Weee're Baaack

So it's been a while since I've posted on the blog -- it's been a hectic transition from maternity leave to work, and I've had a lot of travel to boot. But all is good.

So, the update. In the last two (I guess it's now almost three) months, Sahana has come a long way. Operation Unswaddle was finally successful, after unswaddling her first for the 7-10pm stint and then, a few weeks later, all night long. It was just in time, too, as she started rolling over at around her four month birthday, and that wouldn't have worked too well for her at night in a full swaddle. The real success came when I finally had the courage to drop the 10pm feed, at which she was taking only 2 ounces, so she is now sleeping from 7pm-7am! This is an even faster progression than Paras, who was still downing a 6oz bottle at 7 months. I can't express how great it is to get both kids in bed by 7pm and to have the rest of the evening to myself!

Paras is doing well also. We had a rough patch when he was acting up at school and actually got sent home one day for attacking another kid. It was a low point for me, as I imagined Paras ten years from now as a pot-smoking soon-to-be high school dropout. But I made an appointment with the Yale Child Conduct Clinic, which teaches a program called Parent Management Training, which basically involves ignoring bad behavior and lots of effusive praise for good behavior and rewards via star charts and the like. I had a semblance of this already in place, but I've tweaked it according to the training and Paras is already making a turnaround, anxiously awaiting his "stars" and the Skittles he gets at the end of the day based on the number of stars he earned. Hey, whatever works.

Anyway, I have some pictures from Halloween -- Paras went as Curious George (which I had to express order three days before Halloween when it became clear that there was going to be a showcase showdown if I insisted on him being a cow, which is the $4 costume I got for him from a local consignment shop). He is pictured below with his friend Mark from across the street, who was, if you have trouble discerning, a robot. Sahana went as a chili pepper.





More recently, we took Paras for Day Out with Thomas, which involved a ride on a life-size Thomas the Train and bad, overpriced state fair-type food. Paras had a blast. We had a moment when we bought him a $9 Thomas the Train balloon, which he untied from his wrist and watched as it floated away into the sky. He asked, "Where is my balloon?" And then burst into tears when he realized that it was, in fact, gone. Very sad. So I went and got him another one (the lady kindly didn't charge me for it) and all was good. Here he is with Thomas:



All in all it's been a good fall so far. Sahana starts at her new day care on Monday (which is Catholic -- between that and Paras' Jewish preschool, I think at least one person in our family has a chance to get into Heaven). More to come, soon.

Summer Vacation

We are back from our trip to Dallas, which was really fun. Paras, in particular, had a blast. His aunt's house had so many toys -- not to mention a piano and swimming pool -- that he had no idea what to do with himself. Andy and I were very proud of him on a number of fronts. First, he did great on the plane, i.e., he didn't freak out about flying and we didn't have to drug him out on Benadryl. We did, of course, close the window for most of the flight, and when Paras said, "I don't want to go in the air," we totally lied to him and told him we were just driving on a slightly bumpy road. I think he bought it (though he did open the window at some point and saw the clouds outside). Of course, he had is normal share of standard tantrums, etc. so it wasn't an A+ effort, but it was better than I expected so I'm happy.

He also made headway on his fear of water. On his first two days he had to be dragged into the pool (literally) screaming, and cried for about half an hour. However, by the third day he was asking to go into the pool and stood on the first step on his own. By the end of week he was down to the third step (with the water right under his chin) by himself and was having a great time.

His final frontier was the big boy bed. We put him in his cousin Abhi's "Cars" (as in the Disney movie) bed with a bed rail on the side, and he did great! Not only did he not complain or get out of bed at all at night, but he stayed in his bed after he woke up the next morning until we came to get him. I think after sleeping in a crib for almost 3 years it didn't occur to him that he can get out of bed in the mornings by himself (which is fine with us). So, Andy and I are thinking that we're ready to make the plunge to a big bed and are planning a trip to IKEA next weekend.

Sahana, for her part, did pretty well also. She was great on the plane, though she didn't sleep like any normal baby would. She is very aware of her surroundings and just wanted to look around the plane and at the people. Her first few nights were a little rough, since even a one hour time difference threw her schedule off, but within a few days she was sleeping all night again. In fact, she made progress since for a while she's been sleeping all night, but with some on and off crying starting around 5:30 am. Starting about a week ago, though, she's been sleeping till we wake her at 7am without a peep. I'm hoping this is permanent since I'm going back to work starting next week.

Unfortunately, Operation Unswaddle is not going so well -- last night I tried to "half swaddle" (under the arms) Sahana when she went down for the night, and she was having none of it. She screamed for half an hour, and then when I swaddled her completely she zonked out immediately. I suppose having a baby that needs to be swaddled but sleeps all night isn't the worst thing, but I just got scared because I went online to see when most people unswaddle their babies, and read posts by people who were still swaddling their kids at 1 year old. I hope she doesn't become one of those kids. But for now, I'll go along...she is, after all, only 2 1/2 months old.

Anyway, here's some footage of the fun the kids had in Dallas:

Beach Bugs

It turns out that we didn't have to do a "test run" of the Benadryl -- we had a true medical reason to give Paras the drug after we went to the beach last Saturday and he broke out in hives all over his body, we think from the sand. Very strange because it wasn't his first time at the beach, or at the particular beach that we visited. I really hope that Paras isn't allergic to beaches generally, that would really suck as a kid. Especially because he had so much fun. Andy I were so relieved -- we thought he wold be scared of the water, but he went right up to the water and even dipped his toes in a bit. Mostly, though, he played in the sand, as you can see from the following video:



Sahana had a pretty good day at the beach also, though it was hard to get her in a comfortable position because it was so hot and sunny and I was trying to keep her in the shade. She was also a little bit cranky because of her shots he day before. We've noticed that Sahana is very picky about when and where she eats and naps. Paras was like a robot and would take his naps wherever we were, and wolf down his bottles. Sahana can't seem to take good naps in the carseat (isn't that what they're for?) and eats very poorly f we try to feed her outside the house. So she didn't feed well at the beach and basically didn't nap all day, but thankfully she still slept all night so it was good.

Tomorrow we leave to visit my sister in Dallas. Paras is excited to see his cousins, who are 11, 7, and 4 1/2 years old. He'll have good company. I'm hoping that Sahana can adjust to the one-hour time change and the new sleeping arrangements for a week. We'll have more pictures when we get back!

Two Months

Sahana had her two-month doctor visit today. She weighs 12 lbs 2 oz and is 23 1/2 in tall. She's as tall as Paras was at 2 months. She was great during the visit except when she got the first round of vaccines, when she realized that Mommy and Daddy had totally forsaken her. Here's a comparison of her from 2 weeks till now (with the same flowered pants for perspective):





Sahana's a total sleeper cell and we're proud of her. Paras, meanwhile, has started waking up from nightmares, which is not surprising since he is scared of everything. Birds, bugs, lawnmowers, water, you name it. I thought it was normal but when we told the pediatrician he was surprised that Paras was so fearful at such a young age, so now I'm a little worried. We're dreading the plane trip to Dallas next week, because I'm positive that is going to set off a panic attack. We're going to try a test dose of Benadryl tomorrow to see whether that has an, uh, calming effect on the guy. The teachers at school think that it's a sign of an active imagination -- which is possible, since he is a really smart kid. Here he is, "reading" one of his books (Sorry his head is cut off, for some reason the published video makes the screen smaller):

You Are Getting Very Sleepy...

Today I put Sahana in her crib awake for her afternoon nap, and after a little whimpering, she went to sleep on her own! This is the second time -- I put her down awake last night also and she went to sleep without a peep and slept till her 10:30 feeding. I hope this sticks. I think this is a result of Andy and me letting her "cry it out" two nights ago, when she began to do her starting-to-become a habit of waking up at 7:30 after going to sleep at 7. We felt like we should nip that in the bud, and she cried for about 20 minutes, was quiet for 10 minutes, cried for another 5, and went to sleep. Getting her to fall sleep on her own is Step 2 of my master plan, after getting her to sleep through the night. Step 3 will be to gradually remove her swaddle for her various naps and ultimately, all night, though I probably won't begin that operation until we get back from our trip to Dallas in a couple of weeks.

Sahana is very alert these days. She's a serious kid, though: she does smile and laugh, but usually she's got this very concerned look on her face like she's trying to figure out what the heck is going on. She's very calm, though. Even after she wakes up in the morning, she's not screaming for food, and will (mostly) wait patiently until Andy or I are done brushing our teeth, fixing her bottle, and getting our own tea/coffee to feed her (interestingly, her name means "patience" in Sanskrit). Our au pair taught herself some basic shantala massage (baby massage), which perhaps helps to keep Sahana in her relaxed state. Here is a photo of Sahana getting her daily massage:



Meanwhile, we have new tensions on the Paras front. He is deathly afraid of our cat, Chakli. He used to be fine with Chakli, until an incident that happened about a week ago. I was in the living room feeding Sahana, and Paras was with our au pair in the kitchen, getting breakfast. Suddenly I heard this piercing, terrified scream. It was so loud that I thought that Paras got burned with hot water or something. When I got into the kitchen, I saw that Chakli had brought in a bird. A LIVE bird. So the bird was crashing against the window trying to get out, Chakli was jumping all over the place trying to kill the bird, Paras was screaming his head off, and the au pair was using a broom to get Chakli away from the bird and figuring out how to get the window open (Sahana was still in the living room, happily playing with the monkey on her play gym). I was able to separate all parties and get the window open, and the bird was clearly not too injured as he flew away. I then had to clean up the resulting mess, which was a disgusting mix of feathers and bird poop.

Anyway, that was Paras' first encounter with killing/death, and all he could talk about all day was how Chakli had a bird in his mouth and spit it out. He was very upset about it. And now he is terrified of Chakli and screams whenever the cat is in the house. I really think he's scarred for life, and is going to be a cat-hater.

Poor Chakli is starved for attention, and I think the bird was his way of telling us that he feels like he is still a valuable contributor to the household. He has since brought in another live bird (fortunately we heard him come in and Andy booted both Chakli and the bird outside before they came into the kitchen), and today he left a decapitated mouse on the porch steps. Geez, my house is like National Geographic.

The Good Luck Continues

It looks like the sleeping at night stretch is not a fluke -- Sahana slept till 6-7am all week, with a brief hiccup on Thursday, when she woke up at 4 but was able to go back to sleep after about 30 minutes without a feeding. In fact, today she was still sleeping at 7am when we woke her up! It was the first time in months (including during my pregnancy) that I was able to sleep a solid 6+ hour stretch.

We had a fun weekend, beginning with a trip to the Farmers' Market yesterday. It's sort of the place to see and be seen in New Haven, so a lot of Paras' former friends from the Law School daycare were around and Paras got to play with them, as shown in the video. You can see the two older bossy girls who were making the rules (which were, as far as I could tell, arbitrary -- "you can't touch the frisbee unless we say so," being one example) of the frisbee game. But Paras, like the other little kids, paid attention and just did whatever they said.



Today the plan was to go to the beach with my friend Lauren and her family. But, despite the weather forecasts for the weekend, it rained. So instead we did a playdate at our house which, while not any less chaotic than our other mornings, gave me and Andy some pleasant adult conversation.

Meanwhile, my physical ailments continue. I went to the doctor last week for my achilles' heel tendonitis. I mentioned that I had a baby, and the doctor just looked at me like I was crazy. She asked me when, and I told her in June. She said, "You look really skinny." It didn't come out in a complimentary tone, but I of course just shrugged, like, "Yeah, I'm just one of those lucky people." The doctor didn't seem convinced, and ordered me to take blood test. Her "hunch" was right, and it turns out that I have hyperthyroidism, which apparently happens to 10% of women postpartum. The worst part is that after a few months it becomes hypothyroidism, which means that I'll be fat and exhausted right as I go back to work. Yay! It supposedly sorts itself out eventually, but I have to say that I'm a little frustrated -- this pregnancy is apparently the gift that keeps on giving.

SHE DID IT

So Sahana slept through the night for the first time last night. Straight through, from 11:30-7am. She was squawking on and off starting a little after 6, but no full-on crying. I am not getting my hopes up for a repeat performance tonight -- Paras took a couple of weeks to become consistent, as I remember. Plus she had a pretty crappy feeding at 6pm tonight, before she went to bed. I was so mad at her for not eating that I swaddled her and put her in the crib wide awake, half-hoping she would start crying, which usually gives me an opportunity to get another ounce in her to calm her down. But she went to sleep, all by herself! I figured she'd wake up before her 10:30 feed, but it's currently 10:16 and I haven't heard a peep so maybe the routine is taking over.

Speaking of the routine, the 7-10:30 "nap" has been pretty consistent for a while now, actually (knock on wood), which has given me and Andy and opportunity to go on some dates. For our five year anniversary we went out to dinner at a restaurant we hadn't tried before, and last Friday we dashed out after getting the kids to bed to catch the latest Harry Potter movie. I'm pretty proud of us for being able to get out like normal people with a toddler and a 7 week-old infant...at least without leaving the babysitter (the au pair in our case) with her hands full. Both times we came home to the au pair letting us know that the kids slept soundly while she surfed the net and chatted with her family online. Thanks, Gina Ford!

Meanwhile, I've developed achilles heel tendonitis, which is really annoying, because it means I can't exercise. I had it in December, but got some heel inserts (as per the doctor's instructions) and it went away. I thought it was related to the pregnancy. But it's back, and as I went online to see what else could be done about it, I got really depressed because everything I read kept referring to it as a "middle-age" sports injury. I was under the impression that 34 was still fairly young, but I guess I'm officially middle-aged.

Anyway, I've got to go limp upstairs and feed Sahana. Keep your fingers crossed for tonight!

Summer Fun

Last Saturday we went to the New Haven children's museum. I've been wanting to take Paras for a long time but I think he is only now getting to a point where he can enjoy it. They had a reading of a book called "Bugs," followed by a puppet show involving two dogs who shrink themselves and then walk through the backyard meeting bugs. I don't think Paras really followed the plot but he seemed to like watching the puppets.

Paras has been really funny lately with his imaginative play. Here is a photo of him "driving" George in his make-believe car. Notice the frisbee for a steering wheel and the pliers and blanket he's used for seatbelts on George and himself, respectively. (Apparently he's driving in the U.K. or some other Commonwealth country.)



Meanwhile, I finally got iLife '09 so I have my Flip movies on my computer. Here is a video of Paras having breakfast with my mom (whom he calls "Domi"), before going to school:



Sahana had a bit of a breakthrough last night -- she slept till 5:30 am, straight from 11pm! For some reason I feel like 5 am is the tipping point, and after that it's just a matter of time before she's sleeping till 7am. I'm hoping it's not a fluke -- I don't think so, since she slept till 4:45 a few nights ago and till 5 the night before last (after a brief wakeup and re-put down at 3:30). She's also gotten to be a much better burper -- nowadays it's the actually feeding that takes a while. She treats formula like it's a fine wine, and likes to sip it over the course of oh, about an hour. Very annoying. Paras used to down his bottle so fast we had to have a second one on deck because he would go beserk if you took a break to make a new bottle. Hopefully this means that they'll be different in other ways as well, such as throwing howling temper tantrums every night before going to bed.

And So It Goes...

Things are chugging along here. Andy and I are enjoying the summer with the kids. Last Sunday we went to visit my friend Lauren, who lives close by in CT. She has some out of control blueberry bushes in her yard so Paras got to go blueberry picking for the first time. He had a lot of fun trying something new and being with both Mommy and Daddy at the same time, which I think he craves since we are rarely around together. Of course, in the rush of making sure I had diapers for both kids, a bottle, and other kid gear, I forgot both my still and video camera. (UPDATE: Got a photo courtesy of Lauren):



However, I did capture on video Paras' latest craze, which is to put his Curious George stuffed animal in time out for various infractions (that usually Paras himself has committed in the not-so-distant past). Here is a clip of George getting time out for hitting everyone in the house:



Sahana has started to laugh and "talk" a little bit. She loves playing on her play gym and looking at her mobile. Here she is (once again) playing in her crib:



She's still waking up once a night, though now she's stretching it out to about 4:30am after her 10:30pm feed. Gina Ford says that babies will gradually stretch their night sleep out little by little...hopefully she'll make it all the way to 7am soon! She has been a champ during her daytime naps, which is a huge improvement over Paras. I'm still trying to figure out how we got to a point where we were able to put Paras in his crib wide awake and let him fall asleep on his own. Suggestions, anyone?

In the meantime, I started working out again after getting the green light from my OB. I am very sore from my pathetic workouts over the last two days. Back when I was at the FBI Academy, I could do 100 situps in 2 minutes while holding a 25lb. weight. Now I can barely do five situps. I guess I should be grateful I have the time to workout at all, thanks to the au pair.

I have more videos which I took on my new Flip camera my dad gave me...unfortunately, I can't get them onto my Mac because I don't have the latest version of iMovie. My iLife '09 suite should be coming in the mail soon, though, so I'll try to get them up this weekend.

A Ray of Hope

I meant to write yesterday, but I was too tired. Here was my night from 3 nights ago:

7pm -- Put Sahana to bed

7:15pm -- Read stories to Paras

8pm -- Paras has a poop -- change diaper

9pm -- Try to go to bed early

9:48pm -- Andy calls and wakes me up (by accident)

10pm -- Sahana starts crying, 30 minutes before she's supposed to be fed

10:06pm -- Sahana goes back to sleep (on her own -- yay!)

10:30pm -- Feed Sahana

11:30pm -- Paras is wailing from a nightmare while I'm trying to burp Sahana. Put Sahana to bed without a burp and go help Paras calm down and go back to sleep

11:45pm -- Go to bed

1am -- Paras has another nghtmare. Get up to comfort him

2:19 am -- Sahana wakes up earlier than normal. Go get her back to sleep until her normal feeding time of at least 3:30am

3am -- Go back to bed

3:30am -- Sahana up on the dot to be fed

4:15 -- Put Sahana down after feeding and burping her

6:45 -- Get up to get bottle (and my coffee) in time for Sahana's 7am wake up


So, you say, I must have gotten a 2 1/2 hour sleep in that last stretch. Wrong. After getting up so much all night, I was too wired by 4:15 to really get to sleep. So I was dead tired all the next day.

The other night, though, things got better. Sahana woke up earlier than her 3:30am feed again, so as usual I went to put her back down to see if she could eke out another 30 minutes. (For the non-parents out there, by the way, it's a rule of thumb that once the baby is sleeping until certain time at night, you want to avoid feeding them if they suddenly start getting up earlier, as then they will just make it a habit of getting up at the earlier time again.) Anyway, I put her back down around 3 am, got her bottle ready, and went to bed waiting for her to start crying. She slept until 6am without waking up! (I still didn't get any sleep, since I was on edge waiting for her to get up and also wondering whether she was still alive.) So it's nice to know she is capable of going through the night without a feed, though she hasn't done it enough for it to really be a pattern. In fact, she woke up at 4am last night -- which is an improvement over her previous 3:30 am streak.

So, I have a ray of hope. I remember that Paras slept through the night once, and then went back to waking up, but within two weeks of his first all-nighter, he was sleeping through regularly. So I am hoping that maybe by around 8 weeks Sahana will have gotten the habit of sleeping all night. My friend Lauren sent me some excerpts from a sleep book that says that 8 weeks is when babies start calming down anyway, so hopefuly it will all come together. I the meantime, I need a nap.

Mommy Date

Yesterday Paras and I had our first real Mommy date. He's been going on Daddy dates for while now -- every Sunday afternoon Paras will go with Andy on a trip to the pet store to look at the animals, then out for pizza. It started while I was pregnant, to give me a little bit of a break and to give Paras some quality time with Daddy, since Andy is away all week. Since Sahana was born, though, I need a break from cry-eat-poop-sleep cycle.

This date was unplanned, actually: I took Paras to play outside and he got on this sad little bike we've had in the backyard that has no pedals and tried to push himself around on it. His legs were way too long and it was just pathetic watching him try to scoot himself along. So I packed him in the car and we took a trip to Target, and I let him pick out his first real tricycle. The had a floor model and he rode it around the aisles, and was so excited as we took it to the front to check out. Then we went to Friendly's for lunch (mac n' cheese and purple ice cream), and stopped at the ASPCA adoption fair on the way home to look at the doggies and kitties. On the way home he said, spontaneously, "I had a lot of fun, Mom," which made my heart melt.

Paras got to ride his new bike for the first time after his nap. Here is a video of his first ride:



Sahana, meanwhile, continues to grow. She's stagnated at the 3:30-4am wake up...I'm hoping that she'll stretch that out a bit more in the next few weeks. The weeknights are a real drag for me -- since Andy is not here, it's really depressing having to face the long night, not knowing when she'll wake up and for how long, alone. Andy has been a huge help on the weekends, though. Somehow we've found a good pattern of handing Sahana off so we can both have some time to ourselves during the day, and taking turns at night. The whole thing is just much less overwhelming than it was with Paras. I think part of it is that we now know that she's going to emerge from this insanity in another few months: it's easier to live in the moment and just enjoy her as much as we can, even though neither of us are infant people. Anyway, here is a photo of Andy doing double duty with Paras and Sahana:

Growing Pains

So it looks like the sleeping till 5am thing was a fluke. However, 3:30 seems to be a consistent time for Sahana to get up at night these days, and I'm not complaining -- she can usually go from then until 7 am so it's still only one feeding at night. She's getting to be a better burper, too, so the feedings are getting shorter. Last night I was up and back to bed in about 40 minutes.

Sahana is growing like a weed. She has to weigh over 9 lbs. now. Here is a comparison of her at 1 1/2 weeks and at 1 month:





It actually freaked me out a little bit: I told Andy that I was worried that she would end up on one of those shows on TLC, about people with weird issues, like "World's Tallest Man," or whatever. But growing is good, I guess.

Speaking of growing, Paras is a total giant. We can't figure out when it happened, but he suddenly got very heavy and lost his baby face:



He's now a little boy. Andy gets really angry that Paras still wears a diaper -- I agree that he is ready to be potty trained. (Andy said of changing his poopy diaper, "It's like changing my dad." Not exactly the image I wanted to picture.) But, given that he is in total regression mode right now, it seems like it makes more sense to wait. The only good thing about the regression, by the way, is that Paras is drinking a lot more milk.

And speaking of heavy, I've got about 6 more pounds to lose. It's not so bad, actually -- I shrunk back faster this time than I did after Paras. But it was a little depressing when, a few days after I had Sahana, I weighed myself and saw that I had only lost 6 pounds. I mean, Sahana herself weighed almost 8. But maybe that was retained fluid or something. Anyway, Sahana and I got for a walk every day so I'm hoping to fit back into my old clothes before I go back to work. Maybe I'll post a before and after photo...but only if I lose it all.

OK, gotta run, I took a sleeping pill so I can catch some Zs before I have to feed Sahana again. Nothing good on TV tonight.

One Month Down

Well, we are approaching one month and Sahana is doing well. Last night she slept from 11pm to almost 5 in the morning! There have been some frustrating changes, though -- she's been harder to put down to sleep at her naps and at night. I guess she's growing and starting to become aware of the fact that she exists, so despite our Gitmo tactics -- making her stay awake for designated stretches and giving her most of her feeds during the day (which Andy calls "bottleboarding") -- and her being super tired when it's time to nap, she fights it. Andy reminded me that we went through the same thing with Paras, and he ended up being a good sleeper, so I'm hoping that it will be the same with Sahana.

I think Andy mentioned on his blog that Sahana is impossible to burp. It is really annoying. She gets these huge air bubbles and then refuses to eat anymore, and then it can take up to 30 minutes to burp her. If we put her down without burping her, she'll either spit up or wake up early because she didn't get enough to eat. So middle of the night feedings can take up to an hour. One day I told Andy that the night before Sahana burped both during and after her feed within 2 minutes, which meant that I got to go back to sleep within half an hour. Andy's response was, "Yeah, sometimes you have those magical moments." It's really sad that "magical moments" with an infant consists of expelling gas. Sad, but true.

Here is the latest video of Sahana, doing her daily tummy time.

Big Brother

So everyone has been asking about how Paras has reacted to Sahana's arrival. He's taking it fairly well, though of course he is jealous of all the attention she gets. He doesn't take it out on her, though -- he's very sweet with her, actually. Mainly we see the acting out when he gets home from school, when he's already really tired. I have been checking on him at school, though, and they say that he's been great there, no acting out (or at least not more than usual). I think it's helped that he moved to his own room six weeks before the baby arrived, so he didn't feel totally displaced. Plus he gets a lot of individual attention from the au pair, which is not the same as Mommy and Daddy but he's not completely abandoned.

Before it's totally outdated, I thought I would post a short video of Paras' first meeting with Sahana, the day we brought her home from the hospital.

Groundhog Day

It's hard to write updates at this point because every day is pretty much the same. Plus I have no real new poses for Sahana to take pictures in. Basically she's either got a bottle in her mouth, is playing on her play gym, under her mobile, or in her bouncy seat, or she's sleeping. And I have pictures of her doing all of those things. So I'm going to wait until she's doing something more exciting before putting some new pics up.

I am very proud of her, though -- last night I fed her at 10:30 and then she slept till 3:30 a.m. Another feeding and she was set till it was time to wake up at 7 am. I wake her up at 7 am no matter what, as I am following the same book I did with Paras, which is called The Contented Little Baby by Gina Ford. I think Gina Ford is a genius -- she gives a very strict feeding/napping schedule for the first year, and the crazy thing is that it works. She helped me get Paras from complete spaz who was waking up every two hours to sleeping through the night by the time he was 11 weeks old. That is my singular mission right now: to get Sahana to sleep through the night by the time I go back to work in September. This is crucial because I am completely dysfunctional if I don't get a good night's sleep.

Because I'm such a Nazi about the schedule, it's very hard for me to delegate her care to the au pair right now. I like for things to be done in a certain way, and the only person I trust to do it right is Andy. If I tell Andy that she must stay awake till x time, Andy will absolutely make sure she stays awake until then. Or, if I know she needs to have a good feed and should finish the entire bottle, Andy will make sure she finished the bottle, even if it takes an hour (she is a super slow eater). Some of his methods may be questionable, but he gets the job done, which is what is important at this stage. The au pair isn't really used to this -- she wants to run to Sahana and check her diaper if she makes the slightest squawk during a nap, or she'll feed Sahana while she's still swaddled (which just puts Sahana right back to sleep). So right now I have a million instructions written out in black sharpie taped to the refrigerator on when she feeds, when she naps, how to wake her up from a nap, how to feed her, etc. The nice thing about paying someone to help you (as opposed to a family member) is that they kind of have no choice but to do things the way you want them done. And I will say that the au pair has picked up my techniques pretty quickly so I'm able to relax more when I leave Sahana with her.

OK, I know a post is disappointing without new pics so I'll add another video of (surprise) Sahana playing in her crib:

Video Experiment

I'm trying out the iMovie program on my Mac. Here's a short clip of Paras and Sahana:

My First Post

I've decided that this time around I'm going to keep my own blog. I think I was inspired by Andy's characterization of my labor and delivery as "easy"...um, easy for whom? It was easy for Andy -- 3 hours (compared to 11 last time), which left him time to go down to the cafeteria and chow on chicken nuggets while I was being sewn up and manhandled in all sorts of ways that would not be appropriate for me to describe on a family blog.

The REAL story is that childbirth is a horrible, horrible thing. Eve really screwed it up for us women. Andy asked me what a contraction feels like and I referred him to the scene at the end of Braveheart, when Mel Gibson is tied up spread eagle and being disemboweled while he's still alive. That, of course, is completely separate from the actual delivery, which feels about as bad as you can imagine it feeling. Put it this way, in the middle of pushing, I started screaming, "I can't do it! Can you please help me?" to the doctor -- I was hoping she'd whip out a vacuum or forceps or whatever they use to pull the baby out but, being the Yale Health Plan, she said, "No, keep pushing," and left me to my misery.

What about the meds, you ask? Well, I barely got them. The Yale Health Plan tried to trick me into having a natural delivery. I kept asking for relief but they kept putting me off, telling me I wasn't far enough along. Then, when they finally agreed to give it to me, I was almost too far along -- the nurse said, "We might not have time," at which point I think I probably looked like I was going to kill her because the anesthesiologist came in soon after that. Of course, when I finally got the epi, it was time to push, so I was saved from 4, maybe 5 contractions.

So it certainly wasn't "easy." I know it's supposed to be better the second time around, but apart from being faster, I think it was worse. I found out that they had drugged me out on morphine with Paras, which is probably why I don't remember much. Andy is right, though, that the aftermath was much better this time in that I could walk and use the bathroom.

I did have a complication after the delivery, which was that I had a 101-103 degree fever for three days after I got home from the hospital. After running some tests, the doctors told me I had a strep A infection, and not in my throat (though it turned out my delivering doctor had strep throat...I won't go down the road of how I got it). Apparently this was known as "childbed fever" in the 17th and 18th centuries and was the leading cause of maternal death -- the doctors used to do autopsies on the women who had died the day before and would then go and treat other pregnant women and deliver babies, all without changing clothes and washing their hands. Fast forward to 2009: I had the same illness that killed Henry the VIII's third wife. Fortunately, I was being treated by the one doctor at the Yale Health Plan who believes in antibiotics, so I was prescribed about three of them and felt better in another week.

I took the infection -- and the article about breastfeeding that was in April issue of The Atlantic -- as signs from God that I shouldn't put myself through the ordeal of breastfeeding, so I switched to formula...which was the best decision I ever made. Who knew babies could be so much fun when you're not chained to a couch with your boobs hanging out for eight hours a day? I know some people out there really enjoy breastfeeding and I don't mean to denigrate it for those who had a good experience. But I have to say it was a bad experience for me the first time around, so I'm glad to have the freedom to enjoy my maternity leave this time. Plus I'm a control freak so I like knowing how much Sahana is drinking each day.

Speaking of Sahana, let's talk about her. She is very cute, as Andy said, much cuter than Paras was when he was born. She's much calmer, too. It's nice that we know what we're doing this time around, because we were able to structure her feedings from the get-go and she's already able to go from 11pm to 6 am with only one feeding in between. Anyway, here are some photos from Sahana's second week: