Sunday - Week 1

From Bambini

Nico and Luca were born a week ago at 8:10am. Today they celebrated their first week birthday by taking a stroll and starting a new album of pictures.

We decided to break out the "snap and go" collapsible engineering marvel and use the car seats for this adventure to our little town's main street. We originally thought we would buy new car seats and stroller, but the quality of the used items in this area is very high.

We joined an online mommy's group recommended by Chiara, through which we found a pair of used car seats with four bases and the "snap and go" for $55.

Since the seat and base are essentially a simple injection moulded plastic piece, they should last a hundred years without a problem. I inspected them before we bought them and rapidly realized that it made no sense to indulge babiesRus in their 200% markup of these items. They are only going to last for a short while anyway, and it makes more sense to put the money toward toddler seats.

I was expecting some complex installation of the seats, but they adjusted to the car easily and worked first time beautifully. Barbara washed the covers and I installed a very soft wrap around the belt where their faces are to preventing chaffing. They even have a curved base so you can rock them.

As you can see from the pictures, the bambini are still small and almost dissappear into the seats. The snaps and buckles do not intrude and I have to say I love these things. They are well made and well designed.

Los Altos (the tall one's in spanish) is a small town in the foothills of the small mountain range separating Silicon Valley from the coast. It is a charming low key little town that has a sparse number of visitors yet has many nice restaurants. Traffic is minimal and the people are friendly.

We got as far as the french bakery at which point they both went unconscious. I can only assume that even at one week, the few drops of English blood they have, understood how disconcerting it can be approaching the French... and they have not even been to Paris yet! I only mention this because some very old friends in the UK have joined the blog, and no self respecting Brit Blog would be complete without at least one insult to the French.

Barbara and I visited the UK in 2008 but did not get a chance to meet all of you. The pictures in this Blog are all of pregnancy and childbirth so i thought it might be appropriate to show you some pictures from Barbara's brother Alfonso and Enrica's wedding in the Bahama's a couple of years ago.

Barbara and Alfonso are very close. I can always tell when they call, Barbara has a smile all day. It was an absolute joy to part of their very private wedding on a small island. Since then they have had a baby boy, so Luca and Nico have an Italian cousin.

Barbara got a good nights sleep last night and read this blog for the first time. It got approved even thought there are some very unflattering pictures here.

This evening we grilled a bunch of meat and had dinner while feeding babies. They seem really hungry until they get onto Mama's boob, then they just flop there and immediatly go to sleep. It is very obvious they feel comfortable in her energy. Its like watching them float in a sea of tranquility. They just go limp.

We began with the idea that they would be close to us from Birth. We believe they can sense us and feel safe when we are around. When we were transferred into the recovery room, I immediately noticed that it was cool. This was probably a comfortable temperature for the hospital staff, but it was way too cold for the newborns.

I turned the thermostat all the way up but after a couple of hours it was still cold. When they took the babies temperature, it was falling and they offered us the option of putting them next to our skin (one each) to warm them up or taking to the impersonal stainless steel nursery for heat lamp torture.

I took Nico and Barbara took Luca. After an hour their temperatiure had stabilized, but was not going up. I asked them how we could get the temperature in the room up? They explained that it is set somewhere else and they would need to call maintenance to make an adjustment.

Since the reason we are all there is because of the newborns, it seemed to make sense to have the room set to support their requirements. Can I have been the first person to have thought of this? Once we realized that we would be going without babies if they did not put on weight, it became very important that not waste calories heating their bodies that could be used to store fat.

The nurses were very helpful with the collection and marking of the cord blood. This is a booming industry that is based on the possible benefits of treatments requiring stem cells. The liklihood of using cord blood in private banks has rested mostly on the odds that the donor child or a family member will require a stem cell transplant. In the United States, the overall odds of undergoing any stem cell transplant is 1 in 217. These figures are based on actual transplant rates in 2001-2003. Barbara was certain she wanted to do it, so we did it.

This evening we spoke to my Brother and his wife for the first time. They have been following along and waiting patiently but were very eager to talk to us and see the babies. The first two weeks are very important and almost no one is visiting them, especially not in flu season. Every time I glance at the commercials in a movie we are watching, all I see is cold remedies. Considering the cost of a 30 second spot these days, i am sure they do careful market research to determine if there actually are sick people to sell this stuff too on the day the commercial airs.

Throughout the day Barbara has been going through emails and preparing for the coming week of work. After dinner she announced that she was down to 100 emails in her inbox so we decided to give them their first bath. Chiara and Jean Luca have given us a very nice baby bath. It is baby size and padded to provide the perfect bath.

Chiara has helped in preparing for these children guiding us in many ways and hosting the baby shower. The last few days have gone smoothly thanks to her help preparations.

They didn't like having their back or chest washed, probably because the water conducts heat 25x faster than air. Once we wrapped their upper body they loved the lower body bath. They get this funny expression on their face that looks like "oooh, what's this all about?"

The latest development in their feeding is that they both get hiccups now. We are told this is normal, but I find it amazing that their little bodies can deal with such violent events after only a few days.

Tomorrow the nanny is coming to help in the mornings so Barbara can get some work done while I sleep after staying up all night. She will also help with the laundry and stuff so that we have less to do. What a luxury.