BABY SMILES!

I swear that baby smiles are like sunshine. There is something so pure and absolute about the smile a baby gives. They do not smile to be polite or just to make mommy and daddy happy. They do it only because THEY are happy. When Sophie started smiling for real, it was the most amazing experience. For the first time in my life, I felt absolute joy for another person. I have experienced profound happiness and have had some really amazing experiences but never have I felt this as a reaction to someone else.

Her smiles give me a warm fuzzy feeling that can only be compared to the feeling you get when you sit outside on a warm day and just soak in the sun. It reminds me of a trip that Aparna and I took to San Francisco for her 3oth birthday. It was June, but unbeknownst to us, SF is quite cold in June, so we were there in our Baltimore summer clothes while all the natives were in pants and cardigans. Silly us. However, one day we went out to eat on Fisherman's Wharf and the sun was shining that pure clean way it only seems to on Spring and early Summer days. We sat outside and just enjoyed the cool air coming in off of the bay. It was glorious. That singular feeling is the one I get every single time Sophie smiles at me. This is why people have children.

Sophie loves to play on her activity mat. And doesn't she look chic in the outfit her Auntie Aparna gave her. The butterfly in the middle plays a little tune and the wings light up when you squeeze its head. Sophie just stares up at it transfixed and then when it stops kicks her legs and waves her arms like she's just been given a jolt of electricity. Its pretty entertaining to watch. I think it must be entertaining for her too, because she keeps doing it.

Tummy time has been an interesting process. She has been rolling over from her back to her stomach since she was just a couple of months old and does it now pretty much everyday, but once there, she's not quite sure what to do. She grunts and groans and gets herself onto her stomach and then she bows her legs and head up so her body is in a wide U shape. She rocks around like this for a little bit and then starts making unhappy noises because she hasn't quite figured out the rolling back over thing. She has done it, but not consistently and she doesn't seem to remember how. When I have seen her do it, it was quick, no fussing, and then she just lays there like she's thinking, "how did that happen?"

JOYEUX NOEL!

Sophie's first Christmas included a homemade card composed of multiple shots of the princess. Unfortunately, the little miss didn't care for her outfit or the poses and we had a LOT of pictures with this expression. Am I a bad mother to make my baby cry all in the name of producing a good Christmas card?








However, after changing things up a bit, we did get some fun ones. It seems that ditching the headband and pants make for a happier baby.







We spent Christmas day at Jen and Bert's and a good time was had by all. As usual the food was excellent and I ate too much. Sophie was fairly good for the festivities and only cried a little bit. Here's Grandy (Neil's dad) cuddling up to Sophie.

FALL COLORS

That's Daddy with his best girl in front of our house. The leaves were just beautiful that day!












Doesn't Sophie look ever so comfortable in this one with me? You'd never believe it took 20 tries to get one this good.

THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving was at Aunt Jen (Neil's sister) and Uncle Bert's house. That's her holding Sophie, with the oh-so-lovable Louis looking on.









Cousin Tara had the soft touch and had Sophie sleeping, well, like a baby, in no time at all.

LIFE WITH SOPHIE

Early on, like most newborns, Sophie slept ALL the time and we thought, "how lucky are we!" We thought we had won the baby jackpot and had the one that slept through the night from the beginning and didn't cry much. We thought we'd be those rare lucky parents who when asked about their baby's sleep habits, they could say that she was just a dream, absolutely no trouble at all.

Well, the tide turned pretty quickly. And then she only slept when we weren't sleeping and cried A LOT and we thought "well, crap, maybe we're not so lucky." And then I thought that this was my payback for being such a difficult baby myself. My mom has often said that I did nothing but cry for the first year.

And to top it off, she was tongue-tied, making nursing an absolute nightmare. Tongue-tie is when the frenulum, that thin piece of sinew or whatever that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth, is too short. This causes the baby to be unable to push their tongue out far enough to latch on right, which means they use their gums. Ouch. Luckily a visit to a lactation consultant who correctly identified the problem and then off to an Ear/Nose/Throat doctor for a quick laser cut and she was good as new.

As with all things, these troubles passed and she began sleeping a little more consistently and nursing got better. Finally, things were starting to look up and we could settle into a regular life. Neil went back to work after 2 1/2 weeks home with me. Now begins the scariest of scary: that uncharted territory known as my life as a stay-at-home mom.

SOPHIE'S FIRST HALLOWEEN

Sophie took her first Halloween in stride. At just 2 1/2 weeks old, she wasn't quite ready to hit the sidewalks of Baltimore begging for treats, however she was game for a photo shoot in the cute ghostie outfit her Aunt Jen gave her.

BRINGING HOME BABY...

Homecoming was full of mixed emotions. Frankly, I liked being in the hospital. They fed you (and it was fairly good food), cleaned up after you and pretty much catered to your every whim. However, I was excited to be home and begin our life as a threesome.

So, on Tuesday afternoon we packed up all of my stuff - and I had a surprising amount of stuff, most of which I didn't use - and we headed out. That first ride in the car with Sophie was absolutely agonizing. I sat in the back with Sophie while Neil drove. Every bump, every shimmy of the car were traumatizing events that I was positive were shaking the smarts right out of my kid. Not to mention how it felt on my tender hind. However, we made it home without any real damage, other than to my psyche, and settled in.

During my stay in the hospital, Neil had set up the Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper (thanks Randy and Valerie!) that would be Sophie's bed initially. This contraption looks like a play yard but is attached to our bed and has a sleeping surface that is just below our bed's. It places the baby within arm's reach, but out of any danger of smothering. This is a great invention, however, not so great when you're in so much pain that the only way you can get out of bed is by literally rolling out. The Co-Sleeper takes up approximately 2/3 of my side of the bed, making it impossible for me to just get out of bed, I had to skooch down and then out. Needless to say, this wasn't going to work for someone in my condition. Luckily for me, my beloved husband was willing to sleep next to the baby, handing her to me for all of her many feeds and taking over nearly all of the diaper duties those first days. That first week was pretty tough, but we survived.

Not surprisingly, the cats, Potter (left) and Gomez (right) were none too happy to be sharing the house with someone new.

WELCOME SOPHIE!!

I've said it before and I reiterate it now, giving birth is an amazing and crazy thing. You go in as one person and come out as two. Isn't that wild? Sort of a reverse Thunderdome.

On Saturday, October 13th, as I suffered through contractions, I still had no real grasp on what I was in for. I know that millions, maybe billions, of women have gone through this process before, many of them multiple times. That knowledge does not make your own experience any easier, nor does it really prepare you for what lies ahead. Just as I cannot imagine describing the sensations of a sneeze to someone who has never experienced one, I don't think a woman can truly understand the birthing process until she has been through it.

I took a Hypnobabies class to prepare me for the birth. This is a program that emphasizes natural birth and pain management through mind over matter kind of self-hypnosis. I do believe in this stuff and I thoroughly enjoyed the class, meeting some really great people in the process. Unfortunately, the practice of said pain management during the actual event was less effective than I might have hoped. Because of a cervix that was still at 0 more than 18 hours after my water broke, the doctors recommended pitocin. That's fine. I do not, however, recommend pitocin on no painkillers. After about 6 hours of pitocin-induced contractions, I decided it was time to allow modern medicine to do its thing and asked for the epidural. Seven more hours of contractions followed by three hours of pushing and still no baby and the decision was made to bring in the forceps.

Now, I don't want to say that I'm a convert to the epidural, however, if I would have had to have a forceps delivery without it, I might not have made it through. The result of a forceps delivery, not surprisingly, is often a fourth degree tear. That was the case with me. If you don't know what this is, spare yourself and DO NOT look it up, suffice to say it is bad, bad, bad. The end result though is that we had a beautiful baby girl with 10 fingers and 10 toes and we were instantly in love with her.

Sophie Blevins entered the world on October 14, 2007 at 10:17 am. She was 18 1/2 inches long and 6 pounds 13 ounces.