Eden and her mom in November

Here are some pictures of the two of us during her first two weeks.  Try to ignore that my legs are the size of tree trunks.

Breastfeeding: early challenges

I'm logging my experience with breastfeeding so I don't forget it, and in case I can help others in the future.  Feel free to continue reading if you are interested in that topic, or skip if you're just here for the baby pictures!

Owwwwaaaah!!!  Breastfeeding is hard!!

Eden receives her name

Eden received her name on November 21, 2013, the 8th day after birth, which was her due date to be born!  I was so sure that she was going to be late (before we found out she was breech) that it was quite surreal to be naming her on November 21.

We didn't tell anyone her English or Hebrew name before the ceremony.  Our families were remarkably cool about this and didn't push us at all!  This may or may not have been because I was a pretty big pain in the butt about this kind of thing throughout the pregnancy.  Some nonfamily made fun of us though.

Jewish tradition requires a bris to take place on the 8th day after a baby boy's birth, but does not have the same requirement for girls.  We did not know whether we were having a boy or a girl (we thought boy, actually), so we just told everyone to plan on the 8th day.  When she turned out to be a girl we could have chickened out and scheduled it for later, but we decided to go ahead and do it, because 1) we wanted to be egalitarian about the whole entering the covenant of the Jewish people thing and 2) the whole no one knowing her name thing - we could only keep that going for so long.

But we had already started on the e-invitation before she was born, so it had all boy colors and a graphic called "boy quilt" on it. And we didn't have time to change it.  Result:

For some reason, this completely cracked me up in the hospital.

Eden is named for her paternal great-grandmother Edna (z"l), with whom she shares a birthday!  And although her birthday was semi-scheduled, we did not know about that coincidence until after Eden was born.  (Note: Eden also shares a birthday with her Uncle Matt, which we did know about.)

Not sure whether we would do 8th day for a girl again - it felt pretty rushed trying to put it all together!  But it was a very lovely ceremony, with members/alum of my a cappella group Octave singing "On Children," her grandfather speaking about her namesake great-grandmother Edna, and being wrapped in her grandfather's and great-grandfather's tallitot for the ceremony as special family and friends recited blessings.  Her dad even wrote a song for her, though he hasn't quite managed to memorize the words yet!

If you missed the naming, Eden's ... first cousin once removed (?  my cousin) managed to watch it remotely and video it!  Here is the link:

Part 1:
http://youtu.be/EDVbFbKdxI0

Part 2:
http://youtu.be/_DlpByI3zzU

Eden leaves the hospital

Eden left the hospital on November 18.  We maximized our hospital stay, which I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend to c-section patients who are recovering well.  The weather was really nice for her first day home!  I still looked pretty frigging pregnant.  

First Shabbat

As the only exception to my desire to keep hospital visitors to a minimum, we invited some of our Jewish community friends over to do a Shabbat service in the hospital room for Eden's first Shabbat at about 30 hours old.  We had fake tea lights for Shabbat candles, and did a full Kabbalat Shabbat service with kiddush and motzi.  Her dad held her, and she mostly slept.

As you can see, she was about the size of a challah at the time.

Pictures from Eden's birthday

Obligatory newborn looking like frog shots

Believe it or not, these are the most flattering pictures of me from among the first of the two of us together.  We were separated for hours because of her "grunt breathing."

Grammy made her a hat!

Eden is born

Welcome to Eden's blog, created in a bit of a rush as her mom prepares to go back to work in less than a week!  We are backdating posts so that we create a relatively accurate timeline of Eden's existence, rather than the belated timestamp of when we're actually posting it.

Eden was born November 14, 2013, at 7:14 AM weighing 7 pounds and no ounces.

Eden was allegedly 20 inches long, but having only grown 1/2 inch at her 1 month appointment, the pediatrician concluded that the hospital had probably screwed up her length.  So we will never really know how long Eden was when she was born.

Eden arrived via reluctantly-sort-of-scheduled cesarean section due to her complete breech presentation. Eden was healthy but had a couple of complications in the hospital - 1) she was "grunting" while breathing immediately after birth, which kept her away from me for 6 hours  2) she allegedly spit up something green on her first night of life, which can indicate a bowel obstruction (but did not in this case).  Eden's birth story may or may not be drafted in a separate post.