Sylvia Rose: Unofficial announcement & progress report

I guess it was predictable that I would have failed to blog sooner or even email out pictures. It seemed like word & photos were making it around, though, so I figured it was probably OK, and I figure people will forgive me (which I appreciate)...

But onto the important stuff!!

Sylvia Rose was born at 10:06PM on July 27, 2009.

She didn't cry at all when she was first born, so the hospital people kept her on a heating table while they poked at her. She still wouldn't cry, but she was looking around and moving and making faces and otherwise doing so well that they gave up and let us hold her for a while before they took her away to the nursery for the full set of tests and treatments and things.

They weighed and measured her in the nursery, and she was 19 inches, 7 pounds 3 ounces, and totally perfect. She was checked out by a doctor from her pediatrician's office when she was about 12 hours old, and he said that she was "officially perfect". So there you have it: One out of one doctors agree, Sylvia Rose is officially perfect!


She only went down to about 6 pounds, 15 ounces while we were at the hospital. While we were there, many of the hospital staff commented on how good she was. She didn't give the nurses who had to check her out a hard time, and she was generally very sweet and calm.

We spent 2 nights at the hospital and came home on Wednesday. At the hospital, we weren't allowed to dress her in anything other than the hospital clothes, so we were super excited to get to dress her in her going-home outfit. We weren't sure whether she would fit in "newborn" clothes or "0-3" clothes, so we brought both. We dressed her in a newborn outfit and it was comically over-sized.


She made the transition home like a champ and still has an incredibly sweet disposition. She still doesn't cry very much, which may change when she starts spending more time awake. We made our first migration to her pediatrician's office this morning, and he said she was doing great (which I assume is meant as an additional qualification on top of already being "perfect" and not a down-grade). He says that she is not jaundiced and that we do not have to worry about it anymore because if she has not gotten jaundiced by day 4 then she won't. She also has already started rebounding and gaining weight back from the initial drop, which is ahead of schedule. So, she's doing great! We're tired and still in a certain amount of disbelief -- reality will probably settle in sometime in the next 18 years or so, right? -- but we're also totally delighted!

Here are a ton of pictures:
I think I'll be posting pictures and completely unbiased reports of how adorable and generally awesome she is again soon and often!

Full Term and Still Kickin'

...but before that, our families joined forces to throw the little Sprogster another excellent party:

She got a bunch of adorable, fun, and useful stuff!









She's one lucky fetus! And she's doing just fine. She's made it all the way to full term without any hiccups (except the literal ones, which she seems to get a lot), and her due date is coming up in just 2 short weeks. We continue to make efforts to prepare for her arrival, including shopping, cleaning, organizing, and plenty of relaxing! We've also both been crocheting blankets for the little one:



We've also been keeping busy with other things while we wait for the little one to decide when to make her appearance. We submitted a paper for publication, and then worked hard to edit and re-submit it after some very positive feedback. We've also been BabySitters Extraordinaire, watching Kurt for long stretches of time while his parents moved apartments, and actually double-babysitting for a few hours for Kurt & Elise. Man are those kids cute!











And they sure seem to like Max!





So that's us! And here's an obligatory picture of me & Sprog at ~8.5 months pregnant:



P.S. I got a haircut!

the Alien Inside

Well, the Sprogster keeps on growing and growing, as do I:

She's not even born yet, but she already has friends...
  

...and so much stuff!
  

She's even had her first party...

...thrown for her by the excellent Niehaus family...

...and she did very well for herself!

 

 

We're only about 2 months away from her expected due date, and I've become basically useless for much more than gestating and watching television.  Everything's going well, though.  At her last ultrasound everything looked good and she's continuing to grow at a good rate, so we probably won't have any more ultrasounds.  It's a shame, too, because she is so active these days, it'd be neat to get to feel her moving around and see what she was actually doing at the same time.  

She really does make her presence known these days.  She's as fidgety as her parents, always stretching or rolling around from side-to-side.  It's usually just little kicks or punches, but sometimes it seems like she's trying to burst out Alien-style.  Check this out:

  

(Anything but the flat rise-and-fall of me breathing is all her.)

She's unpredictable, but the two things that usually seem to persuade her to move are caffeine and when Max asks her to... it seems that she's already a daddy's girl.

Wow

That's all.... just... wow.