Note: Ok, so this didn’t get finished until Torsten had been home almost a month, but given how much sleep I haven’t been getting, it’s a wonder it’s being posted at all

Dearest Torsten,

For a long time now, lots of your fans have been protesting the fact that we call you “Small Monster”, thinking that we must be declaring you some sort of abomination. While nothing could be further than the truth (we think monsters are snuggly and lovable and would, for example, invite Cookie Monster and Elmo over for a playdate, although we’d probably leave that whiny Telly Monster at home, and Barney, who is not strictly a monster but certainly is an abomination, is right out…), we are proud to tell you that you had a real name after all, one that your papa and I like very much: Torsten.

For those who are playing the home game (and the one person who rather randomly almost guessed it, knowing of my Thor fetish), Torsten means, literally, in various Germanic languages, “Thor’s stone”.

But it’s cooler than that, really… Old Norse/Icelandic, which is really very poetic (I had a blast studying it, but never really had the time to keep up with it or get far enough to cause much trouble), can use a phrase like “Thor’s stone” (Þorsteinn, in Icelandic) to mean a bunch of things. Not that I looked it up on Wikipedia before we chose it, but Wikipedia does mention that ‘it can be translated to “Thor’s stone”, “Thor’s hammer” or even “adamant as Thor”‘ – there’s also some old myth about a stone that Thor has rattling around in his head, so you can see that it can mean lots of things. Me, I just like the name. Also, it has “Thor” in it (and, let’s face it, it’s much nicer than the English equivalent, “Thurston”), and we know how I likes me some Thor. So whether it means Mjolnir or someone who has a really strong will, we like the name, Torsten, and we hope you do too. It seems to suit you, though I admit, you’re very sweet and I’m not letting some pagan god throw you into the sky to hit things and then fly back like a boomerang, even if it is Thor.

You have other names too, ones I won’t mention online for your privacy, but one is a family name and the other is in honor of a great friend of ours whom we really admire – we’re sure you would too.

But you’re still our Small Monster, and we mean that in the most loving way possible.

I thought I might steal an idea from Dooce (sorry, Dooce) and write you a little letter about you every month for a while, until you’re a little older anyway. And this letter, this letter is about how you came into the world, complete with some very bad pictures because Papa and the auto-focus don’t get along very well.

So Mama had a regular doctor’s appointment one afternoon to check on how you were doing in her belly. So far, you’d been doing fantastically – we’d even gotten to see some awesome pictures of you (which really do look like you when you sleep) – and Mama was just hoping we were getting closer to delivery. She hopped on the bus – for once, fortuitously, not taking 10,000 things with her – and went off to the doctor, hoping to have lunch after the 1 pm appointment.

In retrospect, she should have eaten first.

The appointment started off like every other appointment – listening to your beautiful heartbeat – and the doctor even pulled out the ultrasound to check on your size. Kiddo, those doctors were obsessed with how huge you were going to be, and boy, were they wrong. The doctor was thinking, on this particular day, that you were probably nine pounds, maybe ten, although he still deferred to the judgement of the perinatologist who didn’t think it was much to worry about when he saw you a couple of weeks ago.

Anyhow, then the doctor wanted to know if I wanted my cervix checked.

Now, in case someday you have yourself a pregnant wife, let me just say that no pregnant woman wants her cervix checked for fun – it’s uncomfortable – but we do want to know when we’re big and heavy and pregnant how things are rolling along. It doesn’t matter how many people on the pregnancy board tell us it serves no purpose, we want to know. Let me also say, though, that if we do make a brother or sister for you, next time around, they are going to stay the Hell away from my cervix until I’m in labor. Because this is how the exam went:

Doctor: <poking around with fingers> You’re three centimeters, and… sorry, I know this hurts…

Me: <breathing> It’s ok…

Doctor: <poking around more with fingers> and you’re… whoops.

Me: What?

Doctor: Well, dear, you’re being induced today…

Me: Um, huh?

Doctor: <flustered> I, uh, accidentally broke your water there. Never done that before, by accident, anyway… so you need to get your butt over to labor and delivery.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t entirely upset about this, because any day where you get to meet a Small Monster is a good day. But I also knew that being induced would at the very least lead to an induction, which often leads to a C-section, and no matter how pregnant I was, I wasn’t really wanting that.

So anyhow, I calmly called Papa and let him know what was going on, but that he didn’t need to be in a hurry. They checked me in to a labor room after making triply-sure I knew what being a confidential patient meant (“You do know that this will mean we pretend like you’re not here and we’ve never heard of you, don’t you?” – um, yes, fools, that was the idea…), and I got to change into a very stylish hospital gown and wait on the doctor to show up for a good while.

Meanwhile, I was leaving a message for your papa, trying to tell him what to bring from home, when the nurse actually did show up. At this point, all was a little unreal, and I still wasn’t entirely convinced we were going to bring a Small Monster into the world. You were happily rolling around in my tummy, and speaking of my tummy, at this point, I noticed that my room had a view of the Thai place and remembered that I had not had lunch yet.

I knew I wasn’t going to get any either, and since I hadn’t started having real contractions yet (though they claimed I was having them on the monitor), I wasn’t going to get any anytime soon.

So the nurses hooked me up to some monitors and then started an IV after royally screwing up on the first try (Mama had a huge bruise for days afterward) – one which the resident said really wasn’t necessary yet, and days later I wished I’d protested, since I’m now missing feeling in the wrist where they shoved the thing and left it for days – and Mama walked the halls for a bit in her stylish gown before realizing there really wasn’t any place to go. I went back to the room and danced around a bit there.

Bored bored bored.

Soon thereafter, Papa showed up, calm as Papa always is, and promptly got sent out to eat his own dinner (Thai!!!) and to head home to get some other things he didn’t know I needed when he’d stopped at home on the way to the hospital (note that all of this took him a while, since he took the bus, but it’s not like you were coming anytime soon…).

Meanwhile, various doctors and nurses stopped in and laughed at what the doctor had done – understand, this doctor, who I like very much, likes to give people a hard time I hear, and so I think they were looking forward to getting their own back, but nevertheless, this was my main form of entertainment for a while. The resident who was taking care of us, along with the HMO’s attending physician, stopped in to let us know that we were on a clock. I sort of knew this was going to happen, but basically, they were going to give us a few more hours before they decided to use Pitocin to induce labor. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and while C-sections were mentioned in passing, I really don’t think the attending was inclined to push one. Mostly we just talked about you being big. Which you were not.

Meanwhile, Mama decided to let some people know you were on your way. Via the Internet. Because Mama is a geek (click to embiggen):

But then there was a shift change, and another attending came on. Nice guy, but he was talking C-section from the beginning (with a trial of labor), and that made me a bit nervous. The clock expired and they put me on the Pitocin, which wasn’t initially such a big deal until I was informed that I wasn’t going to be allowed to get out of bed.

Now, in our childbirth classes, we’d been told we could get portable monitors and labor walking around, but the night nurses were having none of that. So I don’t think we had much of a chance to avoid the knife, to be frank.

Also, your Mama is a fool. I was going to try to do it without pain medications for as long as possible. And so they started the Pitocin, and kept increasing it, and I breathed and made it through the contractions pretty well for a long, long time. Of course, since I was lying in bed, those contractions had a pretty poor chance of doing much, and so after a long time, I’d only progressed to four centimeters. But still, that was progress, and I was thinking we’d still get to see you come out of an approved orifice.

Well.

They kept turning the Pitocin up, see. I guess there’s a scale of increments they go for, and the maximum they usually go to is 20 (though they can go higher), and they got Mama up to 20, and… holy cow. Most people will tell you Pitocin contractions are worse than normal contractions, and I can only hope so, because otherwise, I don’t understand how the human race can go on.

We went on with these contractions for a while, you and I, and the only good thing I can say about them is that you were hanging in there like a champ, doing just fine. And that, for the most part, is all I cared about.

(Well, that, and food, and food I wasn’t going to get, just apple and cranberry juice…)

But when they checked me some hours later and I was still at four (stupid lying in bed!), they decided to insert an internal contraction monitor to see if my contractions were strong enough to be making things progress. I could have answered that for them – those freaking hurt, and I suspect they could have gotten the Middle East peace process to progress – but anyway, it was clear they were getting antsy. Never a good sign.

Meanwhile, Papa and I watched episodes of The 4400 (yes, kiddo, your mother is such a geek that not only did she live-blog the start of labor for a few friends, but she also watched sci-fi while having evil contractions…), most of which I can’t remember because they were interrupted by me breathing and going “oh my God, oh my God…”.

We hates Pitocin.

Not long after this, Mama asked for pain medication. We decided we’d go for Fentanyl rather than an epidural, because all I wanted was a little rest, and you weren’t going to be coming all that soon anyhow. Plus, they can counteract the effects of Fentanyl pretty quickly in the baby if they need to, and I didn’t want anyone messing with my spine. But that’s just me.

And that first dose? That was the best thing ever. You seemed to be tolerating it fine, and me, I just felt tons better.

The nurse told me we could give me another dose every hour. Sounded good to me.

Of course, no one mentioned to me that after the first dose, it’d wear off after about half an hour. Or that if the baby was tolerating it, they could have given it to me every twenty minutes. So later in the night, I’d have about 30 minutes of moderate relief, and 30 minutes of breathing through horribly strong contractions.

It got to the point where I could tell when they were going to come. See, there was a machine next to me that pumped Pitocin into my IV, and it would click when it did so. Every other click, I would have one of those insane contractions, and it clicked pretty often. It got to the point where I wanted ear plugs just to avoid anticipating the click. Later, when we were recovering in our hospital room, the leg compression thingies they made me wear also clicked, and I had the Pavlovian response of cringing at every other one. You have a very odd Mama, kiddo.

But in spite of this all, all of the Pitocin and pain drugs and monitors, you were doing fine, little pumpkin, and that’s all that mattered.

About 6:30 the next morning, though, the doctor came in to have The Talk. I had known it was coming by then, especially when my contractions were certainly strong enough to have brought progress (I still am annoyed about having to labor in bed, though…) and I was only at four-and-a-half, and I was so tired from a night of Pitocin-induced pain that I really couldn’t complain. All night they kept saying, “Oh, good, the pain medication seems to be lasting you about an hour”, and I wanted to throttle them and say, “No, it lasts about 30 minutes, and sheer will power is lasting me the hour, damnit!”

But a Small Monster was coming, so what did any of that matter?

Well, anyhow, I’d had my trial of labor, and I was no more interested in subjecting you to whatever Pitocin does to little babies than I was to subjecting myself to the pain, and so after 13 hours of labor, all of a sudden, there were forms to be signed and discussions to be had and strange medications to be drunk, and a few nasty contractions later, we were in the operating room.

You were still, my pumpkin, doing great in there, and I am thankful.

I can’t say that I remember too much – it was very bright, and Papa was in there looking funny in his blue outfit. The spinal they gave me was really very bad, very uncomfortable. I had to sit on the edge of the table while they poked at my spine, and it really hurt. I kept thinking I was going to fall off the table, and let’s face it, no one wants anyone messing with her spinal cord area. Papa and a nurse kept Mama steady, though, and I’d felt the last contraction I’d feel that day.

All of a sudden, Mama was up on the operating table, a big sheet in front of her eyes (thank God – not that Mama didn’t want to see you born, but she really didn’t want to see her own internal organs…), with Papa sitting next to her being mostly soothing (except for mentioning the knife – bad Papa!).

In truth, the actual C-section wasn’t so bad.

Mostly, it felt like people poking me in the tummy, and it was clear everything was going fine. Most of this is kind of a blur to me now, but I do remember them all of a sudden waving a big blood-covered Torsten at me quickly before taking you over to check you out. Your Apgar scores were good (8 and 9, because we’re in Denver and it takes babies a little longer to get oxygenated), and I could hear Papa asking lots of questions.

Oh, and as for you being huge?

Not even eight pounds.

Bite me, modern medicine.

Anyhow, Papa took this lovely picture of you right after you were out (click to embiggen):

And then they brought you over to me – I think Papa was holding you – and, well, wow.

I have never been so in love in my whole life (sorry, Papa ). I have never seen such a beautiful little boy, big wide eyes and beautiful face and all, with perfect little hands and long fingers and lots and lots of brown hair. Mama was all covered with tubes and stuff and couldn’t touch you for a while, but that was ok – I got to lie there looking at your perfect little face and share the wonder of you coming into the world with Papa, and it was the most awesome thing ever.

Soon after, they rolled me onto the cart to take me into recovery, and I finally got to hold you and nurse you and cuddle you. (See picture, and yes, click to see full-size)

Mama was still a bit out of it from surgery and they kept having to take you away to bathe and weigh you, but it was so awesome finally having you out on the outside. Sure, all I had gotten to see were your face and hands, but you are still the most beautiful baby I’ve ever met.

(Sorry about this picture – remember what I said about Papa and the auto-focus? )

Not long afterward, we finally went off to the room where we’d spend the next several days. I have to say, Mama wasn’t really prepared for what it would be like to both be recovering from surgery and becoming a new mama, but in the hospital that was mostly manageable. Mama didn’t sleep much – she doesn’t like to sleep on her back – but you seemed to be fine and happy with the world and were cuddly and slept quite a bit.

We took a lot of pictures of you there, though mostly you’re swaddled, so I guess you’re kind of hard to see… sorry, kiddo

(Click to embiggen!)

Papa was great help in the evenings when he was there staying with us, and you and I tried very hard to learn how to nurse (the fact that the lactation consultant would never come when paged didn’t help…).

It was overwhelming and Mama wasn’t feeling too hot (although, for having a c-section, apparently I felt comparatively great), and sometimes we got lame nurses, and worst of all, there was always someone coming into the room at odd hours to poke you or poke me or check you or check me, but we were doing ok. You’d lost some weight and were turning a little yellow, but we were assured that both things were normal and nothing to worry about.

Finally, a few days later, we were about to leave, when suddenly it seemed as if the doctors noticed your weight and your color for the first time, and it made for a rough homecoming for us. Suddenly, the nurse practitioner who’d thought you were fine the day before was saying you’d lost more than 10% of your body weight (probably because Mama’s milk had just come in, and you’d not had any time to take advantage of it), and you were more jaundiced than they’d have liked (though not enough to treat), and then there were lots of people hovering around giving Mama instructions on how to feed you with supplements and what had been a fairly relaxed morning leading up to your homecoming was all of a sudden filled with worry. You got prodded and weighed again, and Mama was a mess as at the last minute someone tried to show her how to use a breast pump.

By the time we got you into your car seat to come home, you were crying and Mama was about to cry, and poor Papa was having to deal with both of us. We did both decide to stop before we left the room, though

Once we got you home, pumpkin, I admit it, it was tough, but that’s not because of you. You’re really a good baby – you cry when you’re wet or you’re hungry, as babies are wont to do, but the rest of the time, you’re usually just curious, staring around with those big beautiful eyes. The first nights at home were rough, as they always are, and were a bit rougher because Mama had to feed you, then pump, then give you a supplement, and as much as Papa helped, it meant very little time to enjoy you in the beginning, which is too bad, because you’re a very sweet, wonderful little boy. Mama loves to smell your sweet little baby smells and cuddle you and watch you make big eyes when you see a face, but mostly, you smell Mama’s milk and are more interested in my cow function than much else – this makes it a little hard to find playtime, especially if you’re hungry most of the time.

(And did I mention that your Papa is awesome and that you worship the thin ice he walks on? Click to embiggen…)

We’ll try to be better about that in the future – we’re working hard to get the feeding thing straightened out – but I promise you that no matter how tough these first few weeks are, I wouldn’t trade you for sleep or comfort now matter how appealing they are right now.

We love you very much, little pumpkin.

Welcome home!

Love,

Mama

(Click photo to embiggen)

Oh, and Small Monster’s now not-secret name? Torsten.

He’s sweet and beautiful and precious, and we love him more than all the world.

So, out of curiosity, I headed to the U.S. Social Security site to see how common Small Monster’s name (well, the one we’ll call him by) is. Turns out it’s never been in the top 1000 names at any point since the the government started keeping track (which appears to be 1880, based on a lookup for “John”). And if he turns out to be a she, her name will only have ever been in the top 1000 in one year, and that was ranked 995^th

In contrast, my name has, as far as I can tell, always been in the top 1000 since 1950, which is lame. That’s ok though… Christian’s been in the top 1000 as long as John has, and is almost as popular, so he gets extra name-conformity points

Other than wasting time pondering my kid’s name, I’ve actually had a relatively social week. In addition to all of the normal stuff, I went to a nice potluck with the pregnant folks, and last night went to paint pottery with a group of moms who breastfeed (babies were at home this time) – all good fun.

All of this serves to distract me from the fact that in 10 short weeks, give or take some, we’ll have a baby here, and I still toootally have to get the house in order. Depressing!

And, finally, in Small Monster news, for the first time, he woke me up kicking me this morning. I didn’t wake up very far, but he was hammering my ribs, and I thought… ah, good, he’s still alive in there, and went back to sleep.

More proof that I can sleep through almost anything, even aliens trying to hammer their way through my abdomen

Boy. 90% chance or so, give or take.

We won’t take it to the bank (I didn’t see anything), but both the perinatologist and ultrasonographer tended to agree even though it’s pretty early, so I suspect that’s who we’ll be seeing come December.

And there’s a name, but that’s to remain top secret until it’s on the birth certificate.

I will only say that it is not “Ghengis”. I win

So I’ve mentioned before that it’s really nice to have a belly I don’t have to be ashamed of for once. And if I wear the right clothes, I look nice and pregnant rather than just huge (although I often wear the comfortable clothes instead of the right ones – lazy is my middle name. Or, if you’ve read this post, “Lazye” ).

But the other night, since I haven’t posted pictures of anything but, say, macaroni and cheese for a while, I decided I’d take a belly shot and post it. Which means wearing a tight top of some sort, because I sure as Hell am not directly showing off my flabby belly at this point, and shooting from the side.

In good news, I do in fact look pregnant. In bad news, in the good shots, I look like 9 months pregnant (no, I haven’t gained that much weight), in the bad shots, I just look enormous, and in all shots, my butt is the size of Brazil. It does not help that I had a huge ass and a bad swayback before the pregnancy, mind you

So anyway, I’ll keep the shots for a scrapbook, but it may be a while before I show off my pregnantness to the world. Or maybe one night, when I’ve stayed up far too late, I’ll post them anyway.

Oh, and news on the names front – we’ve long since agreed on a girl’s name, and the husband is actually finally talking with me about boys’ names other than Ghengis! Be still my rapidly beating heart. We’ve even found a couple of names we agree are not bad (he doesn’t like some of my favorites, but I can live with that), so our kid may end up with a name other than “Baby Boy Grothoff” or “<insert swimming pool name here>” Grothoff. The gods are pleased.

So today it was hot here in Denver. Really, really hot. It could of course have been hotter, but I’m pregnant, and 94°F (that’s 34.4°C for those lucky enough to be outside the U.S., or 307.4°K for graduate students stuck in their labs for the summer) and really sunny is hot enough for a pregnant woman, thank you, even if it is nice and dry. We get all swollen and grumpy and yucky. We hates the heat. All I can say for it is that rather fortunately, Denver seems to drop about 20°F at night, so nighttime rocks. But the days? Unless it’s cloudy, I could do without baking.

And it’s 7:45 pm, and still 87°F outside. Blah. Cool down, damnit!

I woke up this morning because I was too hot, headed for the (much) cooler basement, and puttered around in a grumpy, hot mood for a while before the highlight of the day.

And then it came. Cold… Swimming… Action. Soothing, cool, clean water. With my husband. In a huge, clean, indoor pool, with very few people around.

Christian and I took a lane to ourselves, had a few leisurely laps, stretched the pregnant woman out sufficiently, and generally had a nice, relaxing time. And it was so nice and cool.

With no air conditioning, you know where I’m spending my summer afternoons…

It was sheer bliss.

Hmmm… if my husband doesn’t get his act together with names, I think I’m going to name this kid after the pool.

So my husband and I are not having an easy time with baby names, mostly because he thinks “Ghengis” is a great name for a boy. (Not happening, dear, sorry… *grin*)

My problem is that there are names I like, but sometimes they don’t quite fit, or aren’t names I’d actually want to use. I stumbled across a new toy called Nymbler though, and I’m interested to see if it comes up with anything… Most baby name sites let you choose by first letter, gender, and origin (although some of the origins are clearly messed up on most sites), and I’ve found that that gets me nowhere pretty quickly.

This one, however, uses a set of names you choose to “influence” the suggestions it makes for other names. I don’t actually know with what information names are tagged in the database, and the site really only tells you that it uses a genetic algorithm to suggest names (which is a cool idea, though without knowing how the names are represented, that’s a pretty vague description – ah, proprietary information ). Neat concept – I’ll be interested to see if it can give us some inspiration.

Hopefully we can come up with better than “Ghengis” if it’s a boy. (Ok, I can come up with better than Ghengis anyway – I’ll just send the husband out for Thai food when I start to push, and by the time he comes back, “Kid-not-known-as-Ghengis” will be out and named…) Rather fortunately, his grandmother has a pretty name that works rather nicely for a girl, so I don’t have to worry about “Ghengisette” or anything like that.

I think. Never know. That evil German guy can’t be trusted