Well, it looks like our plan to catch this website up to date before our baby arrived has gone by the wayside. We're not going to keep everybody waiting two years for baby pictures, though, so here's a start; we'll have to go back and fill in the intervening two years, from our wedding to the present...
Cheryl's mom flew in on Tuesday evening, 2 September 2003, and within five hours we were headed for the hospital. Great timing, and lucky she didn't take the airline up on its offer to pay her to give up her seat on the overbooked flight!
After eight hours of labor, the hospital staff started to see indications that it would be best for both mom and baby if we had a Caesarian, so they wheeled Cheryl into the operating room, scrubbed up Mark, and Lura Takiko Looper was born at 10:50 a.m. on Wednesday, 3 September 2003. Here she is, one minute old, as the nurses clean her up a bit; she's got a full-voiced cry, and a full head of hair!
Both Cheryl and Lura were doing fine, so as the hospital staff finished up behind the blue curtain here, they let Cheryl hold her new baby for the first time! Mark was dithering between the still and video cameras (don't worry, he and the cameras stayed below the curtain at Cheryl's shoulder), so finally the anaesthesiologist took over the video camera from him and said "go sit with your wife and baby!"
The hospital only allows one person to accompany a mother-to-be into the operating room, so Cheryl's mom had to sit out in the waiting area. As Cheryl was moved to the recovery room, Mark accompanied Lura to the nursery for a couple of hours of routine monitoring and her first bath, and on the way we passed the waiting area and Lura was able to meet her grandma for the first time! Lura was Mark's late mother's name, and Takiko is Cheryl's mother's middle name, so both names honor her grandmothers.
Torrance Memorial Hospital provides the option for new babies (and new fathers!) to "room in" with their mothers during their stays, and we took advantage of this. Here we are with Lura, about a day and a half after she was born (Thursday afternoon, 4 September 2003). Cheryl has been very strong throughout the birth and recovery, and she was moving around the room freely well before some of the nurses expected her to be able to.
Cheryl's dad came in on a flight Thursday evening, and on Friday afternoon Mark went back home to bring him and Mom to the hospital so he could meet his new granddaughter!
Here's a closer look at Lura during that visit (two and a half days old). Her eyes have been wide open, looking around at whatever (and whoever) was in focus, since her birth (note Cheryl shielding Lura's eyes from the bright operating room lights in the third photo from the top).
That is, except when she is sound asleep! Mom and baby were doing well enough that one doctor said we probably could go home after just two days, but to be safe (and to profit from the advice of nurses, lactation consultants, and others at the hospital!) we went home on Lura's fourth day. Here she is at five days old, sleeping in her cradle (borrowed from Mark's officemate Paul after his daughter Claire outgrew it).
On her sixth day, we took Lura to the pediatrician for the first time. Here she is in her carrier, which snaps into a base to become a car seat. Grandpa thought she looked like a fighter pilot in her five-point harness--ready for takeoff!
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