Lucas Camilo

Since returning home from the hospital on Wednesday Ida has been doing well. Mostly she’s been lying around the house – eating, sleeping, and pooping just like a baby should. She’s taking more food by mouth (which means less through the tube in her nose) and generally seems healthy.

Lucas is almost excited as we are to have Ida home.  We already have a morning ritual (usually starting around 6 am!) of carrying Lucas into “the big bed” and having him lie facing Ida for a while.  Mostly he loves trying to imitate all of her funny baby sounds, but this morning he insisted on bringing a Dimetrodon to show Ida.  He unsuccessfully tried to get her to hold the tiny, plastic prehistoric reptile (the Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur, as Lucas reminded his sister, having lived before the dinosaurs during the Permian period.)  We explained to Lucas that she’s not ready to hold things, and that you “have to be gentle with babies,” something he then repeated numerous times.  He insisted that Ida take the little green Dimetredon and got his larger, orange figurine so that they could each have one.  They lay in bed together for nearly an hour.  The night before we watched a movie in bed and Lucas snuggled with Ida the whole time.

Lots of people have asked the story behind Ida’s name.  The Evelyn part comes from wanting to give her a name starting with “E” in honor of Krista’s grandmother Ethyl… and Evelyn happened to be our favorite.  Like Lucas we wanted to give her a good middle name as well, one that she could possibly go by — indeed, we tried both of his names out, and some of our friends still call him Camilo.

Mélida comes from Mélida Anaya Montes, a Salvadoran teacher, union leader, and revolutionary who became a feminist and social justice icon in Latin America.  (For those that don’t know, the two of us met in El Salvador back in 2004.)  It was on the way to the hospital two days after she was born that we decided that it was time to give her a name, and that like her brother, she might need some revolutionary mystique.  The Camilo in his name comes from Camilo Cienfuegos, the Cuban revolutionary who fought with Che and Fidel; we like to think that having such a namesake helped him fight back against many medical challenges early in life.  As deja vu set in — on our way to the hospital with our new baby — we looked at each other and said “Mélida it is.”

As for the shortened “Ee-da”, it has a lot of other cool connections.  We learned that Ida (as we pronounce it) is a popular name in Sweden and Denmark and is also associated with an Old Norse god (Krista has Scandinavian roots.) A friend reminded us that in the yoga energy system, Ida refers to one of the primary energy channels in the body, the energy associated with the moon, nurturing, and the feminine.   And finally, Krista’s great grandmother was Ida Olson.

Speaking of family history, Gramma Susan pulled out some old pictures of Krista at birth and its rather uncanny the resemblance.

Here’s Ida on day 4 of life:

And Krista at birth:

It’s hard to believe that Ida is not even a week old — it feels like so much has happened in her life already.  Today we managed to successfully escape Children’s and we’re all reunited at home.  Lucas arrived from school shortly after the three of us got in from the hospital, and needless to say we’re all exhausted.  Thankfully, we’ve got friends lined up to bring us food for the next few weeks which is going to come in huge.

At some point we’ll do more of an update about all we learned from our 4+ days in the hospital with Ida.  For now, the good news is that the tests and examinations from the specialists who saw Ida all came back normal.  She still has an issue with slightly low muscle tone, and she’s still working to coordinate her sucking and breathing (but is successfully taking some of her breast milk through a bottle now, with the rest going in through a tube.)  Much like her brother’s mysterious early days, no one can explain why Ida has had some challenges. But as we’ve said before, the challenges are minor compared to what Lucas went through, and doctors encouraged us to be very hopeful about how she’ll do in the long run.

Even more than exhausted, we’re feeling shell shocked.  We never wanted to use these skills we have: knowing how to be in a hospital with a newborn; knowing how to read the monitors and speak the medical jargon; knowing how to live with the ups and downs of fear and hope and unknown for your baby.  People have said how much they appreciate our sharing Ida’s story with the world, so we’re going to keep trying – mostly because it feels good for us.  We wish we could tell you what all this means, but for now we’re grateful to be have your support, love, prayers, and visions of a beautiful future for both our amazing kids.

First off, we want to thank everyone for your amazing love and support since we posted about Ida’s admission to Children’s.  As you can imagine, its been a challenging time for us and so every text message, call and blog or facebook comment means a ton and gives us strength.

Little Ida is doing well in the hospital and there are positive developments to report.  [Two side notes: the grammarians amongst you probably figured out that our pronunciation of her name as “Ee-da” does not in fact have a long “I”sound as was reported in the previous post – which is now updated – or any “I” sound for that matter.  Woops.  Also, it was on Lucas’s fourth day of life back in 2009 that we started this blog and you may wonder if and when Ida will get her own.  That’s a good question… and you’ll have to keep wondering for now, but in the meantime Lucas is totally cool with sharing his blog.]

Anyway, we’re still working through Ida’s breastfeeding and eating difficulties and she’s definitely doing better.  The occupational therapist and lactation consultant have helped figure out a way for her to practice coordinating the suck, swallow and breath so that she’s getting better at it while also getting all the breast milk that she needs to be strong and grow.  She hasn’t had any more scary episodes like the ones that had her gasping for air on her second day of life.  She sometimes forgets to breath when she’s carried away with the eating but then recovers quickly on her on.  All of this means that she could be home with us very soon, likely with an NG tube going through her nose and down into the stomach to help supplement the food she takes by mouth.

Ida is also awake and alert a lot more now, which is fun to see.  Her cousins had a great visit with her yesterday afternoon in which all three of them got to hold her.  She was awake the whole time, looking around, making funny faces, and generating multiple exclamations of “that’s so cute!!”  She’s also spent quality time in the arms of her aunts Ashley and Megan, both grandmas, and Papa.  In general we’re feeling very positive as we wait for some important test results to come back tomorrow.

I started writing more details about what Krista and I have learned from doctors and discussed amongst ourselves related to what’s going on.  But rather than go there, I’m going to use the opportunity of having a few moments of peace tonight to write about what has made me feel full of awe, love and strength during these recent days.

It’s fitting that this is Lucas’s blog since he’s been a total hero lately.  On Sunday morning I took him to see Ida and Krista at the hospital and he was amazing – overflowing with joy, humor, and general goofiness in a way that lifted everyone’s spirits.  He insisted on holding Ida twice, and as he stared at her from a short distance, had a blast trying to imitate her blinking eyes and pursed lips.  I wish I could remember all of his hilarious quips, but mostly he just kept saying that he liked Ida a lot, and liked being a big brother.  And then, after 20 minutes he announced “I’m all done with holding her!” and asked to read a dinosaur book.  I can’t help but think that something inside Lucas sensed that his parents and extended family were stressed out and needed some lifting of spirits.  Frankly I’ve rarely seen him with such energy and positive mood as he has been over the past 3 days, and it’s been contagious.

The other completely remarkable person in all this is Krista.  Because things changed quickly on that second day of Ida’s life I haven’t able to truly absorb how brave, powerful, and graceful she was in giving birth to our daughter last Thursday.  It was a relatively fast labor – only about 6 hours, in the basement of our home – but that meant that all the intensity of childbirth was crowded into that short time period.  Because of tearing and bleeding during and after the birth, Krista was supposed to be on bed rest for at least a week.  But Ida’s trip to the hospital changed all that.  And because I’ve needed to be with Lucas at home some of the time (despite some heroic extra shifts by his nurses), Krista has been at Ida’s bedside for nearly the entire last three days – there for Ida when she’s fussy and crying, providing the milk for her to grow strong, dealing with all the doctors, nurses, residents, specialists, therapists, etc who come by… and sleeping only occasionally in the foldout bed next to Ida’s crib.  She and Lucas have made me so proud and feel so much love these last few days that it almost makes up for the agony and uncertainty of having our newborn daughter in the hospital.

On February 19,  just after midnight, Lucas’s little sister was born.  It was a big day for all of us, and we were very fortunate that it happened in the basement of our own home.  It was especially cool because by the time Lucas woke up in the morning, mommy and baby were resting comfortably in bed. Many people have already seen the picture taken at that moment, either from email or Facebook.

One new update is that she now has a name: Evelyn Mélida Hanson.  We’re actually trying out a shortened version of her middle name and calling her Ida – pronounced “Ee-da,” like in the full name in Spanish “Mel-ee-da”.  More explanation will come later.

The other update is that the little one is in the hospital.  This is about the last thing in the world we would want to report, especially since Lucas’s experience of early life involved so much time in the hospital and we had really hoped that Ida’s early days would be different.  The short story is that on her second day of life (Friday) in the evening she had a couple of episodes where she appeared to spit up or choke and then be protecting her airway, which  made her cry out and gasp for air.  It was quite scary and the advice from our midwife was to take her in to the ER.  We were able to get a nurse to come spend the night with Lucas and off we headed to Children’s.

It’s been about 36 hours since she arrived in the hospital and she’s doing well – sleeping a lot but also opening her eyes and mouth and exploring the world around her, which is a joy to watch.  She’s had one other episode where her oxygen saturation dropped after eating and so the lactation consultant is helping her practice coordinate her suck, swallow and breath better, which seems to be an issue.   Overall, she seems healthy, and seeing her breath, cry, move around, and sometimes breastfeed is so completely different from Lucas’s first days of life.  But there are some other things that aren’t quite normal, like the fact that she has slightly low muscle tone.  Given the situation, the doctors are recommending that she stay in the hospital for a few more days, just to be observed.

Needless to say, its been a rough couple of days for us – from the elation of Ida’s birth to the fear and unknown of having her admitted to the hospital, and all the challenges of going back and forth to Children’s, coordinating Lucas’s care, etc.  We both got some sleep last night but hardly slept at all the previous 3 nights.  Which, perhaps, is typical for life with a newborn.  But damn… we wanted so badly for it to be different.

One thing we’re sure of is that we can do this.  We know what its like to have a child with challenges, and so if that ends up being the case with Ida as well we’ll love her just as much and work twice as hard to make a good life for her.  We can actually imagine that reality.  And we can imagine a reality where she is a healthy, typically developing kid.  We’re feeling so much love for her and Lucas right now, and looking forward to be able to share it more with our family and community.  But if you don’t hear from us or see more pictures posted in the coming days… well, now you know why.  In the meantime, please hold little Ida in your hearts.