Amy and Peter adventure: day 1

Peter always has his thumb tucked into his other fingers like this.

Mr. Happy, about to laugh?

It should surprise no one that my first order of business, on my first morning of erstwhile single-parenthood, was to call Peter's doctor.

Yes, yes, I am a bit of a hypochondriac. But, he did have a fairly high fever for a newborn (100.1), and parts of him were...missing. I'd be more specific, but that level of specificity may raise red flags. Let's just say it wasn't easy trying to research his symptoms on the Internet.

I'll save the suspense lest you think Peter really was ill. He wasn't. But, today's visit with the doctor brought these factoids/events:

(1) Peter now weighs 13 pounds, 11 ounces. His furious rate of growth has slowed, for now, which means we might be able to eek a few more weeks out of his bassinet. (This is good news as we've not really done anything toward showing him that his new crib is for sleeping and not only for playing.
(2) Peter looks like Kevin in the brow region.
(3) Peter is a "big boy" and a "strong boy" and "is very vocal" and is "as happy as can be."
(4) Peter pulled out several strands of Dr. Soriano's hair.
(5) Peter also peed all over Dr. Soriano, breaking her 6-year pee-free streak. I'm ashamed to admit I'm a little proud of the booger.

Clearly nothing could top that, and we didn't even try. I took Peter past all of his favorite stops on Castro Street, including the fish store. He really likes to look at the fish and the lights in the tanks. I also took Peter to the park by the library for a little photo shoot, where he might have laughed for the first time. I have to wait for Kevin's confirmation to be sure, but I really think it was a laugh.

Peter's development is so funny for me to watch, because it's so - for lack of a better word - spurty. He'll be hard at work on finding his fingers, only to be distracted by a new talent, like talking. Or, he'll go a day or two without saying anything, mostly because his hands are jammed into his mouth. I guess it's pretty normal for babies, and who can blame them? They have the whole world to explore, and their whole lives ahead of them. I just hope I can be patient enough to let Peter find it all - his fingers, his words, his homework, his college major - on his own.

His new "Kevin's away so the baby will play" trick is to be a wee bit more difficult to put down. (Note: Kevin hates it when I say "put the baby down" in reference to putting the baby to bed; it makes him think of rabid dogs. He also doesn't really like it when I call Peter "the baby," which I kind of do a lot.) But, n=2 does not a good sample make, so I will reserve judgement until I have additional observations.

Hello, Peter Joseph Davis-Ross

Born: May 7, 5:53 a.m., at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. Weight: 8 pounds, 10 ounces Length: 21 inches.

Dr. Shin, upon delivering Peter: "How did he fit in you?"

So, I'll preface this by saying that I really, truly did have every intention of having a natural, intervention-free pregnancy.

Until labor started.

And really, labor wasn't so bad, except for the fact that after 12 hours of it, I was only 30 percent of the way dilated and experiencing minute-long contractions with only a minute of rest. And it was 7 p.m., which meant I had a long night ahead of me.

So, yes, I got the epidural.

But putting that aside, delivery was pretty easy, until the end. I started having contractions Sunday morning, right when I woke up, and they progressed pretty rapidly throughout the day. By 2 p.m., I was convinced I was well into the second stage of labor, a.k.a. the "go to the hospital" stage.

I was not. We went in and were sent home.

By 7 p.m., I again was convinced that it had to be time to go to the hospital, since the contractions were so frequent.

It wasn't time, really. But, we went and stayed this time, mostly because I couldn't bear the thought of 40 more minutes in the car.

When we got to the hospital, we were glad to see that Dr. Shin was still the OB on-call. She was pretty excited to see us too, as she'd asked us on Friday to have the baby this weekend while she'd be in the hospital. I should have told her that we'd be there Sunday, since I've known for a while that we'd have the baby on May 6. (As it was, we missed it by about 6 hours. Which I think is pretty remarkable.)

So, we got the epidural, we got settled, and we started sleeping - which was nice. Everything was going well, until the last half-hour of delivery. I had just started the "push" stage when it became clear that the baby was having some problems - he'd had a bowel movement and his heart rate was dipping very low. So, I got some oxygen (which, unexpectedly, felt like it was suffocating), and we got to some serious pushing. After a few attempts, the nurse nicely told me that it looked like we had about 1.5 to 2 hours of pushing ahead of me.

Then, Dr. Shin came in, to let me know that I had about 15 minutes to push the baby out, or they'd have to suction him out, because he was having that much trouble.

So, 15 minutes later, out pops Peter.

Unfortunately, Peter had done just what everyone was afraid of - he'd inhaled some of the bowel movement, which is just as terrible as it sounds. The result was that he wasn't able to get his first few good breaths, and even after intervention from the Neonatal Intensive Care team in the delivery room, he still wasn't able to breathe properly.

Peter was taken away, to the NICU, to have some emergency interventions performed. It was really terrible for all of us: Kevin, who went with Peter to the NICU; me, who had to stay behind without holding the baby; and the delivery nurse and Dr. Shin, for whom everything had been going so well.

The first half of Monday was pretty tough. We spent it in one of the shared recovery rooms - with a mother and her baby. Also, we had no idea how Peter was doing. Every update we received was more and more positive, but no one suggested that he was fine. By noon, he'd been intubated (which he pulled out), he'd had a spinal tap; he'd been put on an IV and had antibiotics pumped into him; and he'd had an artery tapped through his umbilical cord for easy blood samples.

I'd spent the morning in bed, and Kevin went to visit Peter, bringing me this picture. It was tough to see.
I'd also tried to get rest, but spent the morning being interviewed by everyone, from a lactation consultant (sorry, not going to happen) to a social worker.

Luckily, we were able to move to a private room, and we were able to see Peter later that day.

And, even MORE luckily, Peter continued to make incredible progress. By late afternoon, we were told that we could hold and even try to feed Peter. By Tuesday, Peter was off of his IV and I was his primary food source. (Which meant that I was actually excited to get midnight phone calls telling me to come feed my baby. We'll see how long that lasts.) Also by Tuesday, we were told that Peter would more than likely come home with us Wednesday.

One of the few times Peter didn't cry when Kevin held him.

Bonding with Peter

Going home

So that's where we are now: home. Our little NICU baby is healthy and happy, and sleeping with Dad right now.

A ton of photos from the first few day's of Peter's life are here:

Hello, Peter

56 photos

And, a few funny videos. (Really, not so funny - they're mostly for Grandparents.)