A Running Tally of Metaphysical Phenomena

Out there in normal person land, I guess it’s been about five days. In the land of the newly parental, however, I feel like it’s been quite a lot longer. There’s not really a whole lot to say about the first day at home. We have a newborn, you know? She cries a lot, sleeps (but barely) at weird times, and pretty much outshines every other thing in our lives. She is so beautiful that neither of us quite knows how to take it in. That really is equal parts parental hyperbole and truth, too. Her head stayed in a great shape (even though that line was a typo that said “heads” until I fixed it), her face isn’t too smashed up, and really, the only thing that’s a little out of the ordinary is her yellowy complexion. That bring us up to today, Christmas 2008, starring Kent, Kirsten, Greta, and a bunch of great hospital staff, enjoying a cold and rainy holiday at Children’s Hospital of Seattle.

Our first visit to Greta’s pediatrician, the 3-day checkup, was on Tuesday, and that’s when all of these things started happening. Let me say before I go any further that you don’t need to panic or anything: Greta’s in great shape now, and there is no health threat or danger going on at this point. So back to Tuesday. She had been a little sluggish through the morning, and we found out during the appointment that she had lost a little more weight than they expect a newborn to lose and was a little bit dehydrtated from the trouble she’d been having eating. She also looked really yellow by the time the appointment came around, so Dr. Heng ordered a blood test for jaundice. We ran over to the hospital for that, and we were almost to Target for some essentials before heading home (we’d been snowed in, see, and too exhausted to function on top of that) when we got a phone call that we should head to the urgent care folks over here at Children’s. So we turned around and came over here. We didn’t have a chance to pick up anything from home, and both of our phones died within an hour of arriving, so if any of you are wondering why you didn’t hear about any of this on Tuesday, now you know. We love you all, and we wouldn’t intentionally leave any interested person out of the loop, trust me.

A little primer on jaundice for you. First of all, it’s very common and rarely extremely serious. I was treated for it as an infant, and so was Kirsten.  As blood cells age, decompose, and break down, one of the substances that comes out of the process is bilirubin (C₃₃H₃₆N₄O₆). When they do a blood test for jaundice, labs measure the concentration of bilirubin in mg/dL. In infants, a count of 5 is considered high enough to be abnormal (in adults, it’s 2), and in most cases, the enzyme needed to break down and excrete bilirubin kicks in soon enough that it’s no big deal. Once things get a little higher (say, the low teens; it varies depending on the specific age of the infant in hours), it’s time for light therapy, and if they get higher than that level, a blood transfusion is in order. If the concentration of bilirubin gets very very high, it can cause deafness, cerebral palsy, or other brain damage.

When we got the call, Greta’s count was 22.9, and by the time we got to the hospital and they took the first blood test, it had gone up to 24.4. Jaundice is not uncommon, but those levels were. They put her under a light for two hours (this helps break down the bilirubin and send it eventually to the diaper) and then ran another test. We were right on the line: if the bilirubin level went up, we would talk about a transfusion in the ICU, and if it went down, we would check in and keep her on phototherapy. We had a really suspenseful 40 minutes or so, but when the results came in, they brought us down here to our normal room and brought a little light bulb bed with us. Things were down somewhere in the neighborhood of 21. This was all on Tuesday night, and we’ve been here with her on the light bed between now and then. She’s pretty comfortable, really, since it’s just light and not heat, and she’s eating well and totally rehydrated. We’re very relieved, and any fright that might have appeared for a few minutes is well behind us. There’s a good chance we could go home tomorrow, and the roads—and Greta’s condition—were even such that I was able to run home and grab some things, including this computer, the phone chargers, and some clothes so we could get showers!

It’s been an unusual Christmas, but not a bad one. We were able to get some red and white slipper socks (you know the kind? in the hospital?) and hang them (with care) on the IV tree built into Greta’s bed. Everyone is all snowed in all over anyway, so we had already decided to do Christmas—with all the rights, privileges, decorations, and food pertaining thereunto—some time in a month or two, what with December being a big fat question mark for us, so this hasn’t been too bad. This hospital is cheery and full of bright colors, and the four main areas are called the Giraffe Zone, Rocket Zone, Airplane Zone, and Whale Zone. They’re all decorated accordingly and serviced by the Train and Balloon elevators. Many of the various machines on wheels are named rather than numbered, so there is the Scotty Giraffe scale and the Purple Whale height board and on and on. It’s all done to keep everyone’s spirits high, and you know, I’ll be darned if it’s not working. For a hospital, this is a really cheery place to be. Everyone’s attentive and informative and so, so helpful. It’s been a good experience.

The best part of all of this has been seeing the spontaneous comraderie that people are capable of when they need it. A large part of what makes Christmas so nice is the sincerity in people’s smiles, the earnestness when they say merry Christmas, and the general (and generally merited) faith of people in each other to be friendly and caring. It takes a true grinch of a person not to be just a little affected by all of this, and it’s been incredible to see it all in the context of a common, and very memorable, experience in the lives of the people around. I’ve shared the elevators (the Train ones, if you’re wondering) and the hallways between here and the cafeteria with the same few people several times, and the speed with which we got caught up on each other’s children or grandchildren, their progress hour to hour, and how we were feeling—even if we don’t share our most intimate thoughts—is something you just don’t see out in the world at large very often. The combination of concerned parents and Christmas day is a potent one, and the encouragement that a small conversation or just remembering what you talked about last time brings is hard to overstate. The opportunity to give and to receive this kind of care has been the best part of the experience, and that was just from the patients. They aren’t even the “caregivers” per se. We’re very encouraged and, surrounded by some truly desparate situations, very grateful for where we find ourselves at this time of our lives. It’s a challenge to say, “I’m grateful that things could be so much worse and they aren’t” and then go forward without forming a “them” mentality for all of the people whose families are truly suffering. Every day can be a practice in compassion, no matter how it shows itself, and here in the hospital is a better chance than most to continue learning.

Wherever you are, merry Christmas to you from all three of us. Thanks for reading my very tired and rambling thoughts and for caring about our little girl. We appreciate the kindness. Be well.

Kent (and Kirsten and Greta)

She’s here! A big 8 pounds and 14 ounces, 21 inches long. Kirsten did a really amazing job, and both of my girls are healthy and strong and sleepy. I think our camera cable is at home still, unfortunately, so no pictures for the time being, but rejoice with us that the newest Walter is alive and well and looking really healthy! More to come later, and pictures too!

10:45: I had this picture ready just in case, and I’m glad I did. The weather is insane lately with the worst, by far, yet to come over the next couple of days (check out the weather reports for Seattle, and you’ll see what I’m talking about), and the roads are better than they were, but the timing still doesn’t lend itself well to driving around. Fortunately, we’ll be staying put for a couple of days, because we’re legit now! Kirsten’s water broke at home about 9:30 tonight, and we made it up here to Overlake Labor and Delivery in our own car. We were grateful that the roads got plowed and cleaned up well enough that we didn’t have to take an ambulance. We’ve checked in, and everything looks ship shape so far. All my other updates will probably be a lot shorter than this one as the action picks up, and if you don’t see anything else until we’re back home… Well, just trust that we were a little too busy. More to come…

10:52: Alright, Kirsten’s done a great job keeping up with barley updates on her blog, and I’d hate to steal her thunder at the last minute. So all the updates will be over at skirst.blogspot.com. Keep checking.

Interesting times indeed at la Casa de los Sobrehumanas Walter. And this is following a couple of weeks of supremely uninteresting times, in a way.

It all started a couple of weeks ago on the 24th of November. Kirsten had some weird cramps and whatnot when I went to work, and she was going to call me if they kept up or anything continued to seem unusual. Sure enough, things continued, and she called around 11 to let me know that the health care people she talked to over at the hospital had told her to come on in. A couple of hours later, one of the midwives was telling us that what was happening was actually the very early stages of labor. This was at 34 weeks and some days, so it was a little early, and they wanted to stop the labor. Fortunately, they were able to do that with some uterine-specific muscle relaxers, and they sent us home with orders for Kirsten to continue that medication and start bed rest until 37 weeks were behind us. Fast forward sixteen days, and you have today. There has been boredom, no small amount of cabin fever, and a whole lot of waiting around, all with continued sporadic, not-too-intense contractions. Today is the first day that Kirsten is off of bed rest and off of the medication used to stop labor, so now everything can just start taking its course. We both kind of feel like things will kick right in and start progressing almost right away, but there’s really no guarantee. It’s a lot of suspense now, and it seems like it will be sort of anticlimactic if we do all of this stuff to slow her labor down and then end up sitting around and twiddling our thumbs for weeks.

It’s been important throughout the last couple of weeks that Kirsten hasn’t been by herself since A) real, actual labor could have started and B) she wasn’t supposed to be even sitting up, let alone walking around and cooking meals, etc. Her mom has been up for a lot of the time, cooking awesome food and keeping us company and just being great to have around, and on the days when she hasn’t around, I’ve been able to work from home (and I actually remained impressively productive on those days; good warmup for the month working out of the office when Greta gets here), which has been a huge help. We took good care of Kirsten and nagged her about staying on her side (“I’m just going to the bathroom!”), and it all paid off. She made it through 16 days! Finally. She’s down at Ikea with her mom today, picking up a couple of small last-minute things for the barley’s room and just enjoying being out of the house and back on her poor, atrophied feet.

Things could turn on a dime here, folks. I have my bag packed, and I’m ready to run out at a moment’s notice. Rather than write a million text messages (each can be sent to ten people at a time, and then you have to write it again for the next ten in the contacts list; that’s for each update), I’m going to do somewhat regular updating on Kirsten’s blog and maybe here as well. It may not be up-to-the-minute, but hey, we’re having a baby, so maybe you can cut us some slack, hmm? Take what you get and be happy about it. Back in my day, we didn’t even have updates.

We’ve done an awful lot of preparing, and I think we are now as ready as we’re actually going to be (not that ready, I’m sure). Once the first couple of weeks are over and we can sort of catch our breath and sleeping for more than ten minutes at a time, I’ll get back to the for real updates with photos and videos and all sorts of sickeningly sweet baby miscellania. And you’ll take what you get, and you’ll like it. You know, some of us didn’t even have miscellania when we were younger…