Happy Fathers Day, Octo!

I'm sure you all know how thrilled Octo is to be a dad. Zack is one lucky little dude. Seeing Jeff with Z is just awesome.

Thirty-four seconds of Zack!

Here's a short video of Zack being content and adorable shortly after getting fed.

For the ladies!

I thought I'd get the birth story in from my perspective.

June 9th
Morning
I have the 100th conversation with my mom about my frustration with this scheduled c-section. Why isn't my body going into labor?


Afternoon
Jeff and I decide to partake in a local legend by eating at Caiote Cafe and ordering the famous "The Salad." This thing is supposed to drive women into labor when they are past their due dates. The cafe has books and books full of testimonials about this. So we thought it would be funny to go and order the salad, since we knew we were delivering the next day anyway. I wrote in the book something like, "If this works, I will chuck all my fancified ideas about science and logic out the window!"


Evening
Check it out. Something is happening in my life besides giving birth! I was a finalist in the UCLA Showcase. Here are some of the other winners. Agents and managers have actually been calling me to read my pilot script! As you can see, pregnancy and winning showcase go hand in hand. Here's me and Jenny bumping bellies.

I was very proud of how many of my gorgeous and talented female friends placed and won in the contest. Rock out ladies. Oh, and congrats to the guys as well. And to the producers, who did a fantastic job. It was a fun night.

I didn't think I'd be able to make it to Showcase. As it turns out, I will miss graduation. And I already rented my cap and gown--no refunds. Oh well.



Night
I decide to stay out all night partying and roll into the c-section the next day having slept until the late afternoon. This plan is completely scrapped when I look at my cankles, which have swelled to the size of softballs. Jeff and I go home.


June 10th
I wake up just in time to slam my last pre-surgery meal. Mom calls to tell me she's on the way. I start straightening up the house. And...

MY WATER BREAKS! Holy cow! I can no longer be a skeptic. That effing salad worked! I can't believe it! (Or....it was just time anyway--but still, weird, huh?)

I calmly tell Jeff the situation. His response: "Um, do I have time to take a shower?" We get our stuff together. I'm oddly calm, but also so excited. Could it be my body works after all? Hooray! I call Mom to tell her the news, and she just about starts crying on the phone.

Afternoon
We get to the hospital and tell the nurse I want to try labor. We get put into one of the beautiful labor and delivery rooms at St. Joe's.

Mom arrives and reports that in her excitement, she hit a Lexus in the parking lot. Oops. Turns out the Lexus owner also just became a dad, so he's cool. Mom left him a note, because she's not some LA a-hole! So she deals with the guy's insurance while we all play Scrabble.

Doctor shows up and examines me. And here's the skinny:

No dilation, a little effaced, very posterior, and baby's head not down.

Now...if I were giving birth in a tub of water in my living room, a midwife might tell me to just wait it all out. But apparently when your water breaks, and you're giving birth in a hospital, they don't play around for too long. They want the baby out asap, because they don't want to risk infection. So it looks like my choices are pitocin or continue with the c-section as scheduled. Or maybe argue with these people all day and night about how I don't want any medication--which really doesn't suit me. I like meds, trust medicine.

A nurse encourages me to fight the power and try to deliver this baby naturally! She gets us all riled up.

The doctor reminds me that the baby is a big one. He gives me the lowdown on the risks of delivering the old fashioned way. The risks are all to Zack--shoulder dystocia being the main one. Because I'm a mad Googler, I know all this already. Risk is small, but there. And the injury he might sustain is unacceptable to Jeff and me. Doctor leaves, and Mom and Jeff and I conference. I couldn't live with myself if Z got injured on the way out. I think I could probably deliver him, BUT the state of my cervix is not promising. It looks like I could be one of those women who get the worst of both worlds: 20 hour painful labor augmented by drugs...followed by the inevitable c-section anyway. We all vote to go ahead with the scheduled c-section. It's a bummer, but hey, at least I got the drama, the excitement, the mad rush to the hospital! And even a few contractions!

Evening
Surgery goes great. And when I say "great" I mean I hated every single second of it until I heard Zack cry. For all of you who told me this was a "breeze" um...thanks for lying. It sucked! Hated feeling all the pushing and pressure, hated the spinal block, hated the lack of control, hated the operating room. Hated it all. Until the boy came out safe...and huge!

Doc's quote, and please imagine Isreali accent for comic effect: "Julie, this baby barely could come out of your abdomen, and you thought you would get him out of your vagina?"

Jeff looks over the screen to see Zack and declares, "He looks like a one month old!"

The nurse who had told us to fight back and just say no to surgery concedes, "Um...yeah, this was the right call. Nobody wants to deliver a 15 inch baby head."

Well, I'm glad they all feel so great about it.

Anyway, then I see Zack, and he is just gorgeous. And I continue to be amazed at how beautiful he is. I can't stop staring at him. He's such a big, beautiful boy. I know I'd love our baby no matter what, but what a bonus to get such a cute one. Everyone was right about this: he's the new love of my life.



Okay, one more thing, our doctor always forgets who I am. He's a good doctor, but just not the greatest bedside manner. Confuses all his patients. So just now he popped in and said, "Okay, I will probably circumsize the baby tomorrow..." And we said, "No you won't! You stay away from there! We're not circumsizing!" Jeez! I think I may have to get Zack a tee-shirt that says, "Please leave my big beautiful penis alone!"

Falling asleep on Daddy

Happy Baby (as opposed to...well, keep reading)

This is a still from 34 seconds of video I shot with my camera. I haven't been able to post the video yet, but he was being a super cool chill baby and it was great.

It's amazing how mellow he is now that we got him fed. Last night was a rough one. Around midnight he had the worst crying fit he'd had yet, and we thought he was just crazy tired in that way kids get when they don't even know they're tired, but everything super sucks. I had a nice Daddy moment because I managed to lull him to sleep with a softly sung performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, with new words. We felt all full of ourselves and settled down for a long nap. It was ten whole minutes long.

For the rest of the night, the only acceptable order of things was to have his mouth on a boob -- anything else warrented serious griping. He'd fall asleep right there in mid-suckle, and we'd try to move him to the bassinet, and just the first nudge would get him going. We'd go through the list: try to burp him, check the diaper (that's pretty much the list), all the while he'd be outraged and letting us know. In short time we'd hook him back up and that would settle him and the process would repeat.

Bet you wish you had a pillow like this
In the short run this could work out, because we'd just let him crash where he was. Jules could nod off until he fussed and I totally zonked, making up for the hour and a half of sleep I got the night before. (I have a relationship with sleep that will probably come in very handy: once I get to sleep, I have no problem getting back to sleep if I get woken up. So last night I'd wake up to help out when needed, then re-plotz. Tuesday night I was too keyed up to even try to start sleeping.)

In the long term, this clearly won't work. Jules was already wondering if some supplementary formula was in order when the pediatrician seconded that notion this morning because he'd lost about ten percent of his body weight. (For those of you who don't know, the mom's actual milk doesn't come in for a few days; colostrum, the stuff Zack's been enjoying, is exactly what babies need but it's not very copious.) Some weight loss is de rigueur for newborns but 10% is a lot.

Despite the rough night, we'd managed to keep our heads. Still, when we got the bottle in Z's mouth it wasn't really calming him down. Nor did he seem to be drinking much of it. We were facing another frustrating puzzle with one seriously honked off baby to show for it. Then I made the important discovery you see below.

See that tiny hole in the nipple on the right? See it on the left one? No, you don't, because it isn't there. Yep, my boy's first rubber nipple was a factory defect, designed to tease babies.

Once he actually got the stuff, it was a revelation. You could see it in his face -- suddenly the world became much better than previously advertised. Little guy was starving.

After that he took a long, satisfied nap. He's been way more managable while we burp him and change him today, and has spent a lot more time just peacefully taking in the sights around him. I got some great stare time while Julie took a shower and he looked over my face, a slightly suspicious expression on his. But no more monster baby. Until the next adventure.

Zack, exactly 24 hours old

Took this yesterday at 6:47 PST. Let the photo tsunami begin!

More Zack!

Okay, this is my favorite picture taken so far, but I couldn't post it last night. He's about an hour old. I was bouncing between Julie in the recovery room, the spot out by the elevators where I could make phone calls, and the nursery. I came in and it was the first time I'd seen him not crying. Just lying there, checking it alll out. It took several tries because he kept half-closing his little eyes, and on this one I caught him not only opening them but sliding them sideways. Genius!

Here he is meeting Mommy, at about five minutes old. He was pretty pissed off right then.

Here's one of the half-closed eye shots I was talking about. The bonus is he's gripping my finger. It was sooo hard not to just pick him up while he lay there under the heater.

First family portrait!

Zack and grandma. Julie's mom Marjorie was an essential part of the team yesterday. Not only could I leave Julie's room without leaving her alone, but she's also got thirty years of nursing experience. Rock.

Here he is in my lap last night, right before I parked him in his bassinet and posted the last batch of pictures. This was cool for me because I managed to jiggle him to sleep -- almost every time he's started fussing it's been because he wants more boob action, and I'm a little jealous since I got no boobs. He went down and stayed asleep for about three hours straight! He even went right back to sleep after the nurse came in and suctioned out some drool. Atta boy.

And this is him right now. After a fussy morning (you want Daddy to hold you? No, you want boobs), I went back to our house to get Marjorie, and meanwhile he managed some good burps and his first "real" poop. It was a two-diaper affair. Like I said...genius.

Once all that good stuff happened he sacked out hard. He's been asleep for the whole two hours since I got back. And I think his face looks more relaxed than it does when he was asleep in my lap. Already looking less like Winston Churchill. (I always say that all new babies look like Winston Churchill.)

In addition to the genius poop, he passed his hearing test and was tagged as "perfect" after his first pediatrician's exam. We are totally keeping this one.

Zack's Big Day

Here he is! This is him at about 3 minutes old. The nurse popped off a couple pics, handed me back my camera, I took this one picture, and the battery abruptly died. It's rechargable, and now I know that when you see the battery indicator at all, even looking two-thirds full, it's time to plug it in. I bother with these details because it wasn't so bad -- I got a lot of pix right there using my phone, but the wifi at the hospital doesn't seem to access my email so I can't post those yet.

I cut the cord in the brief window after the camera conked out and I fished my phone from beneath my clean suit. The doc who handed me the scissors was dismayed at this lost moment, but frankly I was "eww, no." Fortunately Julie concurred.

He's very alert and spends a lot of time looking at us as if he's demanding an explanation. There's a picture on my phone that really shows this, but this one here is the best one I've got of his open eyes with my camera so far. And yes, that's a side boob shot of Julie's hoo-hoo. The kid is a freakin' champ at nursing. Seriously, once we got him in position he latched on in like twenty seconds. Kind of like "sorry for that unprecedented surprise today, here's a breast the size of your head as compensation."

This is my favorite pic so far. I got back from dropping Julie's mom at our house at about half past midnight. He spent most of the next three hours awake, nursing, looking around, debuting a monster poop and airing his opinion on the whole situation. When he's not crying he makes these delightful little coos and chirps. I keep telling him it's cool, that the world is beautiful. I think he'll come around.

Jules and Zack are both asleep now; I really should follow suit but I have no idea if I'll be able to. I'm so proud of Julie and it warms my heart to hear her sleepy breathing. Zack is swaddled tightly, every once in a while he'll jerk his little legs up as if spring-loaded. He's pretty awesome.

Check out the stats:

Born June 10th, 2008 at 6:47 PST

9 pounds, 4 ounces

21 1/4 inches long

Head circumference: 14 3/4 inches. Yowza.

More pics later. Thanks, everybody.

Holdin' Steady

Here's the mom-to-be-real-soon chilling out with a game of Scrabble. C-section to proceed as scheduled, we should be seeing the lad quite soon.

Thanks for all the good wishes, guys. And check out the first three words of our game... for real. "May" is relevant too, since he should have come last month.

Zack to arrive on Tuesday, has giant head

Yeah so we went for another ultrasound yesterday, which is standard when the kid's late, and Zack's head measurement was described to us as "off the charts." Since I happen to know that at least one of my cute little nephews was described the same way, we're confident we're not going to have a freak baby. However, his head size plus his estimated weight of 9 1/2 pounds means he's going to be delivered by C-section for sure. The date is set for Tuesday the 10th at 6 pm.

There's a chance it could be sooner. We may try to reschedule for earlier that day, and on Sunday we're going in for an NST (Non Stress Test). If there's undue stress, they'll get him out that day. And of course if Jules goes into labor over the weekend we'll haul ass over there and C-section ahead of schedule. But we had an NST today and everything is too cool for school in there.

It was kind of relaxing, sitting there in the recovery room listening to Z's heartbeat for 30 minutes or so. Every time he moved around we could hear it; sounded like when someone calls you but then puts their phone in their pocket. I said that I imagined him tapping on a little microphone in there and Julie cracked "What is it with the womb? Am I right?"

The ward was unusually crowded, so even though we're anxious to see him it was kind of good that today wasn't the day. On the other side of a dividing curtain was a young Indian woman who had just given birth; she was waiting for a room upstairs to clear out and she was still there when we left.

In addition to the that, our doctor was oddly candid about how he was wrung out and had to get out of town today to clear his head. I guess that's another reason it's good that it didn't need to happen today. That's not a state you want someone in when he's wielding a very sharp knife over you.

When we left the house today we didn't know how this would turn out, so we packed the bags in the car and Julie refrained from eating or drinking anything starting at midnight last night. As soon as the NST test was done we were at Bob's Big Boy down the street for pancakes.

I'm digging June 10th as a birthday. And I was born on a Tuesday myself.

Octo kills one of these.

We found a black widow in our driveway and Octo promptly smashed it and its weird, web covered insect prey. Or egg sack. Whatever that thing was. While we were driving past, I spotted it hanging from a thread. It was kind of of odd that I happened to see it. These things are all over the place where we live and they suck! But something interesting I notice about them is that they sort of "decorate" their little lairs. Ours had a pretty little twig dangling from its web. And I found one once that had decorated the front door of its little hideout with berries and a christmas light. Swear. (Christmas light was not hooked up to power, however.)

Where is that baby already????

Julie and Octo get out of the house

Last week Julie had the bright idea to have an excursion, since we've been spending most of our time at home figuring out new ways to get ready. We went to Griffith Observatory on what turned out to be a perfectly gorgeous day.

Here's the mom-to-be-real-soon posing for me while I acted the shutterbug tourist. You can make out the Hollywood sign on the farthest hill back there. The last time I was at this spot (in 1993) the haze was so bad you could hardly see that hill, let alone the sign.

Here I am while we wait in line for the planetarium show, which was actually pretty fun and informative. It was an overview of the various schemas of the universe through history, with a nice nod to the fact that there's still a bunch of stuff we haven't figured out yet.

In another dazzling display of atmospheric clarity, here's downtown Los Angeles. Not the glam part, but the part that goes first when the Independence Day aliens fire their big city-smasher.

Mssrs. Kepler and Galileo, scientists of note. They're sharing the plinth with some other smartypants dudes, but I forget which ones.

Zack's Room

I guess this pic kind of says it all. This kid could be here any day now and we couldn't be more amped. And we totally dig his room. In a way it's the nicest room in the house, which astounds us because the blue paint completely transformed it. The old color was a dark, earthy tone that Jules thought looked good as a swatch but not so good on the walls.

I picked the blue with the intention of painting fish on the wall. We haven't done that yet because there's no rush and we're digging the walls as they are right now. We did, however, put up the wicked fun seahorse nightlight.

Octopunk Goes Somewhere He's Only Ever Seen in Cartoons

For this weekend's adventure Julie and I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see Pink Martini, this century's lounge band extraordinaire. It was fan-freakin'-tastic. Sold out crowd, gorgeous night, the band was just amazing. I like them even more now after hearing about where they find the music they choose to play. One song was from an Egyptian musical and the band consulted Arabic professors to make sure they pronounced everything right. At the end the orchestra played Bolero and they set off fireworks and huge plumes of flame over the Bowl. Great stuff.

And Carol Channing was there! No kidding! At first I thought it strange to see her not talking to muppets, but from the moment she started talking she had all 17 thousand-plus people in that place wrapped around her little finger. It's like she breathes stage presence and she's 85 years old.

Disneyland!

Last weekend Jules and I went to Disneyland, where I hadn't been since 1993. We went with our friends Bruce and Tekla, and their daughter Geneva, who's four. Adding to the magical magic, we got in FREE thanks to Bruce, who's a CG animator for the Diz.

I didn't score too many good pictures, but we had great timing spotting this parade right after we saw It's a Small World. It was staffed by dozens of Disney dancers who never stopped smiling while prancing around in head-to-toe costumes made of fur. I would've been sweating buckets. I was sweating buckets, just standing there.

Look! It's those crazy flowers that get all bitchy on Alice in the movie.

It was actually an excellent day weatherwise and an even better day for short lines. However, the new Meet The Princesses attraction was still quite thronged with young princessy hopefuls. Pretty much as girly girl as it sounds, but I have to admit the decor of the place was really charming. I'm having my next birthday party there.


Here's me and 'Neva waiting in the only other long line, the new Nemo-themed submarine romp. We weren't surprised at the crowd, since there's billboards for this all over LA. Pretty cool, but I miss those old Nautili.

First stop was the Tiki Room, which I don't think I'd seen since I was a kid. Loved it!

Pretty much everything there was cool, including this nutty future car that pulled the tram from the parking lot. I'd so get myself one of those if I was rich. Unhook the tram and I'm gone, baby.