Best and Worst Firsts (a selection)

Day 1… - too beyond words
Day 3 – First car ride; coming home from Alma Birth Center, sleeps through the car and introduction to her house and into the family bed.
Day 3 – first visitors, Auntie Deb and Auntie Dana!
Day 4 or 5 – Ayla loses her first eyelash! Alas, The degeneration of the human body! Woohoo, we make a wish for her!
Day 5 – Magical Mystery Poop! That she has excreted a massive amount of meconium-ish breastmilk-ish poop is evidenced by Jason's threefold changing of his own clothing before we can figure out how it keeps getting on him! She managed to propel it out the back of her diaper, on through between two blankets and out onto the (black and concealing) bedspread, meanwhile remaining completely clean herself.
Day 5 – meets her first baby friend, Elling Spiers!
Day 5 – Midwife Kate gives first in-home postpartum check-up.
c. Day 6 – smiling in her sleep. Is she remembering past lives? Remembering her last meal? She’s barely had her eyes open; how visual can her dreaming be?
Day 7 – Midwife Brandee comes for check-up and repeats weighing twice to double check and yes, she has regained her birth weight (minus one ounce) in just one week!
c. Day 9 – her ear cartilage is noticeably firmer, transforming from a perfect paper-thin pink wing close to her head to a perfect fleshy appendage
Day 10 – First time out of the house. Having (along with mama) hardly left the bedroom, we bundle up and venture out into the backyard. Stepping into a ray of sunshine, this Portland native girl squints her eyes and turns away.
Day 11 – First Bath! We should not have wondered how she’d handle it: Back in the warm water she curls into fetal position and relaxes.
c. Day 12 – vomit! Far more traumatic for mama than babe
Day 12 – We go to the Portland Saturday Market for Jason to pick out his ‘welcome to fatherhood’/’thanks for being such an awesome birth partner and life partner’ cedar flute. Ayla’s second car ride and first public outing. Maybe also her first time (aside from the trip home) being fully dressed in clothing (yuck).
Day 13 – Meeting and Blessing from Yangsi Rinpoche. Ayla’s first Tibetan lama’s blessing outside the womb, she is very open-eyed and calm.
Day 14 – First time back to Alma, this time for two week check-up! She’s reached 9 lbs 3 oz, and everyone remarks about her beauty, peacefulness, apparent vigor and enjoyment of the milk!
Day 15 – Grandma Miller arrives! they meet at the changing table; appropo of the weeks of laundry ahead
Evening day 15 – Yeast infection strikes baby bum! Pure Misery ensues!!
Day 15 – 19 – Total Number Diaper Changes = 112. Perhaps her first Guinness World Record.
c. Day 16 - face breaks out in tiny pimples. What, that radiant, luminous skin doesn’t last forever?!?
Day 17 – met her first newborn friend, Luis Filipe Martin Malcom Marley Wild-Camara, then 5 days old! She looks huge and so much more awake compared to him, and compared to our memories of her 12 days previous.
c. Day 20 – her eyes are increasingly focusing further away. Looking into them is less like a bottomless pool, she seems to recognize us by sight even more.
c. Day 21 – She's three weeks old and for the first time in months that we don’t go to Alma for a weekly check-in.
c. Day 22 – Dramatic feats of hand-eye coordination: seeing, focusing, reaching out towards and actually touching the diaper wipes box lid, then repeating with jason’s hand.
Day 23 – I feel twice that it was not a random jerking arm movement but rather a real hug I received.
Outgrows at least one brand of newborn/small diaper covers
Day 24 – Thanksgiving! Longest outing so far – 4 hours at two friends’ homes gatherings. Lots of love came Ayla’s way and she was very quiet, sweet and wide-eyed.
Day 25 – 24 hours recuperation from the stimulation of the day before, and also perhaps gassy
Day 26 - First for Daddy and Grandma Miller: whispered cheering for Georgia Dawgs as Ayla sleeps in grandma’s lap.
Day 26 - Stayed awake, alert and looking around for an entire neighborhood walk.
Day 26 – SMILED AND LAUGH-LIKE SOUNDS! We’ve believed we’ve seen smiles, or proto-smiles, already, but this was unambiguous! Mama and Daddy were laughing and she joined right in!