Most of yesterday and into last night you were uncomfortable. We could tell that you wanted to be your smiley, playful, charming self but something was going on in your stomach-region that was hurting. You’d start to smile and play and then suddenly it was clear that something inside was interrupting your agenda. During one of the sunny spots where you were smiling a big wide-open grin that you’ve figured out just in the last few days, your mom was making raspberry sounds with her tongue at you, and then: you laughed! It was unmistakable, so lovely, and we both teared up.
You learned how to be by yourself on the floor recently. The first of many steps towards independence. You are a little over 22 inches long today (your mom measured you) and right now, you are held closely to me in the Baby Björn and looking at my left shoulder. We really feel a greater peace in the house now that we can move about to tend to chores and you can happily coo on your blankets, discovering your hands as they wave in front of your face or staring at these picture rails on the wall behind the couch in the living room which transfix you and have done so for the past three weeks.
This picture is currently Mykala’s phone background. I’ve lost significant amounts of time just staring at it before I do anything useful on her phone.
I went to bed on Tuesday evening, expecting to head to work the following morning, a little disappointed that our baby girl’s due date, July 22, had come and gone without a hint of her arrival. But instead of sleep, I felt Mykala’s gentle nudge and heard her voice just a few hours later at 3am: “My contractions started, I think.” She sounded so calm that it took me the better part of an hour to fully wake up and realize that this is The Big Show. We began timing duration and interval of contractions, and true to my computer geekery, I created a new text document in BBEdit that I would later save as labor.txt, here’s a snippet:
