6 weeks

Sava, you were born in the time of sunflowers, when they lined the country roads, tangled and wild amongst the weeds and the emptying fields. When great tall sunflowers filled the vases in our house along with the last of the summer flowers- the cosmos, dahlias, and baby’s breath. The leaves were just starting to fall. Then came weeks of golden sun, golden leaves, all the world throbbing with your birth color, and many walks we took amongst the crunching leaves, feeling grateful for each day that dawned warm and yellow. By the time you were six weeks old, most of the leaves had dropped and had been scraped into compost piles, collected and gathered, and suddenly our yard was transformed from a leafy, shaded green world of filtered hot sun, to a wide-open place, the sky and the yard emptied of intense color, so that everything seemed a piercing, lovely shade of clear gray or scoured dun. I can’t explain how but it felt nice to walk out into the yard and feel first of all how large it felt with the great quantity of clear air that surrounded me. As if without all the foliage and chaos of summer and fall, the air came rushing in, became expanded in volume. Humidity has fled this place and we are left with all this dry air- still warm- poised on the precipice and about to tumble into a splintering of cold.

Every day I fall in love with you a bit more, as you become more alert and aware of your surroundings, and as I learn how to be with you- more confident in the rhythms of the day and my new life. You are- luckily- a flexible, adaptable, and good-natured baby. Calm and grounded, and now more and more -obviously happy (because now you have started to smile, and so we can tell). Smiling often at us, smiling large when we zoom in for noisy kisses on your cheeks and ears and nose and mouth (you love that game!) We have started to spend mornings lying in bed together and just gazing at each other, talking quietly to each other with our assorted languages.
Me: babbling and singing and sometimes just reciting lists of things: jonagold, pink lady, granny smith, braeburn, red delicious, honey crisp!
You: warble. gurgle. grunt. heaow!

You can spend larger and larger periods of time by yourself in your bassinet, looking up at the world and grunting or talking quietly to yourself, before you realize that you miss me and need to be held (Instantly! Desperately! Now!) If I don’t react quickly, there might be a period of time in which I am consoling you, petting and holding you so close and warm in my arms, purring and trying to fill the void with love and comfort, as your lower lip quivers with the indignation of neglect and abandonment and you struggle to swim up to the surface of a great wet ocean of tears and screams. It is a tightrope walk: a careful dance between independence and togetherness, that we are cultivating.

I am not saying that there haven’t been rough times. I am really exhausted after over a month of incredibly broken sleep, and sometimes you cry with an intensity and a ceaselessness that scares us: we just don’t know what to do to calm you down. I have eaten something that doesn’t agree with you/ you are starving to death/ you are overtired- sometimes it seems impossible to figure out why, and I usually just end up sticking my nipple in your mouth to quiet you down- it is like an automatic mood reset button. Even if the attack is not from hunger, it seems to soothe you to the point in which you can drop off to sleep.
So these are my notes from the field, at 6 weeks of age. Everything is about to change. We are moving to a new town in a new state soon… leaving this house you were born in, and off on yet another adventure. It will be the town of your early childhood, and I can’t wait to explore it with you. I have already started to imagine all the walks we will do, hand in hand, along sidewalks littered with crunching leaves.

One Month Old

Sava is one month and one week old now.  It is surreal, how long it has been since she came into our lives; how normalized our lives have become around this new person- as if she has always been a part of us, flesh of our flesh; and yet, at the same time so utterly strange and foreign and unknowable- One month! We have known her for such a very short time. 

A time of intense highs and lows, both fueled by the mind-altering drug of sleep deprivation.

The highs:  Sleeping chest to chest at night, the rise and fall of her breathing contentment as her little arms and legs sprawl out like tent stakes. Her face, moments after breastfeeding, when I lift her up to my shoulder to burp, and she angles her big moonface up to look at me, blinking slowly with slitted eyes and with such milky bliss, as if her heart could break from her love of the nipple, the milk, my face looking down at her.  Daily walks, with Nico running wildly ahead and Sava bundled against my chest in the sling so that I again feel pregnant with her- as we walk up into the hills above our town, feeling the leaves crunch under my feet and the trees throbbing with their last bursts of color- the air and the light equally golden and warm in this yellow time. Sava making her little burps and mews and grunts of sound, while I try out my rusty voice and sing scratchy akward made-up lullabies in preparation for the time in which such songs will be demanded of me.

The lows:  To prove that I am possibly the worst mother in the history of motherhood, Sava got her first head cold at the tender age of one month. I know that is setting some type of record, and proof that we have been pushing her too much, have been going out into the world too often and exposing her to the wickedness of it all... My punishment was a horrific night in which Sava could not breathe through either nostril, and thus could not breastfeed, and just got hungrier and hungrier, until she was basically just screaming in helpless pain, while I sat up in bed sobbing alongside her. No sleep, until we both just passed out from exhaustion, at which point salvation arrived in the form of a phone call from my lovely friend Molly, who wanted to know if she could drop off a squash lasagna and was this a good time? Molly, my angel acupuncturist, two-time mother, and I sobbed the problem to her and she said no problem- she would pick up saline drops and a nasal syringe on her way over..... Nasal syringe? I had never heard of such things. We manually sucked the goop out of Sava's nose and just like that, she was good as new, and nasal syringes were added to the tiny arsenal of things I know about child-raising, against the vast frightening mountain of things that I don't.

Sneak Preview

Last night we were gifted a sneak preview of the Sava to come. She fell fast asleep cradled in Jamba's arm and remained that way for several hours. At one point she entered into what seemed like a very forceful dream. It began with moaning and grunting while she pumped her little legs and soon she was making all sorts of sounds in a broad range. At one point she was making what sounded positively like the garbled voice of a little girl.

…And then she fell fast asleep while we sat flabbergasted. 

Sava's first week

Dear loved ones,

It has been the happiest week of our lives-  being absorbed in the most intimate, inward sacred space as we learn this new little person. Sava is the most gorgeous and perfect being I have ever encountered and I am sleeplostly falling in love with her, as is her smitten papa, one of the most natural fathers I have ever witnessed.  One of my new favorite activities is listening to their hilarious dialogues during diaper changes. She performing her repertoire of grunts while he cheerfully comments on the various aspects of her personal hygiene.

One of the things we like best is that she came equipped with a panoply of sound effects, which range from quiet doe-like pantings  of deepsleep, to the scratchy grunts of her frequent flatulent/pooping episodes, to my personal favorite: this strange "kewpy" noise she makes while engrossed in her happiest of activities: breastfeeding. She maintains a fierce delight in the task and I sense the beginnings of a perfectly timed comedic wit in the way she repeatedly dive-bombs my breasts with this wild grin on her face, before finally settling down to business.  I know it is too early for her to be consciously grinning- but I swear she is. 

So this first week has been mesmerizing, overwhelming, and exhausting. We are adjusting to catching two hour snatches of sleep between her episodes of grunting hunger . We are adjusting to a quiet house as my parents have just left yesterday, leaving us stunned and alone. How are we ever to manage without them? For a week Sava and I have been the still, quiet center of a house swirling with activity: my mom gardening and cooking gourmet meals around the clock while Jamba and Dad find all sorts of things to fix around the house.  Kitchen drawers fixed, hall closets and garage reorganized, and a new bathroom sink to wash Sava in: our little house is getting into infant shape.  It has been wonderful having my parents around- four extra eager hands to hold her, and having us all bond as a new arrangement of family. My mom taking Sava on morning walks around town, letting us sleep in for a precious extra two hours each morning: my dad rocking her by the window.  They are the most besotted of grandparents, and we will miss them. 

On Laundry: 

On Friday our old washing machine committed suicide, having looked into the future and deciding that life would not be worth living with an infant around. (Note: having a homebirth takes a lot of towels).  Secretly, we are all glad, as our washer and dryer had been painted purple by the previous owner. She hadn't neglected the knobs and dials either in her enthusiasm for purple, so for an entire year Jamba had been doing our laundry by guesswork and estimation.  (I secretly wonder if my mom hadn't had something to do with the washer's demise, judging from the glee with which she started researching new machines that afternoon.) 

On Smell:

Jamba, upon taking Sava on the first of what promises to be many olfactory adventures around the garden, held a mint leaf up to Sava's nose. Her eyes popped open and she just stared, transfixed and unblinking, for a minute looking up at the sky.  

She did not care so much for lemon balm.

On Sight:

Her eyelashes are the longest things I have ever seen.  Her lips are like rosebuds. She has a light covering of soft black hair on her back, which makes her look like a little monkey when she is resting all scrunched up on our chests.  The person she most resembles in the house is not Jamba or I, but rather our statue of fat-cheeked Hotei, the laughing Buddha. There has been raised some question of parentage.

On Labour:

Our home birth was the most incredible experience of our lives. We had a beautiful textbook labour-  no complications-  with fires and candles lit, beautiful music, soft light, and the most pain I have ever experienced in my life. Thank god I was not in a hospital with access to drugs. Thank god I had Jamba beside me, helping me to ride the waves of the experience with such beautiful and loving  and fierce energy. It was a transformative experience and it taught me about inner strength and surrender and what I can accomplish, and god, what a relief and joy it was to finally push her out. I just really loved that moment. Jamba caught her and got to bond with her for the first moments, while I rested my head on Heidi's lap and caught my breath, processing the fact that it was all over and all begun. And then, so crazy, to turn around and to be handed this person: this whole entire person all squirmy and covered with vernix and real,  just starting to cry. 

That is all for now. Thank you all for your patience, in allowing us the silence and interiority of this week. We have been so blessed with your calls and messages and prayers of support and love, and look forward to reopening the lines of communication now that we are starting to get a feel for this new terrain. We love you!

Erin, Jamba, and Sava

pictures of Sava's first week!   

Sava Talulah Dunn

Sava 8lbs 8oz came into the world at 1:45 am on September 21, 2008. Erin had a remarkable labor lasting nearly 12 hours and she spent much of that time laboring in our candle lit bedroom or in the birthing tub in the living room. Robin, Tom, Heidi and our midwife Elizabeth were amazing. Sava is sleeping soundly and we are all completely smitten.

For more photos see: http://jamba.smugmug.com/gallery/6025053_ByupK#377076941_PeQaS

Love to everyone!  

September 15th- D- Day!!!

Officially September 15th is our estimated due date which means Sava could pop out at any time.... and we are all ready- baby clothes washed and sealed away, tarp and receiving blankets safely stowed, toys dangling, Nico schooled on the requirements of big sisterhood, and Grandma and Grandpa Donnelly zooming along the back roads of Utah on their way to Colorado.

We know we’re getting close because now both of us have pregnancy brain. Pregnancy brain is the state of mind in which one forgets how to do common tasks like closing the car door after parking, adding bleach to mixed loads, and…um…

For the last week we’ve been in the other-worldly zone. Our glassware and bowls have suddenly vanished from the cupboards but neither of us knows where they might be or what could have happened, and tonight, the night of our due date, we returned home and began furiously cleaning and rearranging the house. It seemed evident that we might just have Sava tonight when, at the end of the multi-hour cleaning and raking session Erin began removing the window treatments and hardware from our new French doors with the electric screwdriver, complaining fiercely about the holes being left behind and what we might possible do to patch them.

This is a time of boundless energy and the deepest exhaustion. But mostly, as things are wrapping up at work and the house is scrubbed and filled with the most delicious welcoming presents from our friends and family (thank you all!!), we are filled with just this wonderful sense of quiet, anticipatory joy. Poised at the precipice of some grand narrative event that is about to unfold - with only the vaguest general idea of how things might go. The details, in all their exquisite and sense-laden precision, well- those are to come. We will attempt to describe them to you to the best of our abilities, once we are on the other side with a wiggling little grublet in our arms. With a- how did somebody put it? "a perfectly unfolded, 10 fingered flower". We can't wait.

Thank you all, we love you!

Erin and Jamba

P.S
Oh, by the way, for those of you who have been asking or wondering what to get for us - we are really well supplied with all things except diapers... we are going the Bum Genius (one size fits all) route and so far we have four out of the 26 or so we will need. A diaper would be a wonderful and practical gift and we would love you forever! (and think of you each time we changed her).

Our address is:

PO Box 1152 Erie CO 80516

33 WEEKS

What does 33 weeks mean, exactly?

Last night we put the air conditioner in the window, cooled it down to a comfortable 78 degrees, and sat in bed eating watermelon while watching the movie "Fool’s Gold". We were on the hunt for a “brainless” movie, but what we got was so much more; a collection of reductive and imbecilic stereotypes barely worth the energy it took to put down my watermelon and click it off midstream.

You have to understand that Erin’s stomach is currently taut to the point of bursting and it seems every new day brings with it new challenges and joys. The joy of not being able to see one’s own feet. The joy of being helplessly pinned to the floor by gravity. The joy of knowing that little Sava has her eyes wide open when she rotates her upper body and hips and thrusts the kicking leg out directly to into the surrounding viscera and bone. The joy of having a child still in the womb who can already program her own photo categories on smugmug (http://jamba.smugmug.com/Sava). The challenge of getting enough sleep.

Erin typically drops off the map of the living anywhere between 9-10:30 pm and awakens anywhere from 5-6: 30 am. Several days ago I awoke to find her doing taxes in the guest bedroom. It was only 7am, but it was obvious she had been awake for hours as countless stacks of paperwork hemmed her in. When she noticed me standing in the doorway she swiftly inquired into various W-2 and W-9 forms she noticed missing and then returned quite busily to the task of sorting and filing.

Last night I agreed to go to sleep early in order to help Mama get some needed rest. Every so often we receive meat and surveillance cam catalogs addressed to the former owner of our PO Box. Following the movie, I read to Erin from the “Allen Brothers: Great Steakhouse Steaks®” catalog to help put her in the sleepy zone. Roe Conn, whoever that is, is quoted as saying of the Allen Brothers catalog, "No question, they have the best tasting...Heat&Serve items available anywhere!” What could be a more perfect endorsement? After informing Erin that August is considered “steak hamburger” month, I read her a little of the soothing prose:

16 steak burgers 6 oz. ea.
Baby Back Ribs uncooked
10 half slabs 12-13 lbs.
USDA PRIME Filet Mignons close-trim 4 filets 8 oz. ea.
USDA PRIME Boneless Sirloin Strip Steaks 4 steaks 12 oz. ea.
USDA PRIME Porterhouse Steaks 4 steaks 16 oz. ea.
Chicken Breasts 8 breasts 5-7 oz. ea.
Veal Rib Chops 4 chops 12 oz. ea.
Domestic Lamb Rib Chops 8 chops 6 oz. ea.
USDA PRIME Bone-In Ribeye Steaks

I barely got to "22 Steak Dogs & Sausage Sampler" when I noticed Erin was fast asleep. Gently I turned off my light and rolled over, but my fingertip grazed Erin’s belly and that was it. Next instant she was wide awake and very upset about my having touched her and the noise of my rolling, the sound I was making with my noisy pillow, etc. She sat up and began reading our latest collection of baby articles while exhaling forcefully and turning the pages noisily, irritably. Only after several “talks” about her need for sleep did she finally forgive me.

If any of you don’t know about pregnancy, it is the best of times and the worst of times and requires you to keep your humor or risk losing your sanity. Case in point. On my way into Boulder today I stopped for gas and started thinking about the future, the 8 short weeks before we are to become parents and everything that that means. Next thing I knew I was sitting in my car in the Shell car wash reading Nietzsche with The Velvet Underground's “Who Loves the Sun” blasting away at an almost uncomfortable decibel.

Extreme elation, trepidation or anxiety can hit you anytime, anywhere--though mostly it is elation.

Today’s anxiety is about diaper service (how do we get it, can we afford it, can we ask for help?) and the continuing saga of my employment search. At 33 weeks it’s anyone’s guess what will happen from moment to moment. Perhaps the rest of the day will be bliss as we wander around in the warm air of Boulder, perhaps Erin will send me heat-soaked emails about having the lugubrious body of a whale, or perhaps we’ll find ourselves in our basement, hurriedly rigging earthquake supports for Sava’s crib with only moments left in which to complete the world. Or maybe we’ll go to sleep early and wake up tomorrow refreshed and ready to face the start of week 34 and all that that means.