Yesterday was Amy’s 38th birthday. It was a bit of a challenge planning a birthday with a baby that is less than 3 weeks old. We started the day with a birthday night feeding (just what Amy wanted for her birthday :) ). After the feeding, she was presented with a sweet birthday card from Gia (with a little help from daddy). The day progressed as many have recently – a blur of feedings, diaper changes, and a little sleep here and there. The only difference is that Gia has decided that she needs to eat more often, so instead of feeding every 2-3 hours it was more like 1-2 hours! Again, just what Amy wanted for her birthday - more quality time with her daughter :).
As a surprise, Drew arranged for a masseuse to come to our home to give both of us 90-minute massages. Wow, did we need it and wow, was it good! We might have to do that again soon. Fortunately, Gia was able to wait 90 minutes between feedings so Amy could get her massage.
Drew picked up some delicious food earlier in the day for us to have for dinner. We pictured a sweet candlelight dinner while Gia slept quietly in her bassinet . . . instead it was Amy sitting in the rocker nursing Gia, while Drew fed Amy. Still sweet but very different. We did get to sit and watch an episode of one of our favorite shows - Grey's Anatomy. Of course, it took us 90 minutes to watch a 40-minute episode, thanks to feedings, diaper changes, etc. but it was still fun.
Despite the chaos, Amy felt it was her best birthday ever. After all, when else has she had so much love in her life!
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
All by ourselves
Amy’s mom, Nancy, left this morning and for the first time we are all by ourselves with Gia. Nancy’s departure has been very bitter sweet. We are really going to miss everything she did for us and her presence, and at the same time it feels so nice to be alone with our new little family. Everything feels more intimate, and spacious. Today, we took lots of naps together, and Amy and Drew had a sweet candle light dinner while Gia slept in her bassinet by the table.
It is amazing how much Gia is already changing. Her face looks different almost everyday, her hands have grown, her fingers are less delicate and she is definitely taller. She is more interactive and makes much longer eye contact. Drew had a very sweet moment with her this morning when she just stared at him with loving eyes for several minutes. He just loved it! Amy’s favorite thing is to kiss Gia on the lips when she is rooting. Gia responds by kissing Amy back (kind of :) ).
Feeling lots of love and sending lots of love back!
It is amazing how much Gia is already changing. Her face looks different almost everyday, her hands have grown, her fingers are less delicate and she is definitely taller. She is more interactive and makes much longer eye contact. Drew had a very sweet moment with her this morning when she just stared at him with loving eyes for several minutes. He just loved it! Amy’s favorite thing is to kiss Gia on the lips when she is rooting. Gia responds by kissing Amy back (kind of :) ).
Feeling lots of love and sending lots of love back!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Life with Gia - Week 2
We are all settling into something that resembles a familiar routine. Both Gia and Amy have gotten very good at nursing so the only extra help they need is for burping and changing during the feedings and of course company. Nancy does the diaper changes during the day and Drew at night. You will probably notice that Gia is lot rounder than she used to be thanks to her great feeding. Nancy keeps Gia company at the beginning of the evening (9:00-11) and then again in the morning (6-9) to help Amy and Drew get some sleep. We had a particularly nice night yesterday where Gia, Amy and Drew all sleep for 4 hours straight! We really hope it will become a habit. We are still working out how we all sleep together. Our original plan was for Gia to sleep in a co-sleeper next to our bed but she is rarely happy sleeping unless she is being held or right next to one of us. As a result, Amy and Drew take turns sleeping with her. For those out there that might worry about her safety, rest assured we are doing everything we need to to keep her safe while sharing our bed. Although it is definitely harder to sleep when she is with us, it is also incredibly sweet to feel her body next to ours.
We had a photo shoot on Monday with the fantastic photographer who did our wedding and pregnancy pictures (Rikka Zimmerman). The shoot went surprisingly well with Gia very content the whole time. There was, however, one incident. Rikka suggested we take a number of pictures where Gia was naked (including no diaper) and Drew was holding her. Drew knew the risks and dressed appropriately. Sure enough, a few minutes in Drew’s arm was drenched with pee. He never flinched but instead looked down at his daughter and said, “You see sweetheart, you can even pee on me and Daddy will still hold you safe and sound.” We will get the pictures back in about 2 weeks and will post the highlights.
Love,
Amy & Drew
We had a photo shoot on Monday with the fantastic photographer who did our wedding and pregnancy pictures (Rikka Zimmerman). The shoot went surprisingly well with Gia very content the whole time. There was, however, one incident. Rikka suggested we take a number of pictures where Gia was naked (including no diaper) and Drew was holding her. Drew knew the risks and dressed appropriately. Sure enough, a few minutes in Drew’s arm was drenched with pee. He never flinched but instead looked down at his daughter and said, “You see sweetheart, you can even pee on me and Daddy will still hold you safe and sound.” We will get the pictures back in about 2 weeks and will post the highlights.
Love,
Amy & Drew
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Thank God for Grandma!
Gia is 10 days old and doing great! Yesterday, her umbilical cord fell off and she is gaining lots of weight every day. Now that feedings are easier, we are all getting more sleep.
We can honestly say that so far parenting has taken tons of time, attention, energy, wakefulness and focus but with the exception of a few moments it has not felt hard. Everything has felt very natural and Gia has been an easy baby. A key component of our ease has been the incredible support Amy’s mom, Nancy, has been providing us.
Nancy has been with us since we got back from the hospital. She has made all our meals, cleaned all our dishes, kept the house clean, done the laundry, changed most of the diapers, and will take Gia at any time of day or night when we need to sleep! She does all of this without asking anything in return. She is 100% here to support us being the best parents we can be. Not to tell us how to parent, or to spend time with Gia (although she gets to do that plenty), or with any other agenda. She has allowed us to completely focus on parenting and to get more rest than we otherwise would have. We are so incredibly grateful for her generous support and selflessness. Fortunately, we still have her for another week! We are lucky to have other visitors coming to support us over the next month – Drew’s parents, Karen & Mark and Amy’s sister, Wendy.
Thank you to our whole community for their love and support.
Love,
Amy & Drew
We can honestly say that so far parenting has taken tons of time, attention, energy, wakefulness and focus but with the exception of a few moments it has not felt hard. Everything has felt very natural and Gia has been an easy baby. A key component of our ease has been the incredible support Amy’s mom, Nancy, has been providing us.
Nancy has been with us since we got back from the hospital. She has made all our meals, cleaned all our dishes, kept the house clean, done the laundry, changed most of the diapers, and will take Gia at any time of day or night when we need to sleep! She does all of this without asking anything in return. She is 100% here to support us being the best parents we can be. Not to tell us how to parent, or to spend time with Gia (although she gets to do that plenty), or with any other agenda. She has allowed us to completely focus on parenting and to get more rest than we otherwise would have. We are so incredibly grateful for her generous support and selflessness. Fortunately, we still have her for another week! We are lucky to have other visitors coming to support us over the next month – Drew’s parents, Karen & Mark and Amy’s sister, Wendy.
Thank you to our whole community for their love and support.
Love,
Amy & Drew
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
What's in a Name
Many people have asked us how we came up with the name Gia Tamayo Batshaw. At last we are revealing the secret behind the mystery!
Gia – Well, we would be lying if we told you that we chose “Gia” to honor our common Italian heritage (even though Amy looks very Italian
). We named her after Amy’s father Gene who died when Amy was 3. We chose to honor his memory by choosing an name that starts with the letter ‘G.’ We thought though hundreds of ‘G’ girl names until we narrowed it down to four we liked the most – Gia, Gemma, Genna, Guava. We decided to wait to name her until we she was born. Drew had never met a Gia before but as soon as he saw her, he knew her name was Gia. He didn’t know why it was just clear to him. Drew didn’t tell Amy for a few hours but when he did, she agreed with him. Tamayo – Gia’s middle name comes from her maternal grandmother who passed away August 26th of last year. They had a chance to meet while Gia was in the womb shortly before Tamayo passed way. She was an incredibly strong woman who was deeply devoted to her family. She had a large role in raising Amy after her father died. Tamayo is Japanese for “Generation Jewel” (not to be confused with “Tamago” which means “egg”).
Batshaw - We decided to stick with tradition and give her Drew’s last name.
It is strange that it suddenly seems normal to never sleep for more than 2 hours at a time. You would think that it would be impossible to function with so little sleep but somehow it is not the case. When we are home taking care of Gia and hanging out as a family, it is not so bad. However, when we go out to run errands we get tired very quickly. Now that feedings have gotten easier, Amy has been encouraging Drew to sleep through a couple feedings a day and get more sleep. Drew thinks he might have actually gotten close to 7 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours!
We continue to feel an abundance of love and gratitude for our little Gia and the lives we have been given.
Love,
Amy & Drew
Gia – Well, we would be lying if we told you that we chose “Gia” to honor our common Italian heritage (even though Amy looks very Italian
). We named her after Amy’s father Gene who died when Amy was 3. We chose to honor his memory by choosing an name that starts with the letter ‘G.’ We thought though hundreds of ‘G’ girl names until we narrowed it down to four we liked the most – Gia, Gemma, Genna, Guava. We decided to wait to name her until we she was born. Drew had never met a Gia before but as soon as he saw her, he knew her name was Gia. He didn’t know why it was just clear to him. Drew didn’t tell Amy for a few hours but when he did, she agreed with him. Tamayo – Gia’s middle name comes from her maternal grandmother who passed away August 26th of last year. They had a chance to meet while Gia was in the womb shortly before Tamayo passed way. She was an incredibly strong woman who was deeply devoted to her family. She had a large role in raising Amy after her father died. Tamayo is Japanese for “Generation Jewel” (not to be confused with “Tamago” which means “egg”).Batshaw - We decided to stick with tradition and give her Drew’s last name.
It is strange that it suddenly seems normal to never sleep for more than 2 hours at a time. You would think that it would be impossible to function with so little sleep but somehow it is not the case. When we are home taking care of Gia and hanging out as a family, it is not so bad. However, when we go out to run errands we get tired very quickly. Now that feedings have gotten easier, Amy has been encouraging Drew to sleep through a couple feedings a day and get more sleep. Drew thinks he might have actually gotten close to 7 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours!
We continue to feel an abundance of love and gratitude for our little Gia and the lives we have been given.
Love,
Amy & Drew
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Trials and Tribulations of Breast Feeding
Things continue to go well for our little family but it is a very strange time. Night and day are beginning to blur. When Drew woke up from a nap today he looked at the clock which said 5:29. For a least 30 seconds, he was convinced it was in the morning when it was actually at night!
If we look at how we spend the hours of the day it roughly breaks up as follows:
15% - Sleep
5% - Eating
.001% - Doing all the things we used to do before the baby came
80% - Breastfeeding (including burbing, diaper changes, soothing, etc)
If we didn’t breast feed, I am not sure what we would do with all the extra time! They tell you that when your baby is first born, they will need to feed about every 2 hours. That doesn’t sounds so bad until you realize a few things. One, it is 2 hours from the start of the last feeding not the end. Two, when you add in all the things involved in a feeding including setup, getting a good latch, burbing, keeping her awake with diaper changes, etc. it can take 1 ½+ hours to nurse. That doesn’t leave much time in between especially when you consider it takes another 5-10 minutes to get Gia to go to sleep after a feeding. On one particularly bad night we had 3 back-to-back feedings. Amy was exhausted and no one got much sleep. Feedings are getting much easier as we all learn to feed more effectively (especially little Gia) and Amy’s regular milk has come in (new mothers produce something called colostrum for the first several days which doesn’t provide as many calories or volume than regular milk).
Yesterday was an emotional day. We had our first pediatrician appointment (outside of the hospital) and they noticed that Gia has lost 12.5% of her birth weight (it is normal to lose 7.5%-10%). As a result, we were all worried that she wasn’t getting enough to eat. This was especially hard on Amy. We tried to feed her has much as possible before her follow up appointment today but it was difficult. She was often upset when feeding and only seemed to like one of Amy’s breasts. Things seemed to turn a corner early this morning with a few really good feedings. We were delighted and relieved when we discovered that she has gained 2 oz which was double what the doctor had hoped for. He told us we had nothing to worry about and we didn’t need to see him for several weeks.
Life is chaotic but very rich. It is sometimes hard to remember what life was like without Gia. Sometimes when we nap for a long time, we wake up missing her. Mother nature sure knew what she was doing…
Love,
Amy & Drew
If we look at how we spend the hours of the day it roughly breaks up as follows:
15% - Sleep
5% - Eating
.001% - Doing all the things we used to do before the baby came
80% - Breastfeeding (including burbing, diaper changes, soothing, etc)
If we didn’t breast feed, I am not sure what we would do with all the extra time! They tell you that when your baby is first born, they will need to feed about every 2 hours. That doesn’t sounds so bad until you realize a few things. One, it is 2 hours from the start of the last feeding not the end. Two, when you add in all the things involved in a feeding including setup, getting a good latch, burbing, keeping her awake with diaper changes, etc. it can take 1 ½+ hours to nurse. That doesn’t leave much time in between especially when you consider it takes another 5-10 minutes to get Gia to go to sleep after a feeding. On one particularly bad night we had 3 back-to-back feedings. Amy was exhausted and no one got much sleep. Feedings are getting much easier as we all learn to feed more effectively (especially little Gia) and Amy’s regular milk has come in (new mothers produce something called colostrum for the first several days which doesn’t provide as many calories or volume than regular milk).
Yesterday was an emotional day. We had our first pediatrician appointment (outside of the hospital) and they noticed that Gia has lost 12.5% of her birth weight (it is normal to lose 7.5%-10%). As a result, we were all worried that she wasn’t getting enough to eat. This was especially hard on Amy. We tried to feed her has much as possible before her follow up appointment today but it was difficult. She was often upset when feeding and only seemed to like one of Amy’s breasts. Things seemed to turn a corner early this morning with a few really good feedings. We were delighted and relieved when we discovered that she has gained 2 oz which was double what the doctor had hoped for. He told us we had nothing to worry about and we didn’t need to see him for several weeks.
Life is chaotic but very rich. It is sometimes hard to remember what life was like without Gia. Sometimes when we nap for a long time, we wake up missing her. Mother nature sure knew what she was doing…
Love,
Amy & Drew
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Home From the Hospital
We came back home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. It already feels like the hospital was a week ago. Amy is experiencing a very fast recovery from her C-section. She was up and walking 24 hours after the surgery and several nurses commented how “strong” she is. She still has to be careful getting up and down from the bed but other than that she is in great shape.
Drew is also doing great, although understandably sleep deprived.
We had really wonderful care at the hospital but are so grateful to be home. When we arrived, we were greeted with a wonderful lunch thanks to Amy’s mom (Nancy) who had recently arrived. It has been such a blessing having her with us. After lunch, Nancy spent some time getting to know her grand daughter while we took a much needed 2 hour nap (more sleep than either of us had gotten the night before)!
Gia is wonderful. Every hour we fall more and more in love with her – the cute noises she makes, the funny hand gestures when she nurses, the sweet contentment we feel when we hold her.
We are so grateful for the love and support everyone has shown us. A special thank you to all the people who brought us meals and visited us in the hospital (Amy’s sister, Wendy, even flew down to visit for just for the day!).
It is challenging to find enough time and energy to sit down and write for more than 5 minutes at a time, but we will make an effort to keep everyone updated.
Love,
Amy & Drew
Drew is also doing great, although understandably sleep deprived.
We had really wonderful care at the hospital but are so grateful to be home. When we arrived, we were greeted with a wonderful lunch thanks to Amy’s mom (Nancy) who had recently arrived. It has been such a blessing having her with us. After lunch, Nancy spent some time getting to know her grand daughter while we took a much needed 2 hour nap (more sleep than either of us had gotten the night before)!
Gia is wonderful. Every hour we fall more and more in love with her – the cute noises she makes, the funny hand gestures when she nurses, the sweet contentment we feel when we hold her.
We are so grateful for the love and support everyone has shown us. A special thank you to all the people who brought us meals and visited us in the hospital (Amy’s sister, Wendy, even flew down to visit for just for the day!).
It is challenging to find enough time and energy to sit down and write for more than 5 minutes at a time, but we will make an effort to keep everyone updated.
Love,
Amy & Drew
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Gia Tamayo Batshaw has arrived
We are excited to announce the happy arrival of Gia Tamayo Batshaw! Thank you for being an important part of the loving community to welcome her to the world. We look forward to introducing you soon!
Born January 10, 2008 at 9:44 AM
In Los Angeles, California
8 lbs, 7.4 oz, 18.75 inches
Mom/Dad/Baby are all doing great!
More details to follow in the days, weeks and months ahead. We welcome your contact and appreciate your patience, knowing that we may or may not be able to respond in a timely manner.
With Love and Gratitude,
Proud Parents Amy & Drew
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