Three posts in a row? Wow – I must be catching up on my e-mail backlog a bit! (Don't worry, the baby is right here, sleeping on my chest helping me type the entries. )
A friend passed this along. I know we're going to get all kinds of tips and advice in the coming days but this seems to make sense on first glance.
Cool…congrats to you and Shea. Good lungs ehh…sounds like you two
need a copy of the happiest baby on the block DVD…the 5 steps to
stop a crying baby. I believe the guy's name is Harvey Karp…our
doula and her collective swear by it. The premise is that a new born
baby is in a fourth trimester and as a result he suggest five tips
(the five Ss) that kind of recreate the prebirth experience…. That is why he
enoucrages the use of a snug swaddle, sshhhushing (white noise from a
radio will do but babies are used to a lot of noise being in the
womb), a gentle rocking he calls swinging, holding a baby on its side
and the last is using a soother.
When you watch the video, swaddling the baby (ensuring the hands are
bound) and turning them on their side seems to calm most of the
babies down. If not, incorporate the other 3 Ss.
And from the Amazon description…
When you bring your soft, dimpled newborn home from the hospital, you
may think your nursery is a peaceful sanctuary…. To him, it's a
disorienting world part Las Vegas casino, part dark closet! Karp
recommends a series of five steps designed to imitate the uterus. These
steps include swaddling, side/stomach position, shhh sounds, swinging
and sucking.
With the CLA conference coming up (already on? What day is it again???), the New Librarians Interest Group is doing a survey of students and recent grads to explore why (or why not) they attend the annual conference.
I think this one is well-worth filling out as this is a pretty important topic and depending on the results, could lead to a resolution being introduced at the CLA conference to make the conference more accessible for students.
The grandparents bumped into somebody in the elevator at the hospital this weekend who mentioned that Pace also means “peace and harmony” in Italian (if you follow this link, click on the volume icon to hear it pronounced) as well as Middle English. We didn't know that but that's cool too.
As with the nickname “Peso”, I thought we might've ended up with another unexpected but fitting Mexican/Spanish connection since Italian and Spanish are such similar languages.
No such luck (although the Spanish meaning of Pace is very appropriate these days too! )
(Man, it's going to be hard to get away from calling him Oscar! Also, thanks to everyone for the e-mails, blog comments, Facebook posts and even the occasional phone call! It's going to take me a long time to catch up on the backlog (and I might never) but we do appreciate all of the kind words and wishes! Also, more photos will likely be forthcoming eventually too.)
Anyhew, we went out the same way we went in to this weekend's adventure – with some complications. This time, they were of the bureaucratic rather than the medical kind but in the end, we were able to get out of the hospital yesterday around 6pm (instead of late morning/early afternoon as we'd hoped.)
Now, I will admit that I have been known to exaggerate for the purposes of the tale on this blog. But I swear on a copy of “The Origin of the Species” that when I asked Pace what he thought of his new house, this was his exact reaction:
He has also discovered that he has lungs and they are fun to use…all night long. (Pace and mother are sleeping right now – her from exhaustion, him to save us the energy to do it again tonight, I suspect.)
How can something that little make that loud of a noise? Anyone who picked “Heavy Metal Singer” as future career in our baby guess book is probably on the right track.
Just whipped home to pick up a few things, fill up the car, charge the cell phone (we have Shea's mom's since that's one piece of techno-geekery that hasn't engulfed me yet) and so on.
It's only been a couple days but I've been trying to come up with an analogy for what parenthood is like so far.
Is it like work where the baby is the boss whom you're responsible to, trying to keep them happy while they have certain expectations of you based on the job description of “parent”?
Or is it like a holiday with lots of fun times, photo-taking, joy and wonder (and maybe the occasional vomiting due to over-indulgence)?
Or is it like University with all-nighters (case in point), constant learning of new facts and skills, and the realization that this is going to be more expensive than you expected!
Or is it 4am and I'm rambling madly as the lack of sleep begins to affect my brain (no comments from the peanut gallery on that one, please!)
My dad was testing out the baby's name at lunch today and inadvertently came up with a nice nickname for the new guy (although it's still tough for all of us to stop calling him “Oscar”.)
I'd being using “Pacer” as the somewhat obvious derivative “Pacey” doesn't do it for me. But dad was playing around “Pace Owen Hammond…Pace Owen…Pace O.” and it hit me “Pace O.” pronounced like “Peso”!
Shea and I have an affinity for Mexico for some reason – we've visited three times and even got married there so this is perfect in that it gives a nickname that will have a personal connection for us, just as the girl's name we had picked would've. (We're not telling in case we have to ue it someday but I've subtly mentioned it on this blog – so if you want to read a year's worth of entries, you might find it!) “Peso” sums up our baby perfectly – something a bit smaller than the typical Canadian equivalent but full of value anyhow.
Okay, back to the hospital (are hospitals missing the boat by not having Internet access available in this day and age? We've had people come by to offer us phone, television, photos. But no WiFi at the hospital. We made about five phone calls to relatives but will likely let most people we know hear about the baby via e-mail, blogs and Facebook posts.)
Okay, gotta go. Li'l Peso will think I've abandoned him!
…and his name is “Pace Owen Hammond” (Pace being the Middle English word for “Peace” and Owen just being a name we liked.)
Pace was born on May 19, 2007 at 12:33am at the Regina General Hospital. He weighed 6lbs 6ozs and was 18 1/2 inches long. The Apgar tests of his reflexes, awareness, etc. at one minute and five minutes after his birth saw him scoring 9/10 both times – Pace's first A+'s!
We did end up having to have a c-section at the end of a long day of labour as baby ended up being in the breech position, having decided to do one last somersault in the last couple weeks. Both mother and baby are doing extremely well and we should be home from the hospital Monday or Tuesday if everything goes as planned.
The timing was perfect – we'd come into Regina from Weyburn for our second last pre-natal class and four hours after class ended, we were at the hospital. Talk about inspiration!
We were sent home for a few hours and returned the next day at noon having had a leisurely morning at home, taking a few last “belly” pictures, doing some last minute house-cleaning (the baby was full-term but came about three weeks before the official due date so we're feeling like we're not ready – although I guess you probably never are truly ready for a baby.)
Anyhow, as I said earlier, both mother and baby are doing well (and dad's not doing too bad himself although he realises sleep is now something that will be a distant memory.) Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and wishes over the past nine months – more photos and fun to follow in the weeks, months (and years!) to come. Here's a personal favourite shot – Pace seems to be saying “Please tell me this isn't my twin!”
LibrarianActivist has highlighted acouplesites in the past that offer free e-book downloads but this page has a comprehensive list of all the options online for getting free e-books and tree-books.
(I
love that the title of the post where I saw it on MetaFilter is “The
Best Place To Get Free Books” and the first comment is “…would be
libraries.”)
