Mirror, mirror on the floor

Owen loves having "tummy time" with his girlfriends at our weekly class for new moms & babies.



He seems to be especially fond of the redhead!

What was that saying about apples and trees again?

I thought it would be fun to compare photos of Owen with some of his mom and dad as babies. When I originally planned this post, I thought I'd ask you to weigh in with who you think he looks like - whose eyes, whose mouth, that sort of thing. But now that I've actually seen the photos, I'm not sure there's much point in that... I can't tell my baby from my husband! (The top row is me, the bottom row is Mike.) Many thanks to Nana, Granny and Grandpa for scanning and sending the photos.

Ode to a binky*

by Owen

eh...
Eh. EH. EH!
WAAAAHHHH!
mmmm...
slurp.

*for the Brits: "binky" is American for "dummy"

My new foot (and hand) fetish

As several of you who have met Owen have mentioned, there's something really amazing about babies' miniature hands and feet. I sometimes find myself staring at them for minutes on end. (Doing something for minutes in baby-time is like hours in adult-time.) Yesterday after he scratched himself in the face :-( I clipped Owen's nails for the very first time, and the clippings were so tiny it is hard to believe how much damage he is able to inflict with those perfect little fingers. Is it too weird to keep the clippings for posterity? I don't want to be a crazy mom, but they're soooo tiny. Photos just don't capture it!

Owen go bragh

A one month old Owen wishes you a very
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hurrah!

I've been slow to post lately as it's our first week alone, just the two of us, and it turns out this motherhood thing is a heck of a lot harder without Dad or Nana around. We haven't had time for a photo shoot yet this week, so I'm posting some oldies but goodies in celebration of the sitemeter hitting 100 visits.

Pride and Prejudice

It's amazing how ridiculously filled with pride I am at every little thing Owen does. Especially when you consider that, to be honest, he doesn't do much. When he was born, the toughest thing he had to do was pee and poop. He was fabulous at it from the start (and it's more difficult than it sounds, trust me). He peed all over the first pediatrician that came to see him in the hospital, which made us super-proud, since we didn't particularly like her. Now that he's 3 weeks old he is faced with more mature challenges, like gas. And I am so proud of every burp. How can this sustain itself? If I'm this proud when he burps, how can I possibly cope with his first day of school, or his college graduation, or his - gasp - wedding?

Since I realize that what brings you here are the photos, for today's installment we feature Owen's crowning achievement to date. Yesterday while playing in his activity gym, he managed to roll over from his tummy to his back. OK, so he was propped up on a pillow to start with, but still... What skill! What coordination! Unfortunately I did not have my camera at the time so today we staged this life-like, docu-drama style re-enactment for your benefit. Enjoy!

At least we're not doing (very many) experiments on him, right?

We're crawling out of the haze of the first two weeks. Mike goes back to work this week (to the lab, I mean - he's been working plenty hard here at home taking care of Owen and of me during my recovery). We're catching up on laundry and straightening the apartment. But as we exit the haze a clearer picture of our future reality is emerging - and I fear for our child. Today I picked up a piece of paper from the dining room table that, like many of the pieces of paper lying around these days, said 8:20 poop, 8:30 right breast, 8:45 poop... When I flipped it over it turned out to be the back of a journal article titled "Bulk heating of transparent materials using a high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser". I'm not sure which side is more troubling. Another reason to worry - today's photo is of Owen "playing" with his favorite toy, a bell-containing stuffed dog named Pavlov.

Where did he get that hair?

A full head of dark hair was not exactly what we expected to see. But before you ask about the mailman's hairdo, you should know about a recent study done by researchers at Johns Hopkins. They set out to test an old wives' tale that if mom has bad heartburn during pregnancy, the baby will have a lot of hair at birth. Surprisingly, they found that it was true - there was a significant correlation between severity of heartburn during pregnancy and the amount of hair on the baby. The connection? Perhaps hormonal levels in the mom, that both relax the esophageal sphincter and promote fetal hair growth. All I know is that for us, it was true!

Five thousand words...

Of ice and Owen (his birth story, as told by Megan)

After 3 weeks of being told by my doctor that I could “go into labor at any minute”, my water broke – in her office – at 1pm on Friday Feb. 16th. How convenient! She said I should go home and relax and wait for contractions to be regular and close together, and meet her at the hospital around dinner time.

I had taken the T (subway) to the appointment, but that wasn’t going to work to get home, since my water had broken… so I called Mike to have him come pick me up in the car. Good thing he got that driver’s license in December! I told him not to bother bringing the bags we had packed, because we’d have time to do that once we got home and I wanted him to get there as quickly as possible. While I waited I eventually realized that not only was I having contractions, but they were coming exactly every 3 minutes.

Mike arrived about an hour later – the car had been frozen in a block of ice! After a warm winter with no storms, we had had a biggie on Valentine’s Day two days earlier that left icy slush and stranded cars everywhere. I hopped in the car and we headed towards home. But we got stuck in traffic after just a few blocks. By then my contractions were quite painful and only 2 minutes apart. The hospital was on the way home, and as we approached it, we made the difficult decision to have Mike drop me off so I could get checked in while he went home to get our bags.

The hospital was busy and I had to wait what seemed like an eternity – actually it was an hour and a half – to get seen by a nurse and checked in. I tried to call Mike but couldn’t get through. Eventually he called and said “everything’s OK now, but there was a crisis with the car”. I asked him if he was OK, and he said yes, so then I asked him if the car was OK and he said “I think so, it’s running” and hung up. So I thought he had had an accident, but it when he got there he explained that he had gotten stuck in ice… again!

Once Mike arrived the doctor came and checked me and said I was “flying through labor” and ready for an epidural, which I got around 5pm. I was progressing so quickly that everyone was sure the baby would come that night. But progress stalled around 9pm, and to make a long story short, they started me on pitocin to help me along, but it still wasn’t until 5 am that I was ready to start pushing.

This is where Owen’s big head comes into the picture… I pushed and pushed and he hardly budged. Mike was a great coach and did his best to keep my spirits up and my fever down, but it was frustrating knowing that nothing was happening. At 10 am they moved us into the OR for a vacuum extraction (they were also prepped for a C-section just in case). After 21 hours of labor, 5 hours of pushing, and over 600 contractions, with a little help from the vacuum, he came out in just two pushes! He had quite the conehead – Saturday Night Live proportions, I kid you not – but otherwise was beautiful and perfect. Mom and Dad were instantly smitten.

The baby formerly known as The Orglet

With great joy,

Megan and Michael
announce the birth of
Owen
February 17, 2007
10:31 AM
Length: 21 in Weight: 8lbs 5oz
Head circumference: 99th percentile
We can't wait for you to meet him!