Well, here we are. After 9 long months, our beautiful baby girl is here. Aurelia was born on Nov 17th at 2.00pm at Cedars-Sinai hospital. She weighted in at 7 pounds 11 ounces, which is quite healthy. Both she and Diana are doing well now.
She came home on Saturday (a week ago) and we're just about finding our routine. Of course, we couldn't have made it without everyone's help. So big thanks to all our friends and family who've gone above and beyond the call to help us out.
While I don't want to bore anyone with too much blathering about how totally awesome our girl is, I do want to share some of the more unusual/interesting aspects of parenthood that we've found in the past week. (This will likely take more than one posting cuz there are a thousand new things that I like that I never cared about before.)
First, the protective instinct. I can't tell you how strong it is and how immediately it sets in. When Diana and I were driving home from the hospital, we couldn't believe how horrible everyone was driving. I don't think it was any worse than the normal LA stuff, but man... with Aurelia in the back seat, I couldn't stop worrying about all the nutso driving. In fact, on one car trip, Diana and I confessed to each other that we really understood the desire for a Hummer. I hate how those things pollute and waste gas, but I would gladly have traded our car for a tank which would be impervious to silly driving. It made me think of Rick's explanation for buying his Yukon - he just wanted the biggest and highest car on the road to protect his boy Sam. Now, I comment on almost every SUV driving down the road... wondering how much room there is inside after installing a car seat, and how safe it might actually be. All of this made Diana and I laugh really hard.. not in a judgemental way, but just because it is such a radically different way of thinking about everything.
Second, thank god for all the people who've invented things that work with only one hand. And I mean everything... remote controls for the TV and DVD, velcro that can be attached with one hand (on diapers), sport top water bottles that can be opened with teeth, magazines that are easy to read one-handed. All of these things have become invaluable over the past week since one hand is almost always occupied by the baby.
Third, it's amazing how a "day" doesn't have much meaning anymore. Aurelia breastfeeds every few hours. Which means that Diana and I are up every few hours. When sleep comes in 2-3 hour increments, the distinction between "day" and "night" is pretty meaningless. This rapidly leads to an inability to tell what day it actually is. Basically, a day devolves from a 24 hour period to a random collection of poop/feed/sleep cycles (each of which lasts 3-4 hours). I am deeply thankful and grateful that Aurelia sleeps very well... last night we got 4 hours at a stretch. While this may sound like nothing, let me assure you, 4 hours of relatively undisturbed sleep is like godsent. This is just another one of those things that has completely changed for us in the past week.
Of course, we wouldn't trade any of this for our girl. She is rock-star cool and it's already been unbelievably fun to have her around - even when she's crying out of control. Anyways... time to get ready for the next feeding.