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Doug, Joy, and Sunshine (due September 30)
by the University of California, San Diego
(UCSD) Library in July, 2001. |
| Wedding at La Jolla Shores, October 3, 1998 |
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| "You're so big!" "You're so small!" We heard every opinion.
You decide. Joy's water broke at 7 PM on Saturday, September 15th.
We were in the hospital by 8:30 PM and stayed up all night with the preliminary
stages of labor. |
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At Scripps Encinitas hospital, strapped up to fetal monitoring
devices. She's between contractions, so she can smile. Joy
was dialated about 2cm by 4 AM,
and was up to 4-5cm by 12 PM on Sunday. She was fully dialated
(10cm)
by 2 PM, and then the really active labor started. |
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Daddy catches her as she comes out. Joy had a totally natural
labor, entirely without drugs of any kind--no epidural, no pain killers
or narcotic to help her sleep. We both wanted our child to come into
the world fully alert and as healthfully as possible.
We brought our wizened, slimy, egg-headed,
gorgeous daughter up on Joy's belly immediately and didn't cut the cord
for a while. "Sunshine" cried and cried at first when she came out,
but she liked her mama's breast and that kept her happy for the next hour
(a half hour on each breast). Her little eyes were looking all around. |
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Our cute little conehead. After contentedly breast-feeding,
we took her away
for a little while to measure her and clean her up a little.
I stayed
with her, talked to her, and soothed her because I wanted to
maximize her first pleasurable experiences outside the womb, and
reassure her that the world was a nice place to be. No needle-injected
vitamin K shots for our little girl. She responded to the lovin'--she
cried a little, but soon calmed down with daddy's touch and gentle
voice. |
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| The perfect food. |
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Napping in daddy's arms. |
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| Proud grandparents Marvin and MaryEllen Friesen look at their latest
(number five) grandchild. Here was a man who had one day held Joy
as a newborn, just as I now held Anika. The cycle of life is truly
amazing. |
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"Yeah, yeah. Birth, schmirth. Piece of cake.
You don't mind if I take a little nap, though, do you? Say, where's
my lunch-on-tap? Waitress!!" |
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Galadriel is an elven princess from J.R.R. Tolkien's The
Lord of the Rings. Joy and I both love Tolkien, so we thought
a name honoring his Middle Earth would be appropriate. Our conversation
about Tolkien's The Hobbit on the night Joy and I first met was
one of the things that really attracted us to each other.
"Sunshine" is simple. Joy loves the sun. |
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Heading home from the hospital on September 18, 2001. |