Lura continues to grow, and to gain capabilities along with size. Here she is at six and a half days old, trying not to wake up so we can feed her! Initially she liked to draw her legs and feet up like this frequently, as she had stowed them for most of the last nine months, but over the month since her birth she has been stretching out more and more often.
On 10 September 2003, when Lura was a week old, we finally were able to get everyone together for dinner all at once! Lura has really been keeping us busy.
Cheryl, of course, is the busiest; the rest of us have been trying to help with whatever we can. Of course, that includes dinner, dishes, and laundry; in addition, we have been helping Lura get enough to eat by feeding her some of the time with a tube taped to a finger, while she works up the strength and coordination to start nursing full time. When she does, though, Mark won't be able to relieve Cheryl and let her sleep through the 6 a.m. feeding!
Here Lura is getting some "tummy time" at 13 days old. Of course, there's lots of evidence (and public-education campaigns) that says it's best for a baby to sleep on his or her back; however, the lactation consultant with whom we are working is also a pediatric physical therapist, and she says it's important for Lura to spend some time on her tummy each day while she's awake (not wide awake here, obviously!). Otherwise, she may find the "reversal of gravity" to be confusing enough to slow her down when she needs to learn to push herself up and crawl.
One thing we were a bit concerned about was how the cats would react to this noisy, squirmy little addition to our family. Would they hide underneath the bed as they usually do when we have company? But they've been surprisingly mellow; here Cricket and Lura are sizing each other up in the dining room, where the cats like to hide on the seats of the chairs under the table.
In fact, they seem to have declared a truce for the duration; usually one of them would have chased the other off the bed here!
One early rite of passage is the two-week checkup. "You're going to put that thermometer probe where?" A baby typically loses about one tenth of his or her birth weight as excess fluids from nine months of swimming are eliminated, and then returns to birth weight by the age of two weeks; Lura was right on the nominal curve with this.
Mark went back to work after a week, since Cheryl's parents were there to help and we decided he should save his vacation time for later if possible. However, Cheryl was advised not to drive for a couple of weeks after her C-section, so he took some vacation and drove the family to the pediatrician's office. He wanted to be there anyway, in case Lura hated going to the doctor as much as he did when he was a boy, and needed extra comforting! The office he went to had poor soundproofing, and you could hear the kid in the next room wailing after getting a shot, and you'd know that you were next... Lura didn't mind at all, though.
The next day Grandpa flew back to Hawaii. We're very glad that he got a chance to meet his first grandchild so soon after she was born! He and Mark have a common interest in astronomy, and they had been hoping to go find a dark-sky location somewhere in a local park and look through our telescope; between caring for Lura and snatching sleep when possible, we never found an opportunity! Next visit, we hope.
Grandma stayed through the end of the month, though. We're also very glad that she was here for her granddaughter's birth (just in time, arriving five hours before we headed to the hospital!), and we're extremely grateful for all her help!
Here's Lura after a bath on 20 September 2003. She doesn't seem to mind baths much at all, usually, though on one occasion she seemed to have been spooked by the water. Not too hot, not too cold, just unexpected at that particular moment, perhaps. Anyway, she's cute in a hooded towel!
It must have been a pretty tiring experience, though, since later that day we took her out in the stroller, and she slept through the whole adventure! We went to exchange tickets for the local Civic Light Opera production of "Forever Plaid"; Cheryl's mom stayed with Lura while we went to the Saturday matinee a week later. We ended up with front row center seats, and "Frankie" came out into the audience and sang "Heart and Soul" to Cheryl! We certainly wouldn't have been able to be there without Grandma there to cover for us; as we said, we're very grateful to her for all her help!
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