week two: parties and lawyers and doctors, oh my!

Several of you have asked if we’re going to share the baby’s name. In keeping with the anonymous nature of this blog, we’ve decided to give her a pseudonym that matches ours. Her name begins with S, so on the blog we’ll be calling her Ess, or more likely Essie. Added bonus is that “es” means “eat” in Yiddish, and she has been doing quite a lot of that already, with her mamas’ hopes that she will love to es as much as we do throughout her life.

We celebrated Essie’s first week of life with a baby-naming ceremony, which my parents and little sister threw together on July 11. A lot of our friends came, and everyone went around the room and shared a wish or hope they had for the baby. Mama Jae and I each lit a candle, and together took our candles and lit a third. We talked a little about her name and its significance, and gave her a Hebrew name. It was such a beautiful ceremony. I cried pretty much the whole way through. There was just so much love and support in the room.

A couple of days later, when Essie was a mere 8 days old, she had her first court date. As it turns out, in the lovely state of Tennessee, since Mama Jae’s and my marriage is not recognized, I am considered an unwed mother, and in this state, the babies born to unwed mothers have to have their same last names. So I couldn’t write the last name we wanted for Essie, which was Mama Jae’s and my names hyphenated, on her birth certificate. So trampy whore me, my bastard child, and the woman I’m living in sin with all had to go to court to get her name legally changed.

Mama Jae and Essie at the court house

It cost about $700, to add a hyphen and two letters (Mama Jae’s last name is wicked short). And we still have to wait for the incorrect birth certificate and social security card to come in the mail, and then go through god knows how much red tape to get those changed.

That same day, my parents headed back home to Virginia. They made me promise before they left that I would not write a thank you note. Lucky for me, I can go a step further and talk about them on my blog for all the world to see. HA!

You would not believe how much my parents did while they were here. They cooked and cleaned and did laundry and pulled weeds and planted things and fixed doors and put up shelves and towel racks and painted the crib and assembled it and put together the pack n’ play and baked scones and ran errands and took gifts to the nurses at the hospital and bought us a glider and ottoman and brought us delicious meals in the hospital and gave me massages and a pedicure and hosted the baby-naming ceremony and put up artwork in the house and god knows what else they did that I’m forgetting or that they did without me knowing. Basically, they came in and made our lives not only easy, but vastly better. They made it so all we had to do the first week was bond with our daughter. Our house is finally unpacked and liveable and clean and lovely to be in, thanks to them. They were just amazing and Mama Jae and I are grateful beyond the capacity of mere words to express.

Saying goodbye to Bubbe and Granddaddy

On a vastly different note, I haven’t mentioned yet that while we were in the hospital, the pediatrician, on his first visit, told us that Essie’s hip was not fully developed, and that she needed to see a pediatric orthopedics doctor. I mostly blocked this idea out of my head the first week of Essie’s life, because every time I thought about it it made me cry. She just seemed so perfect, so how could her hip be messed up? and why couldn’t she just BE as perfect health-wise as she was in every other way? It turns out that this is relatively common, happening in  3 out of 1000 births, and more often to girls. So when Essie was nine days old, off we went to the orthopedics guy. She got outfitted for a harness, which she has to wear from now until whenever her hip finishes developing, which could be a few weeks or months from now. She had an ultrasound and x-rays. It was a long visit, and a lot for her mamas to handle.

Essie in her harness

Neither the hip nor the harness seem to hurt or bother her all that much. The harness is kind of a pain in the ass—it makes diaper and clothing changes longer and harder and less fun for everyone involved. Also, we have to keep her legs as close to the open position as they can be at all times, so no swaddling at this household (she hated it anyway), and not a lot of time in the swing or car seat. But that’s okay; she sleeps pretty well on her back and when we wear her.

Luckily, breastfeeding got off to a great start and has been going really well ever since. We saw her regular pediatrician yesterday for her two-week visit and she’d gained 7 ounces in a week, and is above her birth weight. Everyone is delighted that that’s going well. I’m enjoying breastfeeding—I love the closeness with my baby, and the enforced downtime every couple of hours or so. I love that my body is making food that is sustaining this amazing human life. It seems incredible to me that my body knows how to do this, no problem. I know I’m a broken record about this, but every time my body does what it’s supposed to, it comes as a bit of a shock.

Ooo! The UPS guy just delivered the birth announcements we ordered. I have more to say about Essie and how amazing she is, and about how we’re learning to be parents, but this post is long enough that I think I’ll save it for another time. Thanks again to everyone for your amazing support and sweet comments—they mean so much. xo

Oh! And if you asked for the password and didn’t get an email from me, it means that I didn’t have your e-mail address. So you can email me at moms [at] baointheoven [dot] com if you still need it.