Dear Friends and Family,
Everything takes longer once you have a child. Writing a Christmas letter, for example. You sit down to write, step out for an
afternoon to have a baby, and all of a sudden you’re writing a new years’
letter instead. 2012 has been an
incredible year of blessing for Daniel and I, mainly defined by the birth of
our son Scott on December 10. Pregnancy
and early parenthood have had their challenges, but holding Scott and smelling
his sweet baby smell (the perfect combination of baby shampoo and diaper
ointment) make every second of it worthwhile.
The first few months of 2012 didn’t leave much of an
impression on me. We had an incredibly
mild winter, which was great for running, but bad for pretty much everyone else
from farmers to snowboarders. In early
spring everything changed. Daniel and I had
been hoping to have a baby, but it wasn’t until we were sitting at the roller derby
(yes, really) in April that I knew something was different. Baby Scott – who did not have a name yet and
I sort of thought was going to be a girl – had transitioned from being a
twinkle in my eye to a very real (if very tiny) part of our lives.
Those first few months of pregnancy were, in a word,
awful. I didn’t have Kate Middleton
level morning sickness, but there were some days I would have given a pinky finger
to be able to check into a posh London hospital to ride out the nausea while
hooked up to a San Pellegrino and caviar IV.
Only in those days my tastes were more of the “spoiled 5-year old”
persuasion. The only things I wanted to
eat were grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken nuggets and French fries. I think the low point was when I started
eating frozen burritos for breakfast.
Really pregnant women get a lot of attention and help, but if the
9-months pregnant me met the 9-weeks pregnant me, she would have offered her a seat,
a back rub, some Tylenol, a roll of Tums (for later), and some chicken nuggets –
just in case 9-weeks’ blood sugar was a little low. There really should be designated parking
spots and seating for women who haven’t told anyone they are pregnant yet.
Around the same time we had other exciting news. Daniel had a paper accepted to a computer
science conference in London. Not
wanting to miss this opportunity for a “babymoon”, we packed our bags and flew
over for my first trip to Europe. We were
there a few weeks too early for the Olympics but were able to tour the Tour of
London, several museums, Westminster Abbey, and Kensington Palace, and see the
queen’s birthday parade. While Daniel
was attending the conference, I went to Cambridge and Stonehenge with a tour
group and visited the (recreated) Globe Theater, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and
Greenwich (home of the prime meridian - where time starts). It was a lot of fun to take our last trip
that won’t somehow revolve around mini golf, Grandma’s house, or finding a
McDonalds with a play place.
Summer brought a welcome relief from the nausea of early pregnancy,
but it also brought some of the hottest, driest weather on record in
Wisconsin. Yeah, there are other places
where the temperature routinely gets into the 100s, but those places tend to
have central air conditioning. It was
around that time we started to consider moving out of our little campus
apartment and finding something more “family friendly” with a dishwasher, a washer
and dryer, and less of a chance of the baby getting heat stroke.
August was an exciting month because at my 20-week
ultrasound we found out that the baby was a boy, and in September we moved to a
townhouse on the west side of Madison. In
November, we finally chose a name for the baby – Ron Paul Ryan Gosling – but later
discarded it for Scott Alan (Scott is Daniel’s middle name and Alan has no
significance but we thought it sounded good).
All the time I was growing bigger and the baby inside me was
squirming and kicking and hiccupping his way into our hearts. Unfortunately he never decided to squirm,
kick, or hiccup his way into a head-down position, and my doctor decided the
safest course of action was to schedule his delivery for December 10 before I actually
went into labor. Daniel and I floated
the idea of a 12-12-12 delivery, but my doctor wasn’t on call that day, and a
nurse later told us that no C-sections were scheduled for that date.
We’ve spent the last 2.5 weeks adjusting to being the
parents of the most beautiful, wonderful, cute, smart, nice-smelling baby on
the planet (if I do say so myself).
Sometimes I wonder if I will ever sleep, get anywhere on time, or do
anything that takes more than two hours (because it’s guaranteed the baby will either
poop, get hungry or both) again, but he’s absolutely the highlight of our 2012
and every year to come.
Happy 2013!
Great New Year letter! Scott was born exactly one year and 2 days after my son, so I totally understand the craziness of the holidays with a newborn. But this year I realized the soft glow of the Christmas tree will always remind me of those sweet first weeks (and all those middle-of-the-night feedings). So the holidays are an even more special time now.
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