Jasper's first week*

A week ago tonight, we got into bed with Amy feeling contractions and thinking it still would be a few days before Jasper would arrive. Tonight, we are all settled at home with both Amy and Jasper next to me alternately sleeping and nursing.

The intervening days have been an exhilarating and exhausting roller coaster of emotions.

Before going into all that, however, here's a picture: Jasper in the car seat -- he really likes the thing -- preparing to leave the hospital (for the first time; more on that later). He's a long, skinny guy, but not as much as this picture suggests.

Let's start with the name: Jasper Elliott Prince. I don't know if folks are just being kind or what, but everyone keeps telling us they love the name. The first name was picked for family history. The middle name was picked for sense of place.

Jasper is the name of both my great and great-great grandfathers on the Prince side. A striking portrait of the junior (born March 4, 1881, died July 11, 1918) resides in my parents' house. Maybe we'll get a copy of it for our own home now. Personally, I like the name because it has a certain older feel, a Midwestern sensibility as my friend Q once said. Plus, I don't think we've met any other Jaspers.

Elliott we originally had in the running for a first name because we like Eli. Went around and around about the spelling. Settled on double l, double t in the end for a couple of reasons, I suppose, though just about any combination would have some symbolic ties to the Northwest -- where our Jasper was born. Elliott Bay is in Seattle, which is where I first thought I'd like to live someday if I ever made it to the Northwest. Eliot Glacier is on Mount Hood, which we see every day -- and I stop to look at as I ride to work. Elliott Smith is one of the musicians from the Northwest whose music I most like (though none of it is exactly happy baby-friendly stuff).


That's Jasper as he looked as I peeked in on him earlier tonight.

Again, about this time last week Amy's water broke and off we went. We'll spare you the gory details, but an epidural around 4 a.m. pierced something it shouldn't have, resulting in what the doctors called a spinal headache. Basically, the botched epidural resulted in spinal fluid leaking, which made her brain ache anytime she was upright. As a result, for most of the time between 4 a.m. Monday and about 4 p.m. Wednesday, she was flat on her back. With her feeling better, we came home Wednesday night only to realize the headache returned -- which meant even more time flat on her back while trying to feed the baby. So back we went to the hospital on Thursday to get what the doctors call a blood patch. They drew blood from her arm and injected it into the same spinal spot used for the epidural. The goal: have the blood, basically, fill the pierced dura and prevent more spinal fluid from leaking, thus ending the headache.

Bottom line: She's a helluva lot tougher than I am or ever will be. In the course of four days she had a giant needle shoved into her spine, gave birth to a nearly nine-pound baby, endured a debilitating headache and then had another giant needle shoved into the same spot in her spine.

She amazes me. As does Jasper, who helped me blog some of this in between feedings tonight.


* Note: Corrected namesake reference to great and great-great -- rather than great-great and great-great-great grandfathers. Sleepy.