A Week and Growing

Yesterday Evan went to visit his doctor. He is growing pretty fast. In the last 5 days he's put on 15 oz - almost a pound. As a ratio of body weight it's as if I added 20 lbs in less than a week. If I eat as often as he feeds, I would. He came in at 50 percentile for weight - close to average. Bu we are used to Vivian who barely registers on the chart. Here are some pictures of piggy from this morning.

Evan Pictures

Three days at the hospital and the first couple of days home.

Cover Picture

This was the cover picture for the first three weeks of Evan's life.

Daddy Again

Recap: Jo's water broke at 12:40 am. Twelve hour later she is in the OR for a C-section because the doctor thinks that the cord is wrapped around the baby.

They prep Jo and re-do her epidural while I sit outside the OR in a gown, booties, mask and cap. Carol is waiting in the waiting area. 30 minutes have gone by since she saw Jo being wheeled away. I know she is worried.

Dr. Carter comes out to call me in and asks me to bring my chair with me. I look at her questioningly. "Dads pass out and if you are sitting you don't fall so far". "Oh" is all I can say. "And is your camera ready? I'll be quick in there" she adds. I unzip the gown, pull the iPhone out of my pocket and stride into the OR with my chair. The anesthesiologist tells me to set my chair next to Jo's head. There is a large blue drape propped above Jo's chest that blocks the view of her abdomen from us. There are several people in blue surgical gowns milling around her on the other side of the "wall". Jo sees the iPhone in my hand and smiles and says through her oxygen mask: "Expecting a call?"

The anesthesiologist looks up at the clock on the wall and says: "Starting 1:01pm." I hold Jo's hand and kiss her forehead. And then stand up to get a better look. It takes less than three minutes for Dr. Carter to neatly slice through Jo's abdomen and to start pulling the baby free. The process is neither pretty nor delicate.

A whitish blue alien looking thing covered with splatters of blood and tissue and a headful of dark hair emerges from Jo's abdomen. As more of it comes into view I see a rather large sized scrotum and say "It's a boy!". Then I remember that I am holding my iPhone. I took this picture less than 5 seconds later.

In the next picture Jo is grinning from ear to ear with mixture of joy, relief and anesthesia. As I turn my iPhone in the direction of Jo's face to take this photo, I realize the baby's feet have barely cleared Jo's abdomen. A miracle of modern medicine.

The neonatal team takes over the baby. I squeeze Jo's hand and turn my attention to the neonatal table. They work fast. Six blue gloved hands expertly handle the baby. They give him a couple of blasts of oxygen, suck goop out of his mouth, throat and stomach, check is heart beat, put a hat on his head, ink his feet and take impressions on a card, wipe him down and swaddle him up. They ask me - what's his name? I say "Evan. Evan Cole Chatterjee". I look back at the operating table and see the doctor and her people putting Jo back together and point my iPhone and click.

In a minute or so, they've got a somewhat clean and swaddled Evan. They carry him over to Jo. Mom and son are cheek to cheek for a few seconds. I look down and see the four most beautiful eyes looking at me. I am walking on clouds.

In a blur, I kiss Jo and head off to the nursery with Evan cradled in my arms. He seems relaxed yet very alert - eyes darting here and there. I first go to the waiting area. Carol and Nicolle see the baby and melt into a puddle. I say "Jo is fine. It's a boy. His name is Evan Cole." Nicolle melts into a very large puddle. The four of us go down to the nursery. I walk in and hand Evan to a nurse. She unswaddles him puts him on a scale. He's not happy. I take a photo. "7 pounds and 6 ounces". Then they measure him. "Twenty and a half inches".

We wait outside the nursery - peering at Evan through the glass - who is peering back at us. I hug Nicolle and Carol with tears in my eyes. Back at the OR they are done and they wheel Jo into the recovery area. I tell Jo that everything is fine with the baby. Jo looks terrific - I can't believe what she's just been through. But her body is uncontrollably shaking from a shiver reaction that she can't stop. She's covered with an inflated blanket and a large pipe is blowing warm air into the blanket to try to warm her up. A bit later they are done with Evan at the nursery. I take him back to the recovery room and lay him down on Jo's chest. She gives this smile that is so beautiful that time stops. And she stops shaking.

Nicolle, Carol, Jo and I relax and chat. Jo eats a few ice chips. Evan lays on Jo and looks quite content.

Jo takes a picture of Evan and me. Daddy all over again.

Labor of Love #2

My phone rang. Time: 12:40 am. Caller: JoEllen. Location: if Jo was using Foursquare I'd have known that she was in the bathroom. She said: "My water broke". Thus began the end of pregnancy #2. Twelve hours and twenty four minutes later it ended with my surprised but unoriginal exclamation: "It's a boy". Here's what happened in between.

Jo's friends' second pregnancies ended with short labors. Specially in the case of Laura who delivered her own baby in the passenger seat of her car on the way to the hospital. I think we expected the show to be over before breakfast. Turns out the baby had different intentions.

soon after checking in

The wait started off nicely enough with gentle contractions (oxymoron alert). But as the contractions grew in strength, the medical staff mumbled about "variable" and hooked Jo up to more and more stuff. Then they asked Jo to lay on her side to not "distress" the baby.

Once Jo shifted to her side, the contractions were very very painful. Unlike me, Jo has a high tolerance for pain. Earlier, when the nurse asked her to gauge her pain on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being the worst pain that she had experienced, Jo joked and asked what would rise to 10. At the peak of one contraction during this time, Jo banged her head on the bed frame and said "this is 10". If there was a good time for epidurals it is now. But we caught the staff during their shift change and a backed-up anesthesiologist and it took over an hour for the epidural to be administered. Not fun. After that, things calmed down as the pain subsided but soon enough murmurs of "variable" returned. Jo's dilation progressed more slowly than we had expected. We settled in for a long wait.

But the calm didn't last too long. Jo's blood pressure suddenly plunged. Colette, her nurse, sprang into action: Jo was given more drugs, an oxygen mask, and as if possible, hooked up to more stuff. We watched as her diastolic slowly inched back into the 40's. Sighs of relief. And already more climaxes than a John Woo movie.

Colette decided to circulate warm water through the uterus (in the absence of the amniotic fluid which had flowed down the sewers of Rosedale several hours ago). The results seemed encouraging at first - the next contraction didn't have accompanying decelerations. But then most of the following contractions did.

As in any situation, in the beginning we had to actively look at the data to size up the situation. In question was the fetal heart rate and it's inverse correlation with Jo's contractions. Up till now, the fetal heartbeat was an amplification of the actual heart beat of the baby sensed by a transducer on Jo's belly: thuck thuck thuck. It was replaced by a sensor embedded in the baby's scalp that measured electrical and muscle activity and translated them into audible electronic beeps. And it was easy enough to monitor the contractions though there were instruments for that too. We just looked at Jo's face. As time wore on and we were immersed in the data and its rhythms, we didn't have to look for it. We knew when Jo was contracting and sensed when the beeps got more widely spaced. Some times conversation would slow down and then stop and all eyes would scan the monitors as we willed the heart rate to climb back up again. And at other times, we'd know that a contraction had passed without a noticeable deceleration in the baby's heart rate. But I had that feeling you get when you sense that the data is trending in a direction you don't want it to. Colette did too and she called the new on-call OB/GYN. Dr. Carter walked in and introduced herself to us.

A quick exam revealed that Jo had dilated quite a bit, and a decision was made to try a few pushes. After a few pushes, it became obvious that the baby was getting distressed by the contractions and the pushes. Dr. Carter's diagnosis of the situation was that the baby had wrapped or somehow worked itself into a position where the contractions were pinching the umbilical cord. She said it was time for a section. In a few seconds they wheeled Jo away as fast as they could - careening around corners and slamming into walls. I was told to meet them in the "back". It was 12:32pm. Carol and I collected our stuff and left the labor room.

Little Faith

On a recommendation, last week I read Mitch Albom's true story: "have a little faith" (really - no caps).

In it, a rabbi asks the author, an escaped congregant, to deliver his eulogy. The author gets to know the rabbi of his childhood over the course of the next 8 years. He also meets an ex-con Christian minister who runs a church with huge hole in it's roof while selflessly helping the homeless and less fortunate. The author ends up finding faith. The stated reason for this faith is "the profound comfort of believing in something bigger than yourself".

Vivian - how will you decide what may be the most potent influence on your life. With a little faith in yourself it could be inconsequential.

Waiting for #2

The due date has come and gone. Jo verges between resigned anxiousness and downright moodiness. Vivian thinks it's all a joke and is content with kissing mommy's belly. I play soccer with my phone in my hand. Here is a picture of Jo in the gym at 40+ weeks. Jen thinks that it would be the best thing in the world if Jo went into labor at the gym. Jo's dedication to working out has prompted Jen to blog about her. It's titled "What were you doing when you were 40 weeks pregnant"?

Last week, Carol came up to Austin - ostensibly to take care of the new baby. With no baby in sight, we went to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. While I was settling up, Vivian cajoled Carol into taking her to the fountain and giving her a coin to make a wish. All Carol had was a quarter. When Jo asked Vivian what she had wished for, Vivian replied "I wish for our baby to come soon". An expensive wish. A worthwhile investment.

Viv Dandelionseed

Our own Johnny Appleseed has taken it upon herself to scatter dandelions all over the neighborhood. Here are some pictures from the back yard last week. She was dressed in her butterfly outfit and was on her way to jump on the trampoline.

Jo bought a new battery-powered mower and quickly mowed the lawn while Vivian was away at school so that she wouldn't be able to defend her fields of dandelions.

Quirks

Vivian has a few quirky habits that her parents consider marginally cute. But I do hope she drops them before she's a teenager.

When she's excited, her whole body gets rigid and she clutches her fists and she looks super dorky. It's worried me enough to where I hoped to have her re-enact it at her once-a-year meeting with her doctor for her 3rd birthday wellness check, but I forgot. Here's a picture.

Then there's what Nicolle call "Pete and Re-pete". Sometimes the record gets stuck mid-sentence and it seems like she forgets what the next word is, and then forgets where she was except for the current word which she starts repeating till someone falls over from boredom or old age. It goes like "I drew a picture of a purple purple purple purple purple purple.....".

But her strangest behavioral quirk is that she rubs her upper lip with her index finger when she's tired and / or anxious - till the upper lip is red and sore. Sometimes we put her to bed with a band-aid on her upper lip so she doesn't aggravate it. She hasn't done this for some time now. But she had a red lip when she woke up from her nap this afternoon. We got in the car to go somewhere and I saw it in the rear-view mirror and mentioned it to Jo. Vivian overheard us and said: "Mommy - my lip is red because I was screwing around with it". We'll need to chat with Ms. Mary about the kind of language she's picking up at school/church.

Art

With Vivian it's all hot or cold. You can't get her to play with a toy that you pick. Something may sit in front of her untouched for six months and suddenly she's got to have it beside her all the time.

Today that toy was the portable magnetic sketcher. On the way to dinner she told us that she had written the letter "J". On the way back, it was the letter "H". But between dinner and dessert (from EZ's to "the hazelnut place" - her name for Mandola's due to it being the source of the best hazelnut gelato), she drew something quietly. When I asked her what it was, she said "My kitty cat".

Not bad.

Almost There

Vivian has been in some sort of euphoric and ecstatic good humor for the last few days. Jo and I have eaten at our usual haunts (Amy's, Vivo, Amy's, North, Amy's, Musashino, Amy's). Jen has does what she can to make Jo pop the kid at the gym. The baby names are as ready as they will get. Jo's bag is packed. We are so ready for #2.

eating "olivers" at North

shoulder pressing 80 lbs on the barbell at 39 weeks prego

gummy bears with mexican vanilla and a turn at Amy's playscape

why she doesn't have any clothes on, Daddy? Critiquing art in the men's room at Vivo

School Stuff

A few beers with Guy and George after squash brought this otherwise latent though back to the forefront. Public or private school? Guy is heavily in the private camp. George is rabidly public. Jo and I haven't made up our minds. But when you read this many years from now, Vivian, you can can decide if we made the wrong or right decision.

First, does it matter? Obviously, not always. Lots of assholes went to fancy private schools and grew up to be bigger assholes. And many more happy and successful people schlepped their asses through public schools. So let's frame it like this: if you wanted your kid to get the best possible education, where would you send her?

Here are some data points:

1. Public school education isn't getting any better around here in Texas. Science, logic, and poor Jefferson will soon be bowdlerized into unrecognizable and useless goo. Guns, drugs, football, standardized idiocy testing and pledges of allegiances will continue to bloom.

2. States are running out of money. Public schools are being asked to do more with less, but they will probably end up doing even less with less.

3. Private school are foo foo. The kids are prissy, rich, spoilt, and, ouch - elitists.

4. Private religious schools are great if you favor that religion. Otherwise, they are brainwashing your kid with superstitious mumbo jumbo.

5. Private montessori schools raise kind caring sensitive children who would blossom if the world was montessori too.

And then there's lot of anecdotal evidence on both sides. Two friends whose kids moved from public to private schools seem to be doing better at the private schools. I informally compared curricula from another friend's son's private school to what my sister-in-law's students were doing at their public school, the difference was embarrassingly huge. And then there's an acquaintance whose kids' friends at their private school think he's his kids' chauffeur because he picks them up after school. And I think my own time at school was one of the three biggest influences in my life.

What's a dad to do?

Easter

Easter was a big holiday around our home this year. Vivian was full of anticipation. One night mid week, we took Vivian to Toy Joy and looked through tones of amazing things to find a few that Jo stuffed into Vivian's school eggs (no candy allowed). The next day they had an egg hunt at school. Vivian came back and opened her eggs with squeals of joy. And then she found an empty egg and said "The egg is empty! Jesus is alive" (they had been prepped at chapel). And again and again so many times after that with "The cave is empty. He is alive!" that I was beginning to feel as if someone had swapped my child for a look-alike evangelical preacher.

On Saturday morning, Jo and Vivian baked up a very pretty and tasty batch of beautifully iced cookies (Vivian ate more cookie dough than cookies). Vivian got to spend Saturday night with her cousins and go to the cousin's church for Easter services on Sunday and see a butterfly release. After jelly beans, butterflies are her favorite thing now.

And then she came back and we had an egg hunt in Robbe's front yard (while Robbe was off camping) with neighbor Ava and cousin Ava and the rest of her Texas cousins. And we stuffed ourselves with Grandma's fried chicken till I felt I could lay an egg myself.

The next day, Jo gave Vivian her Easter basket chock full of goodies like a purple glittery tiara and necklace set and chocolate bunnies - in purple confetti. I asked Vivian how she could eat her friend, the Easter bunny - and Vivian happily demonstrated by biting off the bunny's ears and then quickly stuffing the rest of the bunny into her mouth. She said "hoppity hoppity bunny - where are your ears?". Glad Simran wasn't around.

A Quiet Evening

Vivian is at her cousins. We went out for dinner (California Kitchen) and a movie (Runaways). I had forgotten how quiet it is without Vivian.

I love Vivian's infectious chattiness - it starts the moment she opens her bedroom door in the morning and continues till we kiss her goodnight and turn out the lights. Tonight she called me back four times after I had kissed her goodnight with "Daddy - I have to tell you something". If she's awake, she's talking or singing or humming. The other morning, she tried to bribe Jo with a necklace so that Vivian could play mommy and Jo would be the baby: "I'm gonna be the Mommy. And I'm gonna give you one of my necklaces if you cooperate. Are you cooperated?". And she tried to correct her cousin who has a hard time with two V's and calls Vivian "Divian". Vivian said: "It's Vivian - with a V. V for Vah Vah Vivian. Not Dah". I'd be worried if Vivian was quiet for more than a few minutes.

Back to our quiet dinner. This could be one of our last before Jo pops the baby. The last time we were in a similar position was three years and a few months ago. At that time I was staring down the unknown precipice of parenthood. Parenting is at once the most miraculous and the most banal. It is a unique experience for each of us, and it has or will happen to most of the six billion humans on this planet.

The last time around it changed my life. Fully and completely. Yes - I still play soccer and go on ski trips. But everything that happens in between is different. So Vivian - what is it like to be your Dad?

It's fulfilling. I don't believe in manifest destiny or that an omnipotent being of suspicious origin put me on this earth to do his work. Jo and I had a nice life before Vivian. But now it seems more purposeful.

It's interesting. Thankfully I'm not a big fan of order and repetition. Parenting is full of surprises.

It's rewarding. This is a simple reflection of humanity's (or my) need to be needed. There are very few things that come close to how good it feels when Vivian climbs up and throws her arms around my neck.

It's maturing. I believe I am a lot more patient and humble now than I was three years ago.

It's tiring. It's not what you do (and I don't - as I'm sure Jo will agree). It is a state of mind. And it's a one-way trip down that rabbit-hole.

In short, Vivian - you're a keeper. I wonder what your little sibling will be like.