|
|
29th March, 2009 at 2:52 am by Emily
I’ve never recorded how it was that we picked Morgan’s name. The whole time I was pregnant, of course, we talked about it, but there was a never a name that we were dead set on. My favorite was Madeleine after my absolute favorite author, Madeleine L’Engle. Her books have had a huge effect on me in the way that I look at things, so it seemed appropriate. However, Adrian didn’t like the French spelling, which I would have insisted on because if it weren’t spelled that way it wouldn’t be the same as Madeleine L’Engle. I also prefered the French pronunciation, but then she’d have had to explain her entire life that her name isn’t spelled Madeline, which is probably slightly more common. Ultimately, the problem with it was just that there are so many girls named Madeline/eine/etc. We were hoping to hit a nice balance between a name that people have heard of and know how to pronounce but not so common that three girls on her dorm floor will share her name (yes, this happened to me… but my mom picked my name so long before I was born that it hadn’t yet reached that crazy level of popularity, so it’s different). My attachment to Madeleine L’Engle is important, hence why I am discussing that name and not any of the others in consideration besides the ones we picked.
Morgan was probably our next favorite name because it was a name we both liked rather than one of us liking it more than the other. We discussed many throughout my pregnancy, but Morgan was always on the list. There are two Morgans that influenced us. One is my dear friend Morgan that I met on my study abroad, who has always brought joy around me and who was also my roommate when Adrian and I got married (and was a fabulous sport about sharing her room with a married woman, which probably did seem a little odd). The other is a young girl, I think now 5 years old, from a family in our ward in California. Both of these Morgans are incredibly sweet people and both come from families for whom we have a lot of respect. We often discuss things we’ve observed from these families as things we’d like to incorporate into our own family. So the name Morgan stuck around so well because of all these happy associations.
 Oh my, little baby cardigan. Happily for me, my mom likes them as much as I do (thank you!). She looks like a little person here. It’s crazy.
The only problem with Morgan was a middle name. I always wanted to give my first daughter my middle name, Hope. So Morgan was the favorite name, but I just didn’t feel like it flowed well with Hope. So we kept trying other names until I realized at one point that her first name was more important to me than her middle name, since we’d obviously be using her first name more often. If we liked Morgan, that’s what her name should be. So we had to figure out a middle name we were happy with, or it was back to finding a first name that went with Hope.
 She has started blowing little spit bubbles a lot. Hehe.
Friend and roommate Morgan’s middle name starts with a J, and she’s called MJ or Morgan J by her family. We played with other initials, but probably because of that nothing else seemed to fit to me besides a J. So we narrowed our hunt down to J names as possibilities. Josephine was one that stuck out, though I couldn’t come up with a meaning behind it besides the Empress Josephine of France, as in Napoleon and Josephine. She probably wasn’t someone you want your daughter emulating precisely, though he did write her some amazingly lovely letters that I used to go read in the library in college when I needed a break from studying.
Very soon before Morgan was born I picked up the Madeleine L’Engle autobiographies I have and on the first page she wrote about Josephine, her first daughter. Well! That satisfied me on having a meaning behind Josephine. I couldn’t name her Madeleine, but at least there could be some sort of connection there.
 I’ve been hoping for weeks to get her little eyelashes captured. I never realized that they were something that would come in as she got older.
We still really didn’t name her until she was born. In fact, for the first three days we just called her “baby” and other nicknames. I was paranoid that it wouldn’t fit her, because I never really had a “yes, this is this child’s name” moment. But it fit, and I feel it is sufficiently pretty for our little girl. And slowly I’m getting used to calling her by it. For about the first month I still wasn’t in the habit of calling her Morgan. Hehe. I’m basically there now.
 I love her little chubby hands. They are so soft, and sometimes as she nurses or sleeps she still grabs onto my finger.
And that’s the story of the name, for anyone who wanted to know. Mostly, it’s really for my own journaling purposes, but I’m sharing it with you just because.
20th March, 2009 at 2:10 pm by Emily
The tail end of a smile!
 Yes, that’s my blurry claw-looking finger there, trying to poke her while making ridiculous voices. It’s hard to get her to smile on cue while you’re also trying to take the picture!
I like this semi-suspicious look. I think she’s wondering why I sound so silly. I’m just trying to get you to smile, Morgan!
Here we go. Not a big smile, but a happy baby nonetheless.
Tomorrow she is 8 weeks old, and next week is two months. Amazing.
17th March, 2009 at 12:52 pm by Emily
Yesterday we went to the birth center for the last time. It made us both really sad because we’ve been so happy there. I was excited that we were in room 3 since I wanted to take some pictures of the room where Morgan was born… not only did we forget our camera (so the only pictures we have are from when my mom came with hers) but we were only there for a few hours afterwards and pictures weren’t the first thing on our minds. Besides, I’m not exactly dressed, so those are just for us to see. 
Here’s me with Morgan on the edge of the tub where she was born. This is where I got into as soon as I could after we got there, and the water felt lovely, let me tell you. That may have been the reason I thought childbirth was so doable, who knows. It was definitely relaxing. Maybe I should say it was soothing, since I wouldn’t exactly describe it as relaxing… more exhausting, actually. Anyway, the water was nice! (Why do I require so many extra words to say such a simple thing?)
Adrian holding Morgan in the chair where he took her after he dried off while I was getting out of the tub and taking care of the, um, after baby stuff. That only took a few minutes because it was a lot easier than pushing out a baby!
This is the bed where we all went for the next few hours, where they checked me to make sure I was okay and did Morgan’s newborn exam and all that.
Here’s Morgan with Val, one of the midwives. Ali was actually the one on call when she was born, but we probably had the most visits with Val before the birth, and we hadn’t seen her since at our other appointments, so it was nice to see her again. She admired Morgan’s beautiful head shape. Hehe. She had heard about the birth from Ali, but we got to tell her our side of it and how we felt.
I’ve tried to not fill the blog with too many stats, but I feel I need to report that Morgan was 9 pounds, 4 ounces, which I think is awesome for a baby who was 6 pounds, 5.5 ounces 7 weeks ago. She’s made up for surprising us with her teeniness at birth by gaining plenty of weight since. It makes me happy to know she’s growing well. Also, yesterday was the first time I felt like she really smiled AT me. She’s been smiling for a while, once when Adrian got home but mostly at lights or windows, which she really likes. So of course that made me happy.
Like I said, we were sad to leave the birth center. We both teared up a bit saying goodbye and telling Valerie how grateful we were to be able to come there. We miss home in California a lot, but I know that if we were there we wouldn’t have had this opportunity, since Orange County doesn’t exaclty have the hippie mentality you can find up here. If for no other reason than that, we’re glad we’ve been here during this time.
3rd March, 2009 at 11:40 am by Emily
The pictures from Morgan’s 10-day-old photo session are up. If anyone would like to look at them here’s the link. Click on the “clients” tab and the password is “morgan”. The photographer said she thinks she’ll be using at least one for the birth center wall, so we’re excited for Morgan to be immortalized there.
All is well. We just got back from California, where we were for the weekend for Morgan’s baby blessing. I’ll put up photos later (the link for the pro photos just took less time, so that one’s up first!).
We had a pediatrician appointment this morning and everything looks good there, too. She’s growing and gaining weight like a champ which is relieving and gratifying as a breastfeeding mama. I mean, I’m glad I’m able to provide enough for her, you know? Because it’s hard to know for sure… though I guess the fact that she has plenty of dirty diapers and acts happy after eating should be enough to relax me on that one… Oh, and last night with all the exhaustion of travel she slept for 5 HOURS. Today I want to do nothing but kiss her all day for such a lovely gift. Hehehe. I kiss her tons no matter what, don’t worry!
22nd February, 2009 at 7:45 pm by Emily
Yesterday was four weeks for Miss Morgan. Crazy how it goes. She’s eating and growing well, and most times she sleeps well, too. I can’t imagine having a baby with a really hard time sleeping. I mean, this is not easy for me as it is, and the times where she won’t go to sleep or is so exhausted but just can’t sleep I really feel like I’m losing my mind. And frankly it’s been exhausting for me because I’m the only one who can feed her. However, I feel like the last few days I am slowly starting to come out of this daze. I didn’t even really realize how deeply out of it I’ve been until I would realize how I hadn’t even noticed the last four days, for example. And now that I am feeling a little more on top of things I feel like “oh, THAT’S what it’s like to feel normal!” I wouldn’t say I’m all the way there, but there are glimmers.
Relatedly, I’ve been feeling annoyed when I see or think about other people I know who’ve had kids recently. I see a picture (or think of one I’ve seen before) and I think, “Are you kidding? She looks so normal. Is that makeup? I can’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth…” Not helping was that it was hard for me to shower at first because of some issues, so for the first time since I was in high school I actually skipped days without showering. Like, um, four days at first. Yeah, sick. It just seems like people handle this transition better than I have, and so then I’m hard on myself for not being all put together. Part of this, I realize, I bring on myself because we hold her so much. So I guess that’s just my choice that then causes me to get so little done besides feeding her, and clearly I’m not changing my choice so it must be more important to me to do that than to cook dinner or something. I probably should have known that newborn days would be hard for me. Caring for a newborn has been easier than I expected it to be because I’ve always been so nervous with little babies, but that doesn’t mean it’s been a piece of cake by any means. And for goodness sake, that lack of sleep is a killer for me. Maybe it’s just that it seems easier for other people because I’m not inside and living that life–I only know my own. It always looks easier on the outside.
So! I don’t mean to be a downer or anything, that’s just a report on life at M+4 weeks. Life is good, it’s just flying by in some sort of fog and I’m hoping to pull out of it a little. Today my accomplishment was folding some towels and doing a teeny bit of ironing. Woo hoo!
I had a little photo session with Morgan because the light was fairly decent. I really feel like I need to learn to use my camera better. The other day I was looking at pictures on the computer and I thought I must be focusing wrong because so many are blurry, and I realized that by refusing to use flash in a rather grey place, when one of us moves at all the picture comes out blurry. I’m a genius for having not realized this before. There is a prime example of life in this baby daze.
This is the “I’m ready to eat now… why are you still taking pictures of me?” look. Aww.
I had a hard time picking which ones to post, so go to the flickr albums (link in the left sidebar) for more.
|
|
