A very merry... ummm... birthday to me

OK. Sorry for the dorky Alice in Wonderland reference. Ella likes Alice, a lot--she has a thing for the psychedelic. Anyway, my birthday was August 5th, and I got about the best present you could imagine, even better than the presents my dog-nephew, Ike, got for his adoption day. My birthday present was Jina Lerato Thompson, and here she is: Weighing in at a dainty 6lb, 11oz, and born exactly on her due date. This is the story of her first days in this world. Warning to the squeamish: there are pictures of nude, slimy babies (but nothing more graphic than that). Things are a little different in Korea. You don't get the luxurious birthing suites of American hospitals, since deliveries here don't bring in the kind of $$ that they do in the US. We did get a private birthing room, though, compliments of our insurance. Most people have shared birthing rooms. We also got Hyunjoo's best friend, the epidural, for which she was very grateful, albeit very, very itchy. Things after that went more-or-less as you'd expect in the US, with a few notable exceptions. They kept asking me to leave the room for every minor procedure or exam. Then came the perennial struggle I was accustomed to having with certain respiratory therapists in US delivery rooms. There's no need to give oxygen to a healthy vigorous baby who is still a little blue shortly after being born--babies aren't supposed to be that pink that soon. There's actually growing evidence that being hyper-oxygenated isn't just not necessary, but it can be harmful in newborns. At any rate, people love giving oxygen since it makes the babies get pink faster and they feel they've accomplished something... Korea was no exception I had to keep subtly pulling away the O2 mask whenever I could get a hand near her. Did she just mouth-pipette those gastric contents!?!?! That's definitely different. Jina: "Hey, lady, I've got an apgar of at least 8, even without the oxygen." Note the nice symmetric moro reflex :-) Then came the most frustrating part. Although we had requested mother and baby rooming-in together, things here are still kind of like they were in the US in the 1950s. As soon as the baby is born, you get one peek after she's been toweled off and bundled (and then they put the baby to the breast for about 2 seconds--part of new efforts to promote breast-feeding), then whisk her away to the nursery so mom can recover). Does she look like she needs to have her baby taken away? That's about 2 minutes after delivery. At any rate, I went to the nursery and argued for a while that for reasons of bonding, attachment, breastfeeding, reducing postpartum bleeding, etc it's important for mom and baby to be together immediately unless there's a medical reason to keep them apart. I got some sypathetic nods, but the final word was, "We don't do that, sorry." I hate to be the pushy patient. God knows I've experienced some who have pushed too far, but most are simply trying to do what they think is best for their children. I believe I was justified, but I probably pushed a little too long, spending time arguing in the nursery that I should have spent with my wife, supporting her... In the end, my sister-in-law, Ji-Young arrived, and helped push forward our transfer to postpartum so we could bring Jina in to be with her mom. All told, it was about 2 hours before we got moved into the postpartum room--better than the 4 hours they usually take, but still too slow. Ella was relieved to see her mom again. She had been understandably worried about what was going on. Hyunjoo soon got her first meal of seaweed soup--which she will be eating every meal for the next month! And Ella did her best to imitate mom's expression. Another 15 minutes later, Mom and baby were finally reunited. Then everyone had the chance to get better acquainted over the next couple of days. Ella was delighted to meet her baby sister. She constantly wanted to hold, touch, and kiss her... She also "read" her Dr Seuss's story of overcoming one's fears of the mysterious and unknown, such as "pale green pants with nobody inside them". After the reunions, things got a little deja-vu: Jina got attacked by her hand (left), in a scene that was eerily reminiscent of Ella's hand-attack of 28 months ago (right). Actually, I told her "If your hand's bigger than your face..." and she fell for it! My girls are so gullible... Finally, we had our first family portrait on the way out the door: The name: "Jina" is Korean (진아), since she was born in Korea. It's pronounced similar to "Gina". It's actually two words: "Jin", which mean essentially treasure (or chastity/virtue, or truth) and "A" which means grace/nobility. We're still deciding exactly which characters to use, so the final meaning is yet to be determined. For those who read Chinese, we're considering 珍雅 or 真雅maybe 贞雅--although the Korean pronunciation for the last one isn't the same. There are some other possibilites, too. Hong-Bin and Lily, we're going to need a name consultation. "Lerato" is Sesotho, since she spent most of her first 9 months in Lesotho. It means love, and is a common Sesotho name. Thompson, well, that means Son of Thomas. Actually, it should probably be Tobiason (or even Olson per Norwegian tradition) after my great grandfather Ole Tobiason, but that apparently didn't sound American enough, so it was dumped for Thompson. More than you wanted to know.