More milestones

While I'm sure that I am jinxing myself just by writing this post, we had a couple of good moments yesterday that hopefully are milestones of progress for us. First off, we took Sonia in to DayOne to weigh her (since we needed to buy changing table "chuckies" and diapers at the Long's next door anyway, we decided to check on her weight while we were out). She is up to 7 lbs, 12 oz, so continuing to make good progress. We are anxious for her to get to 8 lbs since this is the minimum weight for the Baby Bjorn, and we have big visions that we would be more mobile with her if it were just a bit easier. Of course, this ignores the fact that even in Palo Alto it is cold out this time of year. My advice: don't have children in the winter unless you want to be cooped up in your apartment / house all day.

More significantly, after leaving DayOne we actually went out to dinner like normal people. Sonia was a champ and slept through the whole thing. It wasn't exactly fine dining (burgers at 5:30pm), but nevertheless it was a meal outside of our house during which we had actual adult conversation. Everyone has been telling us to go out to dinner now before she is mobile and has a mind of her own, so we'll be trying to take more advantage of that now that we have proven it's possible.

An even bigger milestone was that we went ahead and decided to have Sonia start sleeping in her own room. Up until now, she has been sleeping in a bassinet in our room, while her room remained this pristine, untouched zone. Yesterday, I read one of the many, many baby books we own and it made the point that barring a reason not to you should probably just start out the way you want things to be in the end. Since everytime Sonia needed to be fed / changed at night, one of us was picking her up out of the bassinet and leaving the room (so the other could keep sleeping), it was actually creating more work for us to have her in the room and I suspected was more disruptive for her since she was getting moved around the house so much at night. Plus, not once did we succeed in getting her to stop crying just by patting her or talking to her while she was in the bassinet, so it wasn't like we wouldn't be getting out of bed once we heard her regardless. So, we decided to have her start sleeping in her crib and we would set up the monitor so we could hear her in our room. Things started a bit rocky in that she decided she had no interest in going to sleep when we wanted her to (nothing to do with the change of scenery, since we tried going back to our room at this point). After 3+ hours of fussing (during which Sameer conveniently managed to schedule a teleconference with folks in India), she finally went down in her crib. Miraculously, she slept quietly for close to 3 hours, then went back down after the next feeding and slept close to 3 hours again. We had an actual normal feeding schedule (2am, 5am, 8am) like you read about in all of these books. I have no idea if it had to do with her being in her own room or not, but needless to say we were psyched. You know you're really tired when the fact that you got to sleep for 2 hours in a row is a big deal.

Stay tuned for my post tomorrow that says all bets are off and she is up all night again... :-)

Greetings from baby-land

It's amazing how quickly Sonia has taken over our lives, and we've become the kind of people who talk about nothing besides our child. In our defense, we haven't really managed to figure out how to take care of her and do anything else (hence, the lack of regular blog posts), so it's not like we have much else to report on. While this is an idiotic thing to say, I'm constantly struck by just how permanent this change is. Logically you've known this all along, but at least a handful of times a day it hits you again that this is a new person who will be in your life forever. Which continues to still be amazing and great, except for maybe at 3 am where it's 99% great and 1% unimaginable. :-)

Sonia is doing well, getting bigger and starting to have a mind of her own. As of yesterday at DayOne, she weighed in at a whopping 7 lbs, 8 oz, fully 1 lb, 3 oz above her birth weight. She's starting to try and hold her head up, which no doubt is just foreshadowing for when she is able to squirm around with more force and it won't be quite so easy to just carry her around like a football. Her eating situation continues to suffer from supply and demand problems -- too much demand, too little supply, so she's on about 70% breastmilk and the rest formula supplements. We're working on phasing out the formula, but she's a little piggy so that is proving harder than anticipated. Sonia has demonstrated that she is happy to eat either, and also happy to spit up both with a special talent for missing the burp cloth and instead just depositing the spit up directly down her own shirt or ours.

Last weekend Sonia got to meet Sudhir and Julie & Jason who were up visiting from Los Angeles. They hung out at our place and watched the Ohio State / Michigan game and posed for the requisite photos with the baby. I love this picture of Jason and Julie because when I asked Jason if we should retake the photo because he looked mildly terrified posing with the baby, he just said something to the effect of "no, that seems about right."

Thanksgiving at our place was low key, which was just what the doctor ordered. In a fit of intelligence, I ordered a pre-cooked meal from Whole Foods, which included turkey and all of the fixings. In an even smarter move, we convinced Sudhir to join us, so he took over the task of reheating all of the food in the containers provided by WF. While this was no doubt beneath his Cordon Bleu-trained skills, we were pretty impressed to have dinner magically appear on the table with virtually no clean-up required. Genius. One guess where Christmas dinner will be coming from in a month or so. As you can see from this photo, even Sonia understood that after Thanksgiving dinner the right thing to do is take a nap.

We did have a bit of excitement on Thanksgiving, which we'll just refer to as the "Zantac incident of 2006." Earlier in the week, Sonia had been diagnosed with acid reflux (did I mention we were having lots of feeding issues? yet another complication...), and the doctor prescribed the baby version of Zantac. To give it to the baby, you dissolve it in 5 ml of water, and then using a little syringe give her 1.5 ml to swallow before she feeds. Thanksgiving morning, Sameer was trying to be nice and fed the baby while I slept. Unfortunately, apparently he wasn't super clear on the dosage for the Zantac, because while he remembered the part about dissolving the tablet in 5 ml of water, he forgot the part about only giving her 1.5 ml of the solution. So, needless to say, Sonia's first meal of the day involved ingesting all 5 ml of the solution, or over 3 times the prescribed amount of Zantac. Not good. When we figured this out later in the morning, we of course called the pediatric hotline from the hospital (a number that will soon be on our speed dial at this rate). The good news is that there was no risk for the baby of any ill effects, but the bad news was that the result was that she was very constipated. I'll spare you the details, but we spent most of Thanksgiving in anticipation of one heck of a dirty diaper (even Sudhir witnessed the countdown to this event). Finally 14 hours after the Zantac incident little Miss Sonia had her biggest blowout yet...I don't think Sameer has ever been so happy to change a diaper. :-)

Since Thanksgiving, we've just been hanging out at home and enjoying our leftovers. We finally got up the nerve to give Sonia her first real bath earlier today, which she actually seemed to enjoy at times. We also tried out her playmat, and she discovered the other baby in the mirror whom she likes to stare at. I understand it's not until over a year of age that they figure out that the baby in the mirror is actually themselves, so this should make for hours of entertainment until then. Finally, Reena and Joel dropped by since they were in town from Seattle, so Sonia got to demonstrate her good visitor behavior by sleeping like an angel while they were here, and then crying bloody murder shortly after they left. I guess she likes visitors, so feel free to come see us if you can!

10 days down, a lifetime to go

First off, an apology...I've been meaning to post an update for several days, but haven't been able to carve out the time to do so. Which is actually pretty indicative of how things are going...great, busy, exhausting, completely absorbing. I remember that Kristen said after having a baby that "social graces are the first thing to go" and boy was she right. The number of emails and voicemails I have not responded to yet is staggering, so here's hoping a blog post at least buys me some time on that front. :-)

Since bringing Sonia home just over a week ago, things have certainly been a bit of a rollercoaster. She started out small, and then lost enough weight that we were starting to get worried (not good to be on the "wrong side" of 6 lbs per the pediatrician). To make a long story short, after 3 visits to the pediatrician since we got home, plus an additional visit to the lactation consultant, Sonia is putting on weight like mad (6 lbs, 9 oz as of two days ago -- 4 oz above her birth weight and 12 oz above her lowest weight). That's the good (actually, great) news. The bad news it this is only happening because we are breast feeding and pumping and supplementing with formula when all of that is not enough. If I have to do the dishes one more time to wash the bottles and the breast pump parts I may break down and hire a live-in maid. According to the pediatrician, Sonia is "not a good feeder" (again, a mystery how a child of ours could end up this way) and as a result, a) doesn't get enough milk when she does breastfeed, and b) doesn't send sufficient signals to mom to produce more milk. Apparently the solution to this is that she needs to put on more weight (how ironic), so that her fatter cheeks will allow her to eat better and then we can (hopefully) wean her off of all of the bottles and extra pumping. In the meantime, she is getting in a lot of bonus bonding time with Sameer who is now able to participate in the whole feeding process. Lucky him. :-)

Despite a bit of stress on the weight front, it has been fantastic to have her here with us. And Sonia has received lots of visitors since coming home. Grandma and Grandpa came down from Oregon to meet her, and she got a crash course from Grandpa on how to watch football on television. Of course, she was a natural. They went home on Monday, but we will back at Christmas along with Uncle Kevin. Dada and Bebe have already made the pilgrimage from Tracy multiple times to visit, the only problem being that only one person can hold the baby at a time (this leads to disputes about who gets to hold her first). And Maya has already proven she is up to the task of being a big sister, carefully tending to Sonia while she took a nap. Needless to say, Sonia is not hurting for attention.

Sameer and I are hanging in there, figuring out the art of power napping and how to trade off on who is getting some rest. Sonia continues to think that nighttime is a great time to be awake, which leads to quite a few debates at 3 am as to whose turn it is to hang out with her while she refuses to sleep. If Sonia were learning to talk right now, based on what she hears the most I have a feeling her first words would be, "Baby, you're killing me...why aren't you tired?"

A few other moments / observations...

• Sonia's umbilical cord stump fell off a couple of days back, which means that she can officially be bathed for real (instead of a sponge bath). Of course, this would require Sameer or me to get up the nerve to do this. I suspect she may be a dirty child.
• The dresser finally arrived today. After 4 months of complaining it was late, I'm not sure what we'll talk about now that it is finally here.
• We have pretty much given up on the swaddling. This child is like Houdini...no matter how much you wrap her, she is going to get those hands out. And in the meantime she grunts like a wrestler as she contorts to make it happen. I finally got tired of trying to sleep through all of her noises, so now I just wrap her with her hands out. Yes, I know, this defeats the purpose of swaddling.
• Sonia has earned her first nickname (from Sameer)..."Old Faithful" as in she pees on you like a geyser nearly everytime you go to change her.
• While I knew to expect that diapers would smell, someone really should have warned us about the pungent effects of having spit-up everywhere. I'm not sure our clothes will ever be fully rid of that odor.

Here is a link to more pictures of Sonia's first week at home with us...we'll try to post updates more often!

She's Finally Here!!

Sonia Grace Dholakia -- November 7, 2006

After much anticipation, Sonia Grace Dholakia finally made her appearance earlier this week! The process kicked off when my water broke at 2:20 pm on Monday, and Sonia was born at 2:06 am on Tuesday. Labor had some interesting moments, but in general was uneventful. I have a new appreciation for the science of pain medication (I had to wait 30 minutes after I requested the epidural because the anesthesiologist was tied up, during which I went from 4 cm to 8 cm dilation and Sameer experienced some pain of his own as I squeezed the circulation out of his hand). Normally I manage to get in a few digs at Sameer on this blog, but not this time...there is nothing like having a child to make you appreciate that you have married the right person. :-)

Sonia continued her streak as the "lucky baby" by securing 11/7 as her birthday...no doubt this bodes well for her future in Vegas. She weighed 6 lbs, 5 oz and was 18 3/4" at birth -- a bit smaller than expected, but perfectly healthy. She enjoyed two days at the hospital, during which she passed all of her tests with flying colors, but made no friends with our recovery room roommate as she proved her lung power around 2 am. Perhaps not surprisingly, they managed to find us a private room pretty quickly after that...

We left the hospital on Thursday morning and everyone is settling into life at home. Sonia's focus these days is on attempting to put on some weight (certainly the only person in our household with that goal) and trying to figure out the difference between daytime and nighttime (sadly, she has this exactly backwards). Sameer and I are constantly reflecting that it is amazing that something so small could so quickly turn our lives completely upside down.

I'll write more later when I manage to string together a couple hours of sleep, but just wanted to share the news and some photos of the new love of our lives. Click here to see a bunch of pictures...more updates to come!

Still no baby

Yesterday we had another doctor's appointment, and the short version of the update was that there was no update. Literally no progress. I think he said I had maybe gone from 40% effaced to 50% effaced, but I got the impression he was just making that up so that we would feel better. No further dilation, no nothing. I pointed out to him that we only have one more appointment scheduled (next Friday, one day after the due date) and he said that was fine because if we haven't had the baby by then we would switch gears a bit. Apparently, they then give the baby a non-stress test (?) where they monitor everything to make sure the placenta is holding up, etc. Depending on the results of that, then you either keep waiting or start to talk about inducing. How we have gone from "I bet she comes early" to "next week we'll talk about inducing" remains a mystery. As DR aptly put it, we are now in the "Groundhog Day" phase of pregnancy where every morning you wake up and it's the same day all over again...just more waiting.

Not much else going on here Chez Dholakia. We are enjoying watching the new television way too much, especially Sameer who points out that sports look the best in HD, so we have watched more ESPN in the last week than in the previous 12 months combined. I'm beginning to realize that perhaps that was the point of purchasing the TV all along...

The saga ends...no, not that saga

While not exactly the birth of our child, one much-anticipated milestone has finally arrived...our new plasma television is finally mounted on the wall. After many trials and tribulations, culminating in some very loud drilling into metal around 7pm that no doubt did not make us any friends with the neighbors, the TV is up on the wall. Sameer quickly dealt with all of the accumulated cords and boxes that had been taking up our living room, and we are now back to living like normal people. Or, as normal as you can call it when a gigantic 50" television dominates your living room.

And, yes, Sameer has vowed to not take on any additional home-improvement projects until after the baby arrives.