Month One

Baby Z just hit the one month mark. This is what my March has looked like:

Times feeding baby Z: approximately 250
Books read: 10

And that's just about it.


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The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn

This is a fascinating book by three developmental psychologists who have spent their professional life studying how infants and children learn. In it, they succinctly summarize a vast body of research for a general audience. And wow! The kind of research they describe is fascinating, and the best part of this book. It's all about experiments. Bring the kids into the lab, video tape them, and then analyze their eye movements or the way they are sucking their pacifier, and you get a little view into their minds. For example, researchers have found that an infant recognizes that something is wrong when an object on wheels disappear behind a screen, but does not emerge on the other side of the screen at the proper time, given its entry speed. However, if the object were to be a duck coming in, and then a dog going out, the same child wouldn't bat an eye. The recognition that something funky is going on there doesn't develop until later.

The best chapter is on language aquisition. My favorite developmental stage with my kids is when they start speaking. And when they go through the period of fast mapping where there are learning words so quickly and easily. This chapter sheds light on the process. An interesting tidbit: when babies are born, they are able to hear all the differences in languages across the world. The authors describe them as global citizens. For example, a Japanese baby can easily distinguish between the "r" and "l" sound that older Japanese cannot hear. By the time the baby is 9 months old, though, the ways they perceive sounds have changed, and they have started to narrow their focus to the sounds of the language they have been exposed to.

In all the research they summarize, they provide three main explanations for all of children's learning. 1. Babies come knowing an awful lot. They are pre-wired for certain things. It's in their DNA. 2. Babies experiment and learn just the way scientists do. They do certain things over and over and gather evidence, and are able to come to conclusions about the world that way. (Thus, the title for the book.) 3. Parents and other adults are uniquely suited to teach children (unconsciously) certain things that shape that perspectives of the world.

An example of the third: all people who talk to babies utilize a certain unique way of speaking. It's more distinctive, a higher pitch, and it enables babies to become accustomed to language and speech.

I read this for the first time when MJ was born and decided to pull it out again since we have another baby in the house. I wish they would publish a Home Experimetal Handbook for Parents. It would chronicle by age easy experiments you could perform on your child at home and then summarize the things that you would learn about child development from doing the experiment.

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Dreams From my Father

Just a few notes about this book: This is not a page turner kind of book, but it is a quieter story of a man's search for identity and quest for personal understanding about race. It is amazing that the man who wrote this book is running for president and will hopefully soon be the Democratic nominee and the next president of the United States. I cannot help but compare him to George and find the current president to be lacking in comparison.

I found it interesting that the timing of my reading of this book coincided with all the talk about race in the campaign. The whole Jeremiah Wright ordeal, and Obama's speech about race. So there turned out to be a lot of overlap in what I was hearing in the news and my reading.

Obama's book is his own personal story. He shares his life as a boy in Hawaii and Indonesia, his time as an angry black man in late adolescence and into college, his work on the ground in the Chicago projects, and his search for his roots in a visit to Kenya and his father's family. The thing that struck me most about his story and his journey is the nuance, the complexity, the detours that he takes. He doesn't see race and racial identity as cut and dried. He doesn't assume black or white people are all a certain way. He has a vision from the ground up--he understands the formative nature of race in identity. I love that he has spent time abroad: I didn't really know much about his years as a child in Indonesia, but that time, combined with his years spent in Chicago, have given him a perspective about poverty.

These themes--the complexity and the contradictions--were repeated in his speech. I love this section, which has been replayed over and over by the press, but for good reason.

As imperfect as he (Jeremiah Wright) may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

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Newborn Pleasures: #4

First Smiles

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Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

By Mildred Armstrong Kalish: This is a charming memoir of Kalish's childhood growing up on an Iowan farm during the depression.
When her father leaves her mother stranded with four small children, she is forced to move to her strict Methodist parents' farm ("They never completely made it into the 20th century.") The children are frequently referred to as "little heathens", and now the process of instilling character and teaching values begins.

Rather than being ordered chronologically, her chapters are sorted by topic. Food (wow--did they really use cream and bacon/bacon fat in so many ways then??), language and its usages ("not on your tintype"??), work, chores, and more work, attending a one room school, and so on. I was amazed at their frugality and practicality. Will a woman really drive her family into the poorhouse if she doesn't wipe out every last drop of eggwhite from the inside of the egg shells? I tried out the recipe for applesauce cake--very yummy, and no cream needed.

I liked this paragraph from the NYTimes review:

It’s not merely that she appreciated the values instilled by the Great Depression, or that now, in her older years, she wants to preserve memories of a lost time (though all this is true). No — beyond that, she reports quite convincingly that she had a flat-out ball growing up (“It was quite a romp”) and her terrifically soaring love for those childhood memories saturates this book with pure charm, while coaxing the reader into the most unexpected series of sensations: joy, affection, wonder and even envy.

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Saffron Kitchen

By Yasmin Crowther. This was supposed to be a nice fiction read. It was about an Iranian woman and the impacts of her leaving Iran and setting up a new life in England. The writing was ok, the story was ok, the characters weren't too compelling. All the events that were so central to moving the story forward, that had such force for the characters felt limp.

I am looking for a nice fiction read!

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Newborn Pleasures: #3

The "O" Mouth

This isn't the best photo of it--sometimes it is so much more round. I love how he will sit and stare at me, and then mimic the round mouth or the sticking out tongue.

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Newborn Pleasures: #2

The Hedgehog Snuggle

I can't get over how he completely he can tuck his legs under his torso

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Medium Man

When T was born, we started calling him "little man."
We have continued to use that moniker for him. Then baby Z was born. All the nicknames that I used for T came easily to my tongue for baby Z, including "little man." Happily, T didn't seem to feel like his position was being usurped when this name was shared with his brother. In fact, he decided it was time for a promotion. He now tells us that he is "medium man", putting him in the middle slot between the other two males in our family.

I'm not sure if it is because we have two boys in a row, but it is natural for me to compare baby Z with T. It feels different than when T was born and MJ was 3. Both AJ and I have noticed how huge T seems. His hands, his feet, and especially his head seem freakishly large. Before, he was the littlest in the family. He would snuggle up to me to read. I would hold his hand as we walked into the library or grocery store. He still does those things, but he feels so less little. He is not a little boy anymore. He is just a boy.

Last night, as I was laying in bed nursing baby Z around 4:30 am, I thought about T. He used to routinely climb into bed with us early in the morning. I'm not sure what happened, but it felt like as soon as we brought baby Z home from the hospital, he stopped doing this and now just stays in his bed until he is ready to wake up. Maybe he has been doing this less over the last few months, but when I realized what I saw as its coinciding with baby Z's birth, I felt a pang of sorrow. T is growing up. He is turning into a real kid.

With MJ, I was anxious for her to grow up, to start school. Maybe because she is the oldest, maybe for some other reason. I don't feel quite the same way with T. I love the time I spend with him during the day when MJ is at school. He is such a fun and pleasant child. He makes me laugh. I hope his promotion to medium man doesn't change our relationship too much. And I hope he can still be my little boy for a while longer.

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Newborn Pleasures: #1

Really big yawns

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Cocoon

I feel like time has stalled, ever since baby Z was born. I find it impossible to believe that we are nearing the end of March and that Easter is almost here. (Perhaps this is mostly due to the fact that there is still snow on the ground here and that we have another winter storm warning tonight, though.)

I am sitting comfortably out of time, for now. I haven't been many places, and baby Z has been to even fewer. I haven't worried about how the house looks and with so many people offering food and my mom here, I haven't had to cook much. I haven't been to church since he was born and haven't thought about Enrichment. I have been wearing my glasses more often than contacts, along with AJ's XL t-shirts and "comfy" pants (aka pants I can fit into) and my hair pulled back. When MJ and T are downstairs arguing with each other, I ignore them and let someone else handle it. I have basically stopped doing the things that keep our lives going, for the time being, to focus on caring for a newborn and to recuperate from giving birth.

The lovely thing about this time with a brand new infant is that I am actually enjoying it. With MJ, the recovery was much more difficult and the breastfeeding was so difficult for the first 6 weeks that I was in a painful fog for a lot of the time. It was also quite a mental shock to transition from non-mother to mother. With T, his tendency to sleep all day and not sleep at night made life difficult. I also didn't really feel connected to him at first, like I mentioned earlier. That's not to say that I didn't like MJ and T's newborn days, but it felt a little harder.

This time with baby Z has been a gift. He is sleeping for long stretches at night, so I don't feel so sleep deprived. He has been calm and pleasant so far. I know this is likely to all change soon--probably about the same time as my mom leaves and AJ is back to work full time. I also know more what to do with a newborn and feel less stressed about it. Again, knowing myself, this will probably be short-lived. But, for now, I am basking in the cacoon.

I hope by the time we feel ready to emerge spring will be well on its way.

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Promises I Can Keep

This is a book by two sociologists. Yea for sociology books that the general public can read! This one is an ethnographic study about what poor women are so much more likely to bear children as single mothers than middle class and wealthy women.


The chapters are organized by topic, and are filled with evidence from the 150+ women's lives that they follow in poor Philadelphia neighborhoods.




This is what they find:

For poor women, there is a lower opportunity cost to bearing children young--don't consciously choose to have children, but at the same time, not viewed as accident

Changing values towards sex, marriage, and child-raising exist among rich and poor alike; There really aren't a lot of differences in these values between poor and rich; Standards for marriage have increased--for rich, means delays in age at marriage and common co-habitation; for poor, delaying marriage too.

So, why are unmarried poor having children ?

The poor hold a higher value on children, due to both fewer foregone opportunities and stronger absolute preferences;

Poor women put children, rather than marriage, education, or career, at center of their identity and personal meaning--find meaning in children; with neighborhoods full of social disorder, children are seen as a necessity while marriage is a luxury

One interesting finding: the earnings trajectory for poor women does not change depending on whether she has a child as a teenager--the same characteristics that are associated with early childbearing are also associated with other negative outcomes; so, having children early isn't the causal effect for diminished opportunities.

"Early childbearing is highly selective of girls whose other characteristics--family background, cognitive ability, school performance, mental health status, and so on--have already diminished their life chances so much that an early birth does little to reduce them further"

Here are some of the problems I saw with it:
1. As a fan of survey research and statistical methodolgy, I would love to see the quantitative complement to this study.

2. I wondered about a generational effect. The researchers lump all single mothers together, but their theory and explanation seem to favor changing attitudes over time. It doesn't follow that young mothers in teen age years and older mothers--in their 40's--would hold same ideologies about marriage and child bearing. It would be useful to seperate out experiences of young girls from others; They also seem to conflate single motherhood and young motherhood (teen ager child bearing).

3. They explain how having babies and young children structure poor women's lives, shape their identity, and give meaning to them. But, what about as their children grow older? How do these women change? For example, when they see their children start to get into trouble? how do they feel? Edin's theory seems to be mostly about caring for young children--providing for their physical needs, making sure they are clean, teaching them basics

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Books in the first week

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See: I read this one in the hospital and in the first couple of days of Z's life. It was an easy read with a nice plot to keep me going. And an interesting story of two women in China in the 1800's. I skipped over the couple of pages detailing the foot binding process. The basic details were enough for me. It is a story about friendship and betrayal, about gender roles and individuality.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin: Toobin is a New Yorker writer, and this book reads like a lengthy New Yorker article. You can guess my reaction to it, then. I loved it! It is my favorite book I had read in the last little while. So many interesting details about the justices and their quirks. He uses the last 30 years worth of SC cases to highlight the justices, the roles they have in the court, and their personalities. I would love to read more about Sandra Day O'Conner--Toobin calls the Rehnquist court the O'Conner court, and attributes many major decision to her swing vote. It was interesting to read about how abortion politics have been very relevant in choosing justices and how justices are perceived. It was also very intersting to read in detail the role of the SC in the 2000 presidential election.

Here are some good parts of the NYTimes book review:

“The Nine” is engaging, erudite, candid and accessible, often hard to put down. Toobin is a natural storyteller, and the stories he tells — how a coalition of centrist justices saved Roe v. Wade; why Rehnquist, despite having loathed the rights granted to criminal suspects by Miranda v. Arizona, eventually declined to overturn the decision; how right-wing firebrands deep-sixed the Supreme Court candidacies of Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers — are gripping. But its greatest surprise is that there are few great surprises. Toobin writes about the court more fluidly and fluently than anyone, but his buddies on the bench didn’t tell him much we don’t already know.

The book includes beautifully written essays on each of the justices, woven artfully into the narrative. The one on Thomas manages to be both sympathetic and devastating. There’s the reclusive Souter, who’d never heard of Diet Coke or of the other “Supremes” (the ones with Diana Ross), and the grandiloquent Kennedy, who toils most over those passages in his opinions he thinks The New York Times will pick up. The book is filled with pithy phrases, crystalline distillations and fine tidbits: the impertinent notes Breyer and Thomas pass one another during oral arguments; O’Connor’s efforts to marry off the bachelor Souter; Souter weeping — and contemplating resignation — after the Bush v. Gore decision.

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi: The memoir of a female Iranian professor who rejects the ideology of the revolution in Iran and chafes under the burdens it places on women. Nafisi studied English literature in the United States and returns just prior to the 1979 revolution to being teaching in Iran. She is soon expelled from teaching as she refuses to wear the veil and to conform to revolutionary standards. Later, towards the end of her time in Iran, she gathers a group of young women to meet furtively in her apartment to discuss books by Nabokov and Austen, among others. Descriptions of these meetings and their discussion bookend her story, with the middle section filled in with her teaching of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She is an academic, and her prose writing and analysis of literature suggest this. I felt that my education had been lacking, since I had not read much of what she analyzed. I need to read The Great Gatsby, if no other of the books she discusses.

I like the sections of the book that discuss her involvement with her book group of young women the best. The other parts got a little long and sometimes bogged down in the details of her literary analysis. She starts off the book with a description of two photos of her group of girls: one in full veil--their outside clothing--and one of them unveiled, full hair and clothing from under their chadors in full view. She uses this as an analogy for their book group, describing how this permitted them a safe place to cast off the appearance of sameness and to really talk about their lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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Three Holocaust Books

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak (early Feb, 2008): This was my favorite of the group. It is a YA, fiction book, that utilized a clever technique of death as the narrator. The story takes place in Germany among Germans. Interesting to look at WWII (and the toll it takes) through the eyes of normal Germans. Death has a number of interesting asides which I really liked--unlike other books with asides, I found it didn't distract from the book, but added to it. The characters were interesting and well developed. There were a number of tender relationships among the characters too. Liesel is the main character, and is the book thief. She steals her first book at the grave site of her younger brother, and goes on to steal a few more. Later she learns to read, and her relationship with books and words is central to the theme of the book. By stealing words, she is symbolically able to control a world that has been beset by the subversive and destructive propoganda of the Nazis.

The Mascot, by Mark Kurzem (Feb 2008): This is the story of a son--the author--who helps his father unwravel the story of his childhood during WWII. The father is Jewish and his village in Belarus was annihilated when he was 5 or 6 years old. He escaped into the woods and was later picked up by a brigade of Latvian soldiers. He becomes their mascot--complete with full SS uniform dress. Burdened by guilt and shame, the father has kept the secret of his childhood for years and finally unloads on his son. But, he is unable to remember key pieces of information about himself, including the location and name of his village and his given and family name. With the son's help, they look for evidence to validate the father's memories and fill in the pieces. This is in a similar vein to The Lost, but not as well written and not as well told.


The Zookeeper's Wife, by Diane Ackerman (Mar 2008): This is the recounting of a Warsaw couple who prior to WWII took care of the zoo there. When Germany attacked and took over Poland and the zoo was mostly destroyed, they started working in the underground and provided refuge at the zoo and in their home to many different Jews (for various periods of time) over the course of the rest of the war. Ackerman tended to wade off into tangents that I thought distracted from the story line of the book. I liked it ok, but not as much as I thought I would. It was interesting to learn about Warsaw and what happened there during the war.

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Silda Wall Spitzer

Ever since Monday when the news broke, I have felt a pit in the bottom of my stomach each time I checked the news online at the New York Times. The whole Eliot Spitzer thing is so depressing to me.

In a way, I haven't wanted to hear any more about the story. But in another way, I can't seem to pull myself away from the details. After a story in the Times last night, I clicked on the link they provided to the prostitute's MySpace page. It felt like some strange mix of The Times and National Enquirer to read this story and see what they gleaned from this woman's online presence. For example, they quote this, showing that music is her love: “I am all about my music and my music is all about me. It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel.” And a crazy quotation from her mother: "She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,” Ms. Capalbo said in a telephone interview Wednesday. And this is newsworthy how?? When I looked at MySpace last night, some 1.2 million people had viewed her page, but now it looks like the website has been taken down. I am suprised it took her this long to do it. All of these ooglers, prying into her life. Yes, she is a prostitute, but her instant notoriety came not from that, but from her unfortunate liason with a powerful man in high public office.

I am not invested in Spitzer as a political figure, as the governor of NY, or as a former NY attorney general. He's just one more hypocritical political persona who got caught with his pants down. Sex scandals among politicians are far from rare. No, I've been thinking about his wife Silda Wall Spitzer and how this is influencing her more than anything else.

Press coverage about her has been limited. There was a general biographical story about her--detailing her life as a corporate lawyer and when she decided to give up her career to take care of their children and support her husband's bid for public office (then, AG of NY). Some of the coverage of his resignation mentioned that his wife wanted him to stand his ground and not to resign. I looked at the pictures of the two of them together on Monday morning after the story broke. She, striding off ahead of him, with her lips pursed in a thin line. I went back to look for this picture, but came up short. Instead, I am finding the grim pictures of her standing behind him during both the apology speech and the resignation speech.

Since I started writing this, I have found quite a few op eds criticizing her. Why is she "standing by her man", letting herself be publically humiliated. Why not just walk out the door? Or tell him to start walking? I'm not sure what I think about her behavior.

Instead I've been thinking about what she might be feeling and about women in general. She gave up her successful and lucrative career when Eliot decided to run for public office in 1994. She gave up her public and paid life (for the most part, although she is involved in some kind of foundation work) to take care of her daughters and to enable her husband's run for public office. She has given up so much for him. And how is it reciprocated? She finds out less than 24 hours before the story breaks in what will be national media feeding frenzy that he has been running around with a prostitute. A prostitute!!! Seriously?? Silda is publically humiliated. Her sorrow and disbelief is on display for the entire country to gossip about and to gawk at.

Maybe I'm just feeling really vulnerable right now, caring for a newborn. It's so hard for me to go anywhere or do much of anything right now and I am very dependent on AJ for a lot. Even if I didn't have a baby, I am completely dependent on him for my financial security. At least, for right now. And it's not that I am dubious that I can really trust him. It's just that there is this asymmetry. I am dependent on him in a way that he is not dependent on me. Just compare how our lives would be different if something--anything--were to happen to me or if something were to happen to him.

My basic problem is that Eliot Spitzer did not respect the choices and sacrfices that his wife had made for him. He ended up trampling over them and completely disregarding them--at least in some way. And now, her life is forever changed. Of course, he's ruined his own life too, but that's his own dumb fault. The saddest part about it is the way it played out on such a public stage.

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Hospital Stays

On Friday, Feb 29, 2008, at 12:55 pm our son was born. We have been in the hospital the last two days, and I'm sure that I will write more about our time there. All my experiences, though, being pregnant, giving birth, the hospital stay, and those early hours and days of having a newborn has caused me to reflect on my memories of what happened with my two other children.


When MJ was born, AJ scarcely left my side during our time in the hospital. He went home for a few hours to upload some photos of her the second day, I think, but was right there the rest of the time. He was there after a somewhat difficult delivery when I still on an IV--he helped me brush my teeth and wash my face when I couldn't move from my bed the first night. He woke up in the middle of the night when she came in to eat. He was there trying to help me figure out the breastfeeding. He was as infatuated with her as I was. I remember our time in the hospital as being sheltered, calm, and magical.

With T, it was entirely different. We had just relocated from NYC to Pittsburgh 7 weeks before his birth. AJ had started business school, and I was desperately trying to finish a dissertation chapter before the baby came. I visited a new ob practice a few times for those last few weeks--care was fine, but I wasn't too excited about my new doctor. When we started to make plans for what we would do with MJ when the baby came, we didn't know a lot of people yet. In the middle of the night on September 25, my water broke. We called a fellow student and his wife whom we had asked for middle of the night back up and headed to the hospital. T was born a little before 10 am, and MJ was hanging out with our friends. AJ called our babysitter and told her that we were in the hospital. She went over to our house and took care of MJ for the rest of the day, bringing her to the hospital at around 4:30. MJ stayed a little while--she gave me a card she made, we ate dinner together, she was introduced to her new baby brother. But, a three year old can only handle so much time in a hospital. Soon, probably around 6 pm, AJ took her home so that she could go to bed. I had the whole night to myself.

Because we didn't know anyone yet, I had no hospital visitors. I was sad that AJ had gone. And I didn't have much to do. T was sleeping a lot and I just hung out. AJ was worried about me and had put in phone calls to lots of out-of-town friends, encouraging them to give me a call, so I spent part of that night on the phone chatting. I went to sleep waking up a few times in the night to feed T and get my vitals taken.

The next day was Sunday, and it just so happened that on that very day, there was a big annual run. Its route was on a major street that ran all the way across Pittsburgh, essentially cutting the city in half. Our house was on one side of the street, and the hospital was on the other. AJ was supposed to drop MJ off at church where she could stay with someone and then go home with them for the afternoon. But, he had a very difficult time getting her there. With the road closed off, every route that he tried to take was shut off. I had waken up, showered, eaten breakfast, seen the pediatrician and ob on rounds, and was now just waiting for him to come. Waiting and waiting. I had no idea where he was. He finally made it to the hospital about 11:00, and by this time, I had just about lost it. I was teary and upset, and he felt terrible. I was desperate to leave the hospital, but the pediatrician wanted the baby to stay an extra night to make sure everything looked good before discharge.

AJ stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon, and I think we must have had a repeat of Saturday afternoon's activities: MJ came to visit, we ate dinner together, and then they left to go home.

All in all, I was depressed and lonely during my hospital stay (however, the food was good and I had a shower in my own room which is different than this time around).

One of my biggest secrets during that time when T was a newborn was the lack of connection I felt towards him. With MJ, I had such a surge of emotion the moment she was finally born. Maybe the 3 hours of pushing heightened my gratitude that she was finally with us. Early the morning after her birth, I walked to the nursery to get her and was so amazed that this beautiful baby was ours. I remember the surprise and awe I felt gazing at her during our time in the hospital.

With T, the delivery was much easier. I had expected the birth experiences to be more similar, and my primary feeling after he was born was shock that it had happened so quickly. He also hardly made any noise after he was born, compared to MJ's extended screaming. And he looked so different from her. He had some hair, but nothing like the dark, curly, full head of hair that she had. He was paler, and his lips seemed abnormally large and red against his fair skin. His eyes, instead of being wide, were more like crescent moons. In short, I didn't think he was cute.

Maybe that, combined with the depression I felt in the hospital, inhibited me from bonding with him. In our early days at home with him, I went through the motions of feeding him and caring for him, but I didn't feel connected to him. All this seemed to be more evidence about my lack of maternal instincts and my overall inadequacies and inabilities to be a good mother. I was comparing myself to what I perceived was every other mother's experience: a deep bond the first time she viewed her newborn.

Eventually (I don't remember how long it took), I felt that same infatuation and amazement with T. It was like falling in love. But, I didn't want to tell anyone that I didn't feel it right away.

With baby Z, I knew that I wanted AJ with me through our whole hospital stay. I wanted to share this experience as fully as we could. We made a lot of plans, based on all sorts of contingencies, but in the end, with a scheduled induction, it was easy to completely schedule MJ and T's time. We had so man people willing to help us out, and I felt comfortable that the kids would be just fine without us. A good friend of ours stayed here with them the first night, and then the second night, they were up at my aunt and uncle's house.

Over and over in the hospital, I felt waves of gratitude that AJ could be with me. The kids came a couple of times to visit, and he left with them to eat and to do a couple of other things so that they wouldn't feel excluded, but mostly he was with me. We enjoyed the quiet time with our baby. We talked a lot about names and which we were going to choose. We talked to family. We watched a movie. Again, he was there in the middle of the night when Z came in to eat. He was able to talk to the nurses and doctors with me. It was a wonderful time to be together with our new baby.

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