9.24.11

Thanks so much for your words of congratulations.

What a whirlwind, eh?  I want to sit back and take the time to write his birth story but "taking the time" seems a long ways off when tonight is the first chance I even had to OPEN my laptop!  Basically, though, I had been having cramps all week, I really thought they were BH or "practice" contractions, E finally made me call the advice nurse on Sunday night, they told me to come in just to be safe and get checked on the monitors, turns out I was dilated to 4 cm, rapidly progressing, having regular strong contractions every two minutes...They gave me the option to try for a vaginal delivery, but everyone agreed for my sanity that a c-section was still the best choice...but I had dinner in my belly that needed to digest...so we waited as long as we could, which was about until 4:40 am when I was checked, at a 6, and my water broke...so they started prepping me for surgery.

Babyboy was born at 6:12 am, and wailed his way into the world - shortly followed by mama and papa sobbing their eyes out...a truly incredible moment - I still can't quite digest it all.

After three and a half days in the hosptial, rooming in with babyboy the entire time, we are home from the hospital. Baby passed the hospital "poop test" (and how!), my milk has come in, he's a hearty eater, I'm still working on the whole, "He'll still be alive if I go to sleep and wake up in a bit," piece of things.  I don't ever want to close my eyes, I don't want to miss a moment with this little guy.  (Cue Aerosmith?) We're battling a little bit of jaundice (super common with a preterm baby) and in the grand scheme of things, I feel so fortunate that at least so far, that's been our biggest medical concern.

I fluctuate wildly between being over the moon ecstatic and so happy, so so so so so happy...and then being overwrought with sadness that Otis isn't here with us, that I didn't get to look into Otis's eyes, that I didn't get even a fraction of this amount of time with him...that this guy will never know his big brother except through our words and stories...Maybe fluctuate isn't even the right word - I feel actually like I am holding both emotions most of the time - this goes down as yet another lesson in the "joy and grief are not opposites, they can coexist at the exact same time in equal strengths" lesson.

Finally - his name - we decided upon Owen Kekoa N___.  Kekoa is hawaiian, it means "the courageous one."  It honors his hawaiian "roots" and our healing time in Maui in January.  (The joke has been "he'd have to be a courageous one to join this family...")  The name Owen came to us as a total surprise.  Our two dogs are both O names, and of course Otis - and the party line throughout this pregnancy was always "We are retiring the O tradition with Otis." I didn't want to be "that family" with names all in the same letter.  Then we met this guy, and I fell even more in love, and all of a sudden it felt horribly WRONG for him not to be one of my Os.  And I've always loved loved loved the name Owen but E was always averse to it when I had suggested it...and then out of the blue on Wednesday, he asked me how I felt about the name Owen.  We're still settling into it, I think it still feels strange to call him a name, to really acknowledge that he's here with us, he came home with us, he's here, he's here, he's here.