Penelope's First Big Trip

To bring Penelope home with us, we have to get her a passport, which can only be issued from the US Embassy in London. When I went to schedule an appointment, I got an e-mail Friday evening that the only appointment available was Monday (yesterday) afternoon at 2pm. So we spent the weekend gearing up for Penelope's first big trip - three hours on the train, a nice little subway ride and walk through London. Previously, I'd only taken Penny a couple of blocks over to the Grainger Market and even that was tiring on my still-recovering muscles.

We got to do a long-term trial of the Moby Wrap baby carrier Aunt Helen brought over from the US. Works quite well -- Penelope stayed asleep whenever she was in it, though she did come out looking like she needed to reinflate for a few minutes. We also did our first trial of the diaper bag. The only thing I seemed to have forgotten was what I put in the bag and where. The bag was so heavy that Dan had to carry it everywhere. It was an incredibly tiring day because it was the longest I'd been out in a while and I've still got a bit of healing to do. However, it was all worth it because we now have a consular report of birth abroad, Penny's passport will be mailed back to us in a few weeks so we can leave by mid-December instead of at Christmas, and she'll have a social security number by January. We even had some time leftover so we could visit the arthropod exhibit at the Natural History Museum. Overall, a great trip.

We had our first Health Visitor appointment today. I love having medical professionals visit me instead of having to go to their office. Penelope now weighs 7.14lbs and has grown out of the preemie diapers (more for poo quantity than butt size). She wasn't thrilled about having to be weighed without any clothes and lodged a urinary protest (though she didn't cry through the whole procedure, despite being woken from a nap). Generally, both Penny and I are doing fine and slowly figuring out how to work together. We're definitely going to continue to work together on our traveling, though, because going home and then to Grenada should be considerably more complicated than our little London trip.

Passenger Revealed -- Penelope

As you might have determined from the long radio silence, I didn't have much longer to wait after the last post. I posted the Halloween thing, then went to the party later that night. After the party, I enjoyed a few lovely hours of contractions. They went away, though. Same on Saturday night/Sunday early AM. I continued to enjoy irregular contractions throughout Mass, shopping and the new Bond movie on Sunday. For some odd reason, the contractions seemed to get more serious and regular throughout Sunday night. I called the hospital a few times to see if it was time to come in, but each time they said I should wait a little longer ("until the contractions are 2-3 minutes apart," "until the contractions are that far apart for two hours straight," etc.). So I spent some more quality time with my little TENS (electroshock) machine and took a warm bath without the TENS. Finally, when my water broke and I was having trouble resisting the urge to push, they said it would be ok to come in.

I'm guessing the cabbie who brought us to the hospital was less than thrilled if he ever checked the seat after dropping us off (water doesn't break just once, I was pretty wet by the time we completed the five minute ride). Unlike in TV, we had to wait in the maternity assessment area to be checked out -- you know, just to make sure it's the real deal -- before heading into the delivery room. The midwife on duty there had quite a shock as she checked for my dilation and was greeted by a full head of hair. She quickly arranged for someone to wheel me over to delivery -- no time to fill the birth pool, sadly, so no feedback on that for anyone. No time for any pain killers, really, so no feedback on those either. By 10:55 am, we were holding our lovely little Penelope Supriya Saha. Dan was great support throughout the process, staying up with me through the night and massaging my back as we went through the final stages. He took a couple days off school to help Penny and I get established at home as well. So he's a little behind in his studies, but really enjoying hanging out with Penny when he comes home in the evening. He's the one on whom she has puked most often at this point.

So Penny is now officially a week old. We have almost figured out the eating thing, though there are still a few kinks we're working on. She's not sleeping through the night (that's MUCH further down the line as I understand it), but Dan seems to, so he'll be able to catch up with classes. It does help that we have two bedrooms to work with. Penny doesn't seem to be bothered by the racket on our little street, which is great.

On another note, thanks to everyone who has been keeping my mom in your prayers. She underwent her last chemo treatment this past week and is doing really well. She's got another surgery or two scheduled, but generally well along the road to recovery. She's really looking forward to getting to hang out with Penny while we're home over the holidays.

Please understand if I'm a little extra slow in responding to things. I've had tons of calls and e-mails over the past few days and, sadly, sleep usually wins over turning on the computer.