funny grunty breathing noises.

Crib(!) and pics from the Fortney visit

Guess who slept in his crib last night? Finn! For the whole night, you ask? Yes! Well, of course he did it in 3 chunks, as you can see on Trixie Tracker. Yay crib! It was weird sleeping with him in his own room. Even with the baby monitor on, we couldn't hear all of his weird little noises, which had its good and bad points. It took us awhile to fall asleep. He liked it well enough that I think this will be the plan from now on.

Below are pictures of my Dad (Jon) and my mom, sister, and niece (Mary, Jeanna, Jamie), along with Mr. Finn, from the Fortney visit over Thanksgiving.

Finn footage

To celebrate Finn turning two weeks old yesterday, we took a little video this morning (Finn's favorite time of day) and finally figured out how to work the camcorder-to-PC transfer. He's not doing anything exciting, but he is really cute.
Here you go!

2-week weigh-in

The kid is chubbin' up nicely. :) He is above his birth weight by 2 oz and is now at 8 lbs 13 oz. That means he is eating well. I could have told the doctor that from the stunning number of diapers that I've changed in the past 2 weeks. In another few weeks he may transition to only several poopy diapers a week, rather than 8-10 per day. Maybe the doctor was just kidding me. FYI, our doctor's name is Timmy, and he looks about my age. I guess I'm a doctor of Planetary Sciences, but there is a big difference! He seems outstanding, of course.

The Fortney gang headed out yesterday. We toured the Bay area a bit and visited family from Sacramento (shout-out to the Blahas) and Salinas (the Reeves-Fortney clan). Finn was much prodded and much admired. He seems to be re-adjusting to his usual schedule now.

This week I'm going to go into work at NASA Ames for at least a half day. :)

*Yawn*

Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it'll occur to you in advance. Or at least, to me. For example:
-Babies sleep when they go for rides in cars.
-Babies who sleep all day tend to not sleep so well at night.
Add these two together, and you learn that when you spend most of your Thanksgiving driving from Los Gatos to Oakland, Oakland to the Marin Headlands, and then from there back to Los Gatos, you might get a baby who is VERY awake at three in the morning. Which we did. Surprise!
Fortunately, he was easy to keep awake the next day and slept great last night. However, today we drove down to Salinas and back, and I'm a little nervous about our prospects for sleep tonight. Wish us luck, because I'm REALLY tired. Why did I never notice how exhausting holidays were? Fortunately, Jonathan's aunt Beth lays out a mean Thanksgiving spread, and sent us home with tons of leftovers, so at least we have some tasty fuel to keep us running.

Also: Finn's new hobby? Dirtying the fresh diaper before it's fastened, or even fully in place. I think Jonathan went through three diapers in one change today, and I know I had one yesterday like that (yes, I'm changing diapers now). His other hobby: sucking on the knuckles of his index fingers, which is cute, especially when he can't find them and gets mad.

Here's Jonathan and Finn this morning, all snazzed up and ready to go:

Bath time fun, and other pics

Last night we decided to give Finn a (sponge) bath. It seemed a like a good idea, since he was nearly a week old. He HATED it. He is not a big fan of being on his back or being naked. This had both and got him wet. He got to wear his cute little Pooh towel though.











Sometimes he likes to play. Can you tell that he has a lot of Pooh gear?

One week old!

Finn is one week old today. A few fun facts:

• He has a dimple in his left cheek.
• Yesterday he took a two hour nap in his crib.
• He's cuter every day.
  

Yesterday was pretty uneventful. We're still doing fine, and still kind of in a daze. But we're still eating well! We want to say a very big thank-you to Rachel and everyone who signed up for the dinner schedule she set up. Before the birth it sounded like a nice thought, and kind of handy. Now I'm not sure how we'd be surviving otherwise. Lots of pizza, I imagine. Instead so far we've had tasty squash lasagna from Jessica and Daren, and Ginny's coming over tonight with Indian. Yum. And in addition to a varied diet, we get to show off Finn without having to leave the house. Thanks Rachel!

8 hours. No, really.

That's how much sleep I think I got last night. Not all in a row, of course, just between the hours of 10 and 10, but when you're used to getting up every hour or so to pee, that's kind of irrelevant. Two to three hour chunks are an IMPROVEMENT. In the category of "things we're going to keep trying to get away with as long as our luck holds," here's a picture of Finn right before bed last night. Last night and the night before, we put him in the seat, shut out the lights, and went to sleep. And so did he. We didn't expect it to work, but we thought it was worth a try - and it was! Two nights in a row! No, I'm not bragging, nor am I counting on it lasting. I'm just feeling the Thanksgiving spirit, and milking this for all the sleep I can.

Speaking of feeling thankful, have I mentioned that Jonathan has changed EVERY diaper so far? Or that we've decided to go with cloth, and it's going great? So right now it's still hilarious that Finn LOVES a fresh clean diaper to poop in.
Also: best eater ever, for which I can take no credit. Finn has mad skillz, and the nurses at El Camino hospital were great - SO supportive of breastfeeding, and never left the room after handing him off until they made sure we had a good latch.
And Mona almost seems to like him. She was just perched on the couch two feet away watching him, and she stays on the bed when I bring him there screaming to nurse. Murray's still terrified, though.

So things are good. My baby's awake now, and I'm going to go play with him. Before I go, here's a bonus photo: Finn and Mom yesterday before she left.

He peed in his eye! He peed in his eye!

When you pull the baby's legs up to do a diaper change, watch where the important parts are pointing.

And they said the learning curve was steep in law school

Trixie Tracker updating has fallen by the wayside, as anyone who's checked will have noticed. Right now we're focusing on accomplishing the eating and sleeping. We'll work on recording it later. Clocks have much less meaning than they used to - all time has become relative, and runs in three to four hour cycles. And the crib cam will be more interesting once we can get him to sleep in it for longer than half an hour.

We had a pediatrician appointment yesterday, and Finn's weight has already leveled off, at 8 lbs 3 oz, so that's good. Last night he slept for two THREE HOUR stretches. We're trying not to extrapolate this few days of data into believing that we have the easiest baby ever, but it's hard. Also, at first he had three modes - screaming, eating, and sleeping. Over the past few days there's this new category, "nothing's-wrong-I'm-just-awake-and-looking-around" that I must admit is my favorite, and there's more of it all the time.

My mom has been here since Friday. Before the birth we weren't sure if we would want anyone around the first week or two, but I'm so glad she could come earlier rather than later. I'm not sure how we would have survived the weekend otherwise, and today will be ... interesting... after she leaves. She got in a lot of Finn-holding time, picked up after us when we weren't looking, and even made us a cake. Thanks to her we actually went out to dinner for Jonathan's birthday last night, which was exhausting but fun. I realize this reveals what a dope I am, but I didn't expect to be this ... beat. I think I thought, sure, I'll be sleep deprived, but we'll deal with that. I completely failed to take into account the physical toll of pushing another human being out of my body and then having to put myself back together again. So I'm trying to take it easy, and this blog post is the most challenging thing I have lined up for the day.

Weekend!

Wanna see a funny sign from a hallway in the hospital?

We've made it 2 more days! Last night Finn was a good little sleeper, with 3 different chunks of 2 to 2 1/2 hours of sleeping. He much prefers his carseat or swing over his crib. So for now he gets to sleep where he likes. We'll try breaking him into his crib slowly for afternoon naps.

Today is my birthday! I'm 31, one year older than my Dad was when my parents' had me.

Below are Finn and Katie right before we hopped into the car for the ride home on Thursday.

Everyone knows how important tummy time is.

Day 3 - We're home!

I guess he's really ours, because they let us take him from the hospital today. We made it safe and sound, and Finn has now been sniffed by Murray and officially deemed uninteresting. Mona seems ... leery. Vigilant as always.

Thanks so much for all the comments and e-mails, everyone. I've generally been too tired, overwhelmed, and/or one-handed to respond, but it's been really great to hear from everyone. You guys make *me* cry. I'm sure we'll get more communicative eventually. In the meantime, there should be some appearances on the crib cam, and I added a link to our brand spanking new Trixie Tracker site, for those of you out there who can't get enough Finn-fo. (Finn+info. Get it?) You know who you are.

Yesterday was all-eating-no-sleeping day. Today seems to be all-sleeping-as-long-as-someone-will-hold me day. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Oh, right - my mom! :)

P.S. I LOVE that second picture Jonathan posted. The looks he gives us generally range from unamused to outraged, and I see the one in that picture pretty often.

Some pictures and comments

Hi all! Katie was fantastic yesterday. 30 hours of labor. As you can imagine, I have never been more proud of her. Our midwife Lin was fantastic and I'll never forget the attention and support that she gave us the past 9 months and the past 48 hours. We owe her so much.

During the ups and downs of the ups and down of Finn's pulse, the most unnerving part was that you could hear it on the monitor. Blup, blup, blup, blup, (pause), blup, blup. It was the pauses that were the worst. Or when you could hear that it was gradually slowing. It was impossible to sleep (for the 2 hours that we got from 3-5 a.m.) unless he had a steady pulse.

So far he is a very good eater, which is fantastic. He really likes to be swaddled up. I wish that I was better at swaddling him. The number of diapers that I've changed in my lifetime has gone from 0 to 4.

Who likes more pictures?

Day 0-1

Short version: Finn McGovern Fortney was born Tuesday, November 13, 2007, at 9:20 am. He weighed 8 lbs., 11 oz., and was 20 1/2 inches long. He has lots of pretty dark hair and blue eyes. Labor started about 3:30 am on Monday morning, and we went to the hospital around 7:00 at night. He came out the old fashioned way, with help from drugs (and lots of people), and started screaming right away. Got a 9 on his Apgar at 1 and 5 minutes (for those of you in the know on such things). The pediatrician says he looks great, and both Jonathan and I are tired but good, and very happy.

Now, for those of you who want the long version...

Finn was in no hurry. At 41 weeks, still no contractions that were strong enough to be uncomfortable, and few that were strong enough to feel. We went down the list of things that could/should get things started; I went to an acupuncturist; we waited. Our midwife, Lin, did an ultrasound and stress test last Thursday and said that everything looked fine, but that she'd like to do prostaglandin gel on Sunday night, and if that ripened my cervix, start me slowly on pitocin on Tuesday. I was a little nervous about pitocin, but willing to try the gel and go from there. So that's what we did.

Sunday night we went to the hospital for the gel. I was at 1 cm. Everything was fine, normal, and uneventful. We went home.

Monday morning I woke up with contractions I couldn't sleep through... although I tried from about 3:30 to 4:30. At 5:00 we got out of bed, and they were 3-5 minutes apart. We already had an appointment to see Lin at 10:00 so she could see how things were going with the gel, so we just kind of puttered around the house until then. When we went in Lin said I was at 2 cm and that everything looked good, and sent us home, telling us to keep her posted. It looked like we weren't going to need the pitocin after all, which was nice.

We managed to sleep a bit when we got home, and the contractions slowed to almost 10 minutes apart for a while. They were pretty erratic for most of the day, but got stronger and stronger. We tried to reach Lin, but... um... Jonathan and pagers don't get along. We won't dwell on that. We reached Olga, the other midwife, who said we could go ahead and go in if the contractions were pretty intense and we wanted to get checked. So we did. And I was still 2 cm. I think they were going to give me something so I could sleep and send us home, but they put me on the monitor to see how Finn was doing for a while, and by the time an hour had passed and Lin had come in to see us, I was at 4 cm, so they decided to keep us. It was around 9:00 p.m., it was the real thing, and the only way I was going to be sleeping between then and having a baby was an epidural.

We walked around a bit to see if that would help move things along; it didn't. Both Lin and the nurse pointed out that if we just let things move slowly I would probably be completely and utterly exhausted by the time I had to push. That sounded reasonable, since I'd been up since around 4am, so we decided to have Lin break the bag. I think that was around 10:30, and I was at about 5 cm. As expected, the contractions felt a lot more intense after that, and were coming closer together. Lin recommended I try the shower, so we did that for a while, and it helped a bit. But for the hours after the bag was broken, I had a really hard time finding a comfortable position either between or during contractions, and didn't feel like I was getting any rest in between, especially in my back. At some point after midnight, I have no idea when, I felt like I was at the end of my rope. I couldn't focus on anything; I just wanted to cry and for it all to go away. But Lin had had the nurse get the warming table ready, and the cart full of instruments and stuff, and from the questions she was asking me about what I was feeling and where, I got the impression it might be time to push soon. So she checked me for the first time in hours... and I was still at 5 cm.

This was when I finally truly understood what people mean when they say that there are times when having someone stick a needle into your spine sounds like a reasonable, nay, a brilliant idea. So they called Dr. Brown, the wonderful anesthesiologist, and he came and did the epidural. Good thing: I could function again, and think about sleeping. Bad thing: Finn's heart rate wasn't doing so good. They thought it might be related to the epidural and my blood pressure, so they gave me something for my blood pressure. It helped a bit (I think; I was not at my most alert at this point), but his pulse was still falling during contractions, and in between them not getting up as high as it had been. Lin called the doctor on call, Dr. Barrett, and he looked at the readout and said that if it went that low again, they getting him out. Period.

I was so out of it and so tired by then that I probably would have done anything anybody told me to. But Lin was great. She thought that he was coming up high enough between contractions, and as long as he kept that up, we'd watch carefully, give me very small amounts of pitocin, and wait for my cervix to catch up. Apparently some (most?) of the nurses in labor and delivery really thought we should have a C-section, and if Dr. Barrett had come back to check on us, we probably would have, but we didn't hear about any of this. We knew there was concern, and monitoring, but from our perspective the positions I was in and the fluid they put back in had gotten things back in a good place, and everything was fine. Thank you Lin! We slept a bit; they checked on us periodically, and we got through the night. It was scary to go from a free-range person to one attached to no fewer than six instruments/bags/whatnots in such a short time, but we were doing okay, and so was he.

When the new nurse, Maria (who replaced Maria, who replaced Emily) came on sometime around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, I'd been awake for about an hour. Finn's pulse was now good (back up to pre-bag-breaking-levels) after every contraction no matter what position I was in, which was great. I could still feel the pressure of the contractions, and I couldn't get entirely comfortable, but my attitude was a lot better. The pressure was telling me it might be time to push, so I told Maria that, and she checked me - completely dilated, and ready to go. She said if I felt like pushing, go ahead. We started pushing; Lin came; and then at 9:20 we had a baby! I guess it must have been about an hour and a half of pushing, but it really didn't feel that long. The cord had been wrapped around his neck, which was probably the problem in the night, but it was around loosely, just once, and he's very healthy. And loud. And has a full head of hair. And is a skilled eater.

We like him. We're going to keep him.

-Katie