Finally the new Mommy can enter a blog here. For the past few days, Chubby (sorry, Landus, Mom still likes to call you Chubby from time to time, I promise that I will change to call you Landus completely one day) has been a good baby who can sleep peacefully at night. I managed to get up only once or twice per night to feed him, which gave me about 6 hours sleep total, not too bad. He has been very active in the afternoon though. After each feeding, there is no way to put him back to sleep. We have tried different ways, like turning on the mobile, playing baby lullaby songs. None of them works! The conventional baby lullaby can neither calm him down nor get his attention. But we found he did love all those rock n' roll music that we love, such as Simon and Garfunkel, John Lennon, and Rilo Kiley. I am wondering if it's because I only listened to rock n' roll and folk music for the past nine months. Such an unconventional baby!
Breastfeeding has been successful so far. We haven't used any formula for the past week. And Landus has gained quite a lot of weight between the 1-week and 2-week checkup: 7 lb 10.6 oz to 8 lb 10 oz. He also got quite a lot of baby acne on his face now. We asked Dr. Wright, his pediatrician, during his two-week checkup. She assured us that we didn't need to worry. She said that was pretty classic, just like a medical textbook described.
That's for now. I will come back when Landus gives me more peaceful time.
Today was his two-week checkup. His umbilical cord has fallen off completely. He didn't pee on the good doctor this time (unlike one week ago). He likes long rides in the car, and appears to like "The Sound of Silence."
New measurements: 8 lb 10 oz, 23", 14.75" head circumference.
While doing a make-up assignment about childhood vaccinations, I thought of that well-known quote "That which does not kill me makes me stronger," stated by Nietzsche. Not quite the model of parental responsibility. But I also gained a new insight from wiki into another Nietzsche quote, "God is dead," both of which are related to his attempt to solve the problem of nihilism (something that is often tagged to Nietzsche as an operating philosphy instead); that religion and philosophy has no place in the final evolution of man, but which the transition could lead to despair and death from the rejection of the cosmic order that Christianity describes.
From wiki: The idea is stated by "The Madman" as follows:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
Explanation
It is Nietzsche's way of saying that the idea of God is no longer capable of acting as a source of any moral code or teleology. Nietzsche recognizes the crisis which the death of God represents for existing moral considerations, because "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident.... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands."
New possibilities
Nietzsche believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully develop. The Christian God, with his arbitrary commands and prohibitions, would no longer stand in the way, so human beings might stop turning their eyes toward a supernatural realm and begin to acknowledge the value of this world. The recognition that "God is dead" would be like a blank canvas. It is a freedom to become something new, different, creative — a freedom to be something without being forced to accept the baggage of the past.
Nietzsche uses the metaphor of an open sea, which can be both exhilarating and terrifying. The people who eventually learn to create their lives anew will represent a new stage in human existence, the Ubermensch —i.e. the personal archetype who, through the conquest of their own nihilism, themselves become a mythical hero. The 'death of God' is the motivation for Nietzsche's last (uncompleted) philosophical project, the 'revaluation of all values'.
It is, in a way, a restatement of the fact that we all have to find our own meaning of life, that there is no universal prescription.
CW Nevius's ongoing boilerplate about the homeless in our fair City's park. #1: Homeless spreading out from the park. Choice quotes:
"Wednesday, we put out the garbage," says Burnett, who has lived in her Outer Richmond District apartment for three years. "When I am coming home late, and I see somebody in my driveway going through my trash, they look angry at me. I'm thinking, 'No, this is my house.' "
The frustration cuts both ways. Some homeless residents see themselves as harmless eccentrics, living on the fringes of society. "I waved to one of the neighbors this morning, and he flipped me off," Olsen says. "You try to be nice, but if you're homeless, you're automatically the scum of the earth." Neighbors? Dude, you're homeless, those people are paying a million bucks to live there, and they're also paying taxes to finance all of your support programs.
Ah yes, Yuanyuan reminds us that we have been neglectful of our blogging. Such slovenliness shall be remedied tonight. Opting for a layout that will allow for a more custom layout, should I ever get the energy to customize, I put Landus's pictures on my OCF site:
Yu went into labor at roughly 4 am, with strong contractions that wouldn't let up. We went to the hospital around 6:30 am. They placed her in triage to decide whether to admit her, and around 8:30, her water broke, earning her a ticket. Landus happened to choose just about the busiest day in the history of the UCSF medical center to come out into the world, because there were no delivery rooms available, so she had to gut it out in the triage room until nearly 2 pm. By 10 am, Yu was in tremendous pain with "back labor," and a pain rating that, as Spinal Tap would say, went to 11.
IV fentanyl didn't take the edge off, and for 4 hours, nurses kept reassuring us we'd get a room and... nothing. We started getting pretty angry, cursing UCSF and whatnot. I made a number of choice statements, which ought to be interesting in a few weeks or so, since I'll be rotating on the peds wards there...
Eventually, we got a room, and Yu finally got the merciful epidural, of which she was eternally grateful. She was able to sleep until about 7 pm, when she started to feel a lot of pressure again. She was wheeled into another, larger room, and started to push. She pushed again and again, and started to get quite exhausted. She hadn't eaten a substantive meal for 24 hours. Over the previous several hours, she had also developed a low-grade fever. It started to rise as her efforts to push Landus became more draining. At 39oC, they gave her another dose of tylenol, IV antibiotics, an O2 mask, and some meds to slow the baby's heart rate down (it had gone up to 180). Eventually, his meconium came out while still inside, so it became necessary to speed things along, lest he develop a serious infection. Dr. Thiet directed the use of forceps, and with one last mighty push from Yu, Landus came in to the world at 10:30 pm, 10/11.
Landus was a big boy at birth, 8 lbs and 21". He has marvelously long fingernails (he was overdue by 4 days), and some wonderfully bizarre ear hair (I have been reassured that is normal for newborns). One of these days we will file his fingernails so he won't cut himself on the face. After a few very rough nights, things are starting to normalize a little bit. Landus is very cute, usually a docile boy in the day, and is not overly fussy apart from the times he requires liquid sustenance and bowel movement management. He also likes to bend his legs like a frog, and kicks like Bruce Lee. He does crunches better than I. And we think he looks a lot like me. Today, he fell asleep to his Dad singing Rilo Kiley (appropriated from a VW commercial):
That's all for now. After getting a momentary reprieve from medical school, it's so nice to relax and be at home with family. I may post some homemade Youtube videos soon, have to review the tape first. Take care everybody.
