April Showers Bring... a Statistical Anomaly

Full report to follow during the week. In the meantime, here's a teaser:

Rachel, our doula, was almost as pregnant as Karen. But she was a superhero for us, making the labor more bearable, more natural, and efficient (important if you don't want to huff and puff for a day and a half and experience a series of nervous breakdowns). Karen went from 2 to 9.5 cm dilated in 5 hours of controlled breathing, visualization, and many many body positions as suggested by our advocate. Seriously, we highly recommend having your first baby with a doula/midwife on hand... that is, unless you want all the medical interventions suggested by most modern obstetricians and hospital staff (who happily usher 40% of today's mom's to be into C-sections, 95% spinal administered pain management and an at least 85% pitocin inducements/augmentations)*. Achieving our aspirations during this birth was really satisfying, and improbable. Jasper's safe arrival was all we really wanted, but keeping it natural was the icing on the cake (and very possible if you surround yourself with the right people).
Splashdown! After 4 hours of pushing, Jasper Diego Guard popped out and landed on top of Karen. My wife went from utter exhaustion, through the sheer terror of the "ring of fire", and landed safely in euphoric bliss de amor - all in that final 30 seconds around Jasper's arrival. Karen is my new hero. I knew she could do this.
While Karen got fixed up and delivered the placenta, me and Jasper got to know each other. His expression here is a better representation of the moment than mine. The little guy was on high alert and ready to bond with his parents.


Skin-to-skin nuzzling for regulating baby body temp and stimulating the nursing instinct (and a good natural pain reliever for mom).



The nurses got Jasper away from us long enough to weigh him and put him through XYandZ other processes. I think he found the bureaucracy a bore... or maybe Jasper had just had a hard day at the office.

I sometimes got to bro-down with the little monkey, which immediately gave me ideas for fun and games.

Our class on caring for newborns said that you can start "tummy time" any time after a baby is born. Here, Jasper got down to do some push-ups (3 sets, 10 reps per), but before he could get a good upper body workout, he fell asleep.



Don't worry, we know about the back-sleeping only rule. I just wanted to give his body a few different sensations to keep him in the fluid motion feeling of his 9-month free-float in amniotic fluid. He seems to like to sample a variety of poses, which is good since there will probably be more photo-ops to come (especially once we get him in his aquarium).

*We chose Kathy Stewart, our Lamaze teacher from Full Circle Child Birth, for our doula. When Karen's water broke, Kathy had another birth in the works, so her trusted back up was Rachel Thompson, who is connected to Christian organization called Charis Child Birth. Lucky for us agnostics, Rachel gave supremely secular service. We didn't have a clue about the religious orientation of her organization until I affixed the link to this post. Anyhow, just thought I'd share this nuance. And I should probably say that we never would have wound up working with either Kathy or Rachel (or managed a natural childbirth) if we hadn't seen The Business of Being Born. Even non-breeders should check out that flick.