Waiting For My Real Life To Begin

I am happy to report that my fears were unfounded, and Emiko still knew her Daddy when I showed up today, which was later than I intended thanks to sleeping through my alarm. I feel really bad about that, because Sara was beyond tired when I got there. Turns out Emi was very fussy last night and wouldn’t sleep. Sara told me she thought it was because she missed her Daddy, so she tried doing the things I do to try and placate her. Talking more, bouncing her around, holding her hand, but to no avail. Finally, after four hours of restlessness, Sara picked her up and took her for a walk down the hall. About two minutes later, she was out like a light. Though I’m sorry she had to go through that last night, it made me smile a little knowing that Emi does love her Daddy at least a little bit.

Sorry for the cheesy MySpace-style self shot there. It just made my morning seeing the little one again. Sara was really exhausted from the long night before, so I took the little one off her hands for a bit and decided to try my hand at taking some videos.

Sara had gotten up from the bed and left Emi sleeping, and after a minute she started to stir. I reached out to her to keep her calm and warm, and she grabbed a hold of my finger once again. I feel like I’m going to die of an overdose of cute every time she does that.

Unfortunately, the placating only worked for about a minute, and then she started to get a little bit more fussy. Still cute as cute gets, in my opinion. Now, it occurs to me that so far, I’ve shown all sorts of happy pictures of the baby where she’s looking contented and cute; most of them taken while she is sleeping. I do that because they ARE cute. I can’t help but smile when I see them, and hope you all feel the same way. You know, like these.

      

I feel like perhaps I have been misleading you, as these blissful, peaceful, and contented moments are not the only times we share with young Emi. Truth be told, she has many other moods and emotions as well. Such as…

Demure.

Hardcore.

Babypocalypse.

To expand a little bit on that last one, I know a lot of friends and family have expressed their wishes that they could be here and meet Emi face-to-face. I know it’s difficult living so far away, so to help everyone get a better feeling for Emi-chan, I recorded this video.

It’s simultaneously amusing and heart-wrenching how her jaw quivers with rage when she gets really flustered like that. Of course the blood-curdling shriek that truly displays her lung power occurred about 7 seconds after I stopped recording, but you get the idea. I hope now you all understand why I’m so smitten with my baby girl.

Alright, I’ll try to dispense with the gushing so I can give you a real update here. Sara was able to take a shower today for the first time since the surgery, which made her feel a lot better. I kept an eye on Emi for a good portion of the day so Sara could get some rest. I didn’t mind the task one bit. Emiko and I roamed the halls a bit while I sang to her, or even just talked about the ceiling she was watching as we passed under it. She spent a good deal of time sleeping on my chest, as seen above, which was another highlight. There’s something about that little girl that makes even the smallest things seem so huge. I love it.

In other good news, the food supply is starting to pick up steam, as Sara has begun to produce more. Not in full swing yet, but getting there, which is a very good sign. So far, Emi has lost about 300 grams since birth, which is to be expected. The doctors only worry if the weight loss is more than 10% of the body weight, which it hasn’t come to yet. If we do reach 10%, they will want to start supplementing Emi on formula and such. Now that Sara is producing more, it should be a non-isssue going forward from here.

Emi seems to like the feeding time to be a whole-family affair, as she prefers to hold onto my finger while she eats, which can be seen even more clearly in the following picture.

Stop trying to check out my wife! That’s not cool. Not cool at all.

There. Happy now? You’ve lost your privileges. Anyway, Emi eats about every 3 hours or so now, and once the milk production is in full swing, that should increase to about a four hour interval. Things seem to be going very well on this front, so that’s a real plus. Sara started to have a bit of a fever again today, though, so the doctors came in to check her out. They checked the area around the wound from the surgery and prodded her a bit. They seemed satisfied that there were no major issues arising from post-op problems, which is very good. They suggested in increase in water intake, and gave her an icepack for her head. Hopefully it will start to come down again overnight.

Today we had our “watch and learn” tutorial for bathing the baby. Mostly basic stuff that we already knew, but a little helpful in terms of showing exactly how to hold the baby so she doesn’t end up swallowing too much bathwater, which is good. Tomorrow I get to bath her by myself for the first time, and Sara will do so on Monday. I’m nervous about it already, but I think it’ll go smoothly.

That just about wraps things up for today. Unfortunately, I only remembered that I wanted to try to get family photos today after it was already late when no one else was around and the lights were already out. So, we tried our hand at more cheesy MySpace-style self photos, and the results are seen below. Thanks to the flash in the low-light environment, Sara and I decided we would take turns playing the part of the pale zombie with the oversized head in the foreground of the picture.

  

And with that, it was time for me to call it a night so I could head back here and process the pictures and videos to post for all of you. Now, it’s a lot later than I’d hoped it would be when I finished, and I need to get some sleep so I can do this all over again tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Sweet Dreams, Emi. I’ll see you in the morning.

M