These photos are the first that — in my opinion — really capture our baby girl’s spirit. She’s not always this happy and contented, but she is like this much more of the time than I ever would have expected from a newborn. When I look at these photos I really see our Meera Grace — the beauty of a girl that I’m really coming to know these past couple weeks — shining through the images.
Owen and Kyle are loving life (and living their lives) at the pool, yet again, this summer. They’ve only been out of school for just over a week — and so far they’ve spent the vast majority of that time at the pool. This time of year Braydon and I ask ourselves daily what we’d do without the pool. We know what we’d do: we’d be wishing for a pool. For the sake of our boys (and for the sake of our sanity) we’re so grateful to have this pool, especially this year.
Well, believe it or not, today has been a great day so far. I’m still sick as a dog, but feeling a bit better than yesterday. Kyle and Owen have been –miraculously– absolutely perfect (well, as close to perfect as they’re ever gonna get)! Meera has –miraculously– been eating and sleeping beautifully! Once he got past the depression of leaving, Braydon got off to work just fine this morning. And Alex, our lifesaver Nanny, has ensured a fun summer day for K & O. After three days of misery it has been a wonderful surprise to have a really smooth and good day (so far). Sometimes (the past few days) life throws us punches. And sometimes (today) we get roses.
We’re here… barely. We’ve been completely off-line for the past few days. Sorry to our readers that we’ve been MIA in the blogosphere. I hate not blogging because I feel like I’m missing out on my own processing/journaling and also because I feel like I’m leaving all these important days somehow undocumented. But late Thursday night I started coming down with a yucky bad sick thing. Very feverish with high fever all day Friday. My OB put me immediately on an antibiotic. But it was not anything related to my c-section or breast-feeding. Saturday and today I’ve had a terrible bad flu bug– congested, achy all over, sore throat, headache, the whole nine yards. As if the whole newborn-nursing24x7-twinados-transition2PartyOf5-CsectionRecovery-thing wasn’t enough. So here we are: Blogless (and sleepless) in Pennsylvania. Braydon and I are surviving… but barely. The boys are hanging in there o.k. (I’ll put it this way: we have our high points and we have our low points), all things considered. Meera is eating like a champ (good for baby; rough for Mommy) — but is having some trouble sleeping (rough for all parties involved). Braydon goes back to work tomorrow… which is deeply depressing on every level. So, there you have it. I’m hoping that at some point soon I’ll figure out how to find time to blog. As they say, ‘this too shall pass.’ In the meantime… the truth is… we’re struggling.
Very hard to find time to write these past few days… but at least I can post some photos. It is hard to capture these moments of these days. These pics don’t do it justice. But they at least give a glimpse.
We’ve been home with Meera for one week now as a family of five (or, as my college roommate Jen called it — a “Party of Five” — Hi Jen! I love that— “Party of Five”). The week has gone better than I had expected, especially since having a c-section. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say the week has been entirely a “party” per se. ;0 Meera is an awesome baby. I had prayed and prayed for a mellow baby and I am giving thanks that — so far at least, knock on wood — I seem to have received what I prayed for. Meera and I are nursing well, which is what I’m most grateful for. I had read three breastfeeding books cover to cover during my pregnancy and talked to as many of my friends as possible about it. I was more worried about breastfeeding than I was about labor/delivery. I worked hard with Meera (and the breastfeeding specialists) those first few days in the hospital and I’ve got to say — it has all paid off. Still, being confined to a chair and nursing for hours on end (it often feels like that’s all I’m doing 24×7) is not exactly my style. It is hard for me to sit still, let alone for soooooo much of the day/night (I am not a sit-still person). But alas, that’s life with a nursing newborn. It is what it is. Meera sleeps well, and when she is awake Meera is calm, cool, and contented most of the time. The only exception seems to be when I eat potato chips. I’ve eaten them twice in the past week— with horrible results in Meera’s demeanor. This is a huge bummer, since I love potato chips. I had tried to not eat them much during my pregnancy (I worked so hard to eat healthy), and was so looking forward to indulging in them post-delivery. But eating them is definitely not worth the fussies/crankies/screaming fits that come as the consequence. So, no more chips for me… at least not for a good while. Meera is amazingly good at putting up with her brothers’ antics. They hug her too tight and hold her too much and slobber her with kisses too often and zerbert her belly with way too much gusto (not to mention cover her butt with layer upon layer of “bum bum cream” at diaper changes). They also bang their drums and blow their trumpets while marching circles around her (“Marching Band! For Baby Meera!!!!!”), and they yelp and scream and shout and sing and have tantrums without any respect for a newborn infant in the house. Meera takes it all in stride. Thank God. She can sleep through just about anything –including twin 4 year olds banging the piano within 2 feet of her downstair’s crib. It is quite something to see actually. Really. Anyway, she’s a dang good baby. Most of the time. I have my post-pregnancy-hormonal, deeply-sleep-deprived, c-section-recovering moments of watery blubbery slobbery meltdowns a couple times a day… sobbing and crying in Braydon’s arms in total despair (sometimes because I just can’t fathom how on earth we’re going to manage all of this… and sometimes because I am just overwrought with adoration for this precious new little being in my arms). Braydon is a rock and handles it perfectly. He also is really good at burping the baby (she needs to burp a lot). He also has been a MASTER at keeping K & O busy, happy, and pre-occupied so as to give the baby girl space to just be with her Mama for some chunks of time each day. I’d say that overall, it is all good. Delirious (both in the good sense and the bad sense), but overall… good.
Meera’s First Pool DayRecord high’s here today. Hot and humid, heat index over one hundred. The boys (all three of them) were in the pool for a good portion of the day. The girls (all two of us) were quite annoyed that we can’t join them yet. We did visit the pool though… for all of about 10 minutes until I couldn’t bear to watch anymore (green with envy) and Meera was hungry (as usual). K & O did what they consider to be some pretty impressive “pool tricks” for their sister. As you can see from the photo above (~~big yawn~~) Meera was pretty unimpressed. I think its ‘gonna take a lot to impress this girl.
KissesKyle and Owen both love to hold Meera close and kiss her on the lips. She loves it. They kiss a lot. Their eyes are locked. Their kisses are wet and slippery and sooooo full of love. We know we shouldn’t let our 4 year olds give our 9 day old gooey slobbery mouth-to-mouth kisses. We know about germs. We know about saliva. Yada yada yada. But we can’t help it. It is just too much of a sweet and innocent and loving and intimate thing between them — we don’t have the heart to stand between them and cut it off. So, we run the risk of germ spread. We’re willing to take the risk. Ironically, we insist that K & O wash their hands each and every time before they hold her– LOL!
Well, I’m not sure what to say… either way you look at it, our first ever Johnson-McCormick Family Blog Contest was a total flop. Total flop. First of all, nobody — not one of y’all — guessed Baby Sister’s name correctly. There were 104 entries to this contest, many of which guessed multiple names. But not a single winner. Not even one. What’s up with that people????????! Secondly, K & O didn’t get to make a phone call. They are sorely disappointed. They love the phone. And they are very nondiscriminate about it (they’re more than happy to chat — even with the telemarketers when I have K & O answer those phone calls — so surely they would have thoroughly enjoyed congratulating a contest winner). But alas, not one call to make. What’s up with that people?????! What’s up with that?! Just for the record: it was an “M” on the wooden train with the “K” and the “O” — “M” for Meera Grace Johnson-McCormick. Better luck next time you all.
…to change a baby’s diaper????…
In her first week of life, I have changed Meera’s diaper exactly 3 times, and have dressed her precisely once. The males of the J-M house are all over those duties — round the clock. Important note regarding K & O on baby duty: by far their favorite part of baby care is the application of diaper-rash-cream during diaper changes… there surely has never been a baby in the history of human existence to have more diaper-rash-cream all over her bottom at any given time than Miss Meera Grace.
Guest Blog Post from MorFar – The Birth of Meera
by Don Johnson on the occasion of the birth of his granddaughter Meera
It is truly an honor and a privilege to be so close to the beginning of life for another human being. I’m sure that the witness of this miracle is even more intensively emotional when the person giving birth is my daughter and the person whose life is beginning is my granddaughter.
One of the truths that this experience has reaffirmed is that there’s very little in life that we can be sure of; and even less that we have control over. The plan for MorMor (Janet) and I has been that as soon as and whenever labor was to have begun, we would get in the car and drive for 8 hours from our home in New Hampshire to Pennsylvania. It was a commitment we were happy to make because of the honor of being invited into the process in such a profound way.
So when the report from Heather’s doctor visit on April 28 was that it could be any day now – our bags were packed and our night ears sensitized for middle of the night phone calls. It almost seemed like we were working round the clock to get our work obligations completed ahead of schedule for the next few weeks. We were ready!
As we have all learned, Meera was not ready. We went to Pennsylvania for Kyle and Owen’s fabulous birthday party on May 5. We returned to NH so we could be with our granddaughter Sadie’s birthday party in Maine on May 10. Surely Meera would arrive by her May 15 due date but where was she? I called off a work trip to South Carolina scheduled for May 19-21 so I could be here in NH with MorMor when the call came – convinced that the extra gravitation of the full moon would beckon Meera into this world. We started to joke around that maybe Heather was faking it for who knows what reason and then we started to think that maybe we shouldn’t joke around anymore. Finally it was May 24, Memorial Day Weekend, and we made the trip to PA without a phone call in the middle of the night. This sure wasn’t the frantic departure in the night as we planned it – it turned out to be a nice leisurely trip to PA without the urgency of an any-minute-now birth.
Never did it cross my mind that Heather’s intention of a totally natural childbirth experience was not going to happen.
After the 3-day weekend, we had a great Tuesday afternoon with Kyle and Owen when Heather and Braydon were at the doctor appointment. But it did seem like they were at the doctor’s for an extended amount of time. When they returned to their home to tell us that they would be checking into the hospital at 8 that night for the induction process to begin – that’s when things started to really seem a little surreal. Inducing – that’s not how Heather had planned it.
Heather and Braydon put the twins to bed and shortly thereafter headed off to the hospital. Nobody had planned it this way. How come it wasn’t happening the way it was planned?
May 28 dawned pretty normal – for us. Kyle and Owen got up, wondered where their parents were (even though they were fully apprised the night before), and Janet brought them to pre-school while I got caught up on some work details. We went out to lunch, knowing that Kyle and Owen would be picked up from school by Alex, their Nanny. A call to Braydon informed us that things were moving slowly at the hospital and allowed us to find out what he wanted us to bring him for lunch. Janet and I arrived at the hospital around 2 pm.
You know how on Christmas Day you lose all track of time because no matter which day it falls on, there’s no other day like it – it’s not Monday or Thursday or Saturday or Sunday – it’s Christmas. May 28, from 2 pm on, was like that – totally swept up by what was happening in Room 304 of St. Luke’s Hospital. It was like no other day. I’m pretty sure Heather will agree with that.
Now I’m not one to stick around a whole lot when someone is going through lots of pain and/or distress, especially when that person happens to be my beloved daughter. Give me a support role and I’ll take it hands down. So I surprised myself a little that I spent so much time in the labor room. Most of the reason for that is that Heather endured several hours of serious labor in very stoic fashion – it was quite amazing as I now look back on it. I tried to divert attention by chit chatting about absolutely nothing and I’m still not sure of that serving any redeemable function. And of all the people in that room – Heather, Braydon, Janet, nurses, etc. – I know I’m the one who achieved most familiarity with the hospital gift shop, cafeteria, corridors, and maternity section waiting room. I was the volunteer and very eager gofer for whatever anyone needed and I could easily manufacture the needs of others when what was happening in room 304 necessitated a relaxation of my daughter’s modesty – there’s no way I needed to be witness to that.
Those hours of labor were indeed tedious and slow-moving. So when I was fetched from the waiting room with the news that the doctor had decided that it would be best to do a C-Section, I was relieved. And when I went to the room to see Heather before she got rolled into the OR, there was noticeable relief coming from her direction as well. I was there when the anesthetist explained what would be happening and witnessed his attempt at humor when he asked Heather if she preferred to go to the OR by walking or on the gurney. He sure did a double-take when she said, “sure, I’ll walk”.
It’s one of the most vivid images that will always be with me. I’m now at the end of the corridor, waiting to see Heather get rolled into the OR. The door from Room 304 opens, and out comes the entourage. Heather leading the way, shuffling down the corridor as pregnant as anyone can physically be; Braydon at one arm, right beside her; a nurse, pushing the IV stand, on the other side and one step behind; a student physician, right behind her; all followed by another nurse, rolling the gurney that Heather was supposed to be riding on. It was amazing! Heather Beth Johnson marching triumphantly to the operating room. That was at about 10:00 pm.
After all the waiting (a month’s worth) it was almost a surprise to see a nurse come down the corridor, rolling a baby on whatever they roll babies on, Braydon right behind, smiling and as proud as could be. They stopped to let Janet and I take a look and observe that Meera had a great pair of lungs and also all of her fingers and toes, and then into the nursery. We just stood outside staring into the nursery at Meera in amazement and wonder and awe with the miracle of new life. It is truly one of the most emotionally and spiritually stimulating experiences of my life.
And it was a relief to talk briefly with Heather as she went from the OR to the Recovery Room. Yes, this time she was being rolled on the gurney. It’s not how we envisioned that it would be happening. The whole experience is a reminder that as much as we try, we aren’t in control.
If there is a sequel to this story, it might be the total sense of gratification and love that I experienced on the day after Meera and Heather came home from the hospital. Not once but twice having Meera fall asleep in my arms and stay there so contentedly for at least a couple of hours each time. I sense that there’s a lifelong bond beginning between Meera and MorFar – just exactly as I envisioned it!
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