miss katya is home!
It seems so strange to think that four weeks ago today, we were flying back to New York from our last vacation as a couple without children. We were talking about how we were going to prepare over the coming two months for the arrival of our daughter. Three days after that I was in the hospital and a week later we were already the parents of a tiny daughter.
Now, four weeks later, I have spent a week and a half in the hospital recovering from the c-section and waiting for my blood pressure to go down. Katya spent two weeks in the neo-natal intensive care unit, colloquially known as NICU (pronounced Nick-Yu). For the week I was home and Katya was in the hospital, I went to the hospital three times a day to feed her and hold her. Peter spent the whole three weeks running from home to the hospital, from the hospital to work, from work to the hospital, and from the hospital home - on those days that he didn’t spend the whole day at the hospital.
Now we have had almost one week with Katya at home. She was released from the hospital last Wednesday. She weighed just about 4 lbs then. From the way she eats, we guess she weighs well over 4 lbs now. We are now firmly intrenched in the eating, burping, peeing, sleeping routine of a newborn. It is demanding but absolutely wonderful.
Katya doesn’t cry as a rule. The most she will do is yell out when something uncomfortable is going on in her digestive track - or if you try to wash her with a cold cloth. She is eating and sleeping really well. She is slowly learning how to breast-feed. The bigger she gets, the better she gets at it. She has no problems at all with the bottle, however. She usually pigs down the first half of her bottle and then sleeps through the second half. She can put herself to sleep if you just lay her in the bassinet - maybe something she learned how to do in the hospital. Since she has been home, we take her on a little walk every day in her portable bassinet. She usually sleeps as soon as we hit the bumpy sidewalk, but it is nice weather and we think the fresh air is good for her.
So far, the cats are very much in awe of her. They have not tried to get too close, although they are extremely interested in her especially when she is moving and making noise. Sometimes they show their jealousy a little when I am feeding her. Pippin and Kisco particularly will come in and cry to me.
She has a head full of hair and a seldom heard but attention- commanding vocal capacity. The nurses in the NICU used to tease us about it. They’d say “You hear that big mouth - that’s your daughter” before we even got into the nursery. Her cry still sends fire works through my whole body - good ones. For when the doctors were preparing me for the c-section they said that the baby seemed healthy from what they knew and the best sign would be if she came out kicking and screaming. All that day, waiting for the operation, I prayed that she would come out kicking and screaming. And indeed she did. I will never forget that feeling. I was lying on the operating table - arms spread to each side like I was on a cross and a big blue tarp one inch from my chin stretching up to the ceiling. Cold, drugged, nauseous, and nervous I laid there waiting for what would happen. Peter was on my right side and my mid-wife on the left. The doctors were doing what felt like pushing a big reluctant slippery fish around inside me by leaning all their weight on my ribs and lungs and pressing down. And then all of a sudden, I heard the piercing cry of an irate newborn. My heart jumped into my mouth. The pediatricians were laughing, joking about giving her an 11 on her 1 minute Apgar (a 1 to 10 scale for the condition of newborns). And to this minute, when I hear that piercing cry my heart jumps and I thank all the forces there are for our healthy, although small, baby.
Thank you all for all you support, messages, flowers and love. We have really appreciated it and it has helped us immensely in getting through this startling tumultuous scary amazing time.