A Visit from Dave and Mary

Recently, Josh's father David and stepmother Mary visited San Francisco from Chicago to meet little Robert for the first time. Previously, they'd only been able to see their grandson over a computer screen using video-chat.

Dave & Mary got to hang with Robby in various settings - we did some walking in Presidio Park and on Lands' End, had brunch at the Beach Chalet looking out over the Pacific Ocean, and spent a bunch of time just chilling out at home.

In this little video you can watch Dave & Mary spending some time with Robert in our living room.

A Walk in the Park

One of our favorite things to do is to take Robby for a walk in the small corner of the Presidio park right near our apartment. The park starts out as a playground, from which you can take various walking paths around Mountain Lake and along the borders of the Presidio golf course. We've had rare beautiful weather in the weeks since Robby's birth, and we've been able to take him to the park on warm days when very little outerwear is necessary.

We took a short video of one of our first ventures into the park with Robby, followed by a quick visit to his grandparents the Bach-y-Ritas just down the street. We wear him in a sling, in which he typically goes to sleep after even a few minutes of walking. On this occasion we decided to take him out of the sling to play on a sunny, grassy stretch near the lake.

Yellow Alert

Caution: this blog entry mentions poop.

One of Robby's first adventures has been getting, and getting rid of, jaundice.

Before we had a baby, I thought of jaundice as something you got as a pioneer on the Oregon Trail.  I now understand jaundice occurs in most babies, especially breastfed ones, and then it goes away after a few weeks.  In that time the baby's liver starts to process the bilirubin (the yellow chemical) and then they poop it out.  However, if baby is not eating "enough" (like sleepy little Robby), and thus is not pooping enough, the bilirubin level can get high enough where it becomes toxic.  If that happened, the doctor would want to shine special lamps on him to dissolve the bilirubin, which I'm sure would not be fun for any of us.

Robby's jaundice never got to a level high enough for any big measures, but it did creep up pretty close, and caused concern with our pediatrician, especially in light of how much weight Robby lost since his birth.  We've found that jaundice and weight loss can be a vicious cycle, because the bilirubin makes him sleepy, making him eat less, making him poop less, building up more bilirubin, making him even sleepier...and so on.  As new parents, exhausted ourselves, it's been very difficult to constantly wake him up and force feed him.  As I belatedly filed for his birth certificate, I secretly considered naming him Rob van Winkle, or alternatively, Billy Reuben Allen.  It's been disconcerting for me, wanting so badly for him to take part in the world, to see his yellow face as a constant reminder that he's not eating enough.  And it's been hard for Anna to negotiate breastfeeding with him - she and Robby have been latching and feeding just great, but when he's awake!  Numbers and measurements and timing and throughput are not the ways in which we want to be relating to our son.  On the plus side, it's enough to make a diaper-changing-averse parent lose all his squeamishness, and cheer at every stool!

Happily, Robby is now eating voraciously (and also doing the rest of the digestion thing...), and no longer looks like baby Maggie from the Simpsons.  The whole process has taken him on some of his biggest forays outside the home so far, from doctor's offices in the sunny Castro, to labs in the Richmond where he's had blood taken, and to newborn centers where he's been weighed and coached on his eating skills.  Our intensive feeding schedule seems to have jump-started his energy, because he's now crying for his food and can be very difficult to put to sleep. We're relieved that he's just gotten back up to his birth weight, in response to which Anna and I tore up our feeding schedule and are now letting him eat when he's hungry, like a human being.

Robert Julian Allen, born March 24th, 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

We are so happy to report that our son Robert Julian Allen was born on March 24th, 2008. Anna birthed him at 10:54 PM that evening at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He was 7 pounds, 3 ounces at birth and was 19 inches long.

Anna's labor started on Sunday night at about 11:00 PM while we were reading in the the living room. We transitioned to the hospital at 7:00 AM the following morning and Anna delivered him that evening in the presence of her midwife, her mother Marsha, our doula Ann, and myself.

We stayed in the hospital for two nights and are now back at home. The first week of his life has been pretty intense for us, as we're sure it is for all new parents. But it's also been a wonderful time and we will use this blog and our photos on Flickr.com (click here to see them) to share with you some of our joy. Then it will be our pleasure someday to share it with Robby himself.