The story of Maya

Maya was born at 14:17 on 26 May 2008. She weighed 2.48 kg and measured 47 cm.

The baby certainly brought a smile to everyone's face. We couldn't believe how tiny she was and we were surprised how her eyes were so lively, darting around wildly when she came out, seemingly glancing at all the gathered faces in the labour room before she started to cry. We're not quite sure what she saw that finally managed to freak her out. The parents in law obviously blame it on her catching sight of me ;-)

Labour went to plan but it was a struggle to get the baby past the last obstacle. The midwife and obstetrician kept their eyes glued to her heartbeat monitor and commented that the baby was getting tired as they saw the rhythm starting to drop. I guess the rate kept going down as I overheard them agreeing in low whispers that they now needed to speed things up and the doctor then seemed to pull far more vigorously on the suction cup.

My heart missed a beat when she came out. She looked exceedingly floppy, with dark grey skin and a blue head and face. This wrinkled pouch of skin didn't seem like it could be alive. Then, fractions of a second later it felt miraculous to see this strange being open its darting eyes, see the arms and legs flail and then hear those tiny lungs splutter into life and, the final act, the little cry that confirmed that all was well.

Despite my misgivings about the colours, the nurses reassured us that everything was indeed normal and gave her 10/10 on the initial health-check. Their main worry was the weight which was well below the estimated 2.9 kg we had been expecting. The current plan is that she will stay in hospital for observation over the next 5 days.

Maya (we changed the spelling already!) and mum quickly settled down from the exertions of the morning and mere minutes after labour, the whole ordeal already seemed a distant memory. She started suckling as soon as the opportunity arose which seemed perfectly natural to me until the nurses told us that many babies struggle with that bit.

She continued vigorously suckling for the rest of the day, except when the nurses came to tear her away for blood sugar level tests. Poor girl, its her first day out and what kind of welcome does she get? She gets her foot punctured for blood tests every 3 hours!

She also spent some time in her cot with a luxurious triple spread of hot water bottles. This didn't stop the charm offensive though. We did noticed that we will have to cut her nails tommorrow ... they are quite long and she sticks them in her eyes when she suckles on her thumb ;-)

Happy mum, proud dad and fattened daughter are now exhausted and (mostly) sleeping after an athletic day!


La baleine, the day before!

The day it all happened

The day after