Santa and Mrs. Claus

Today Arianna got to meet Santa for the first time.

Arianna and the Blue Dragons

All around Cayman are statues of Blue Iguanas placed at often visited locations.  We have started taking pictures of Arianna with the statues and here are the first three from Smith's Cove, Rum Point and the Botanic Gardens.



Smith's Cove




Rum Point




Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Gardens

 

Sunday and Monday with Grandma Cummings

Katie, Arianna and Mary Anna
at the Wreck of the Ten Sail Monument
to Queen Elizabeth II

Visits on Sunday and Monday to the Eastern and Northern districts saw us spend time at Rum Point, the Botanic Gardens and various sites on the "Cayman" side of the Island. 



Katie and Arianna get
introduced to a Blue Iguana at the
Botanic Gardens



Mary Anna has decided she wants to be Grandma Cummings, thus the name change. She leaves tomorrow after a really fun visit.



Daddy and Arianna at the Tukka
Restaurant in East End



Seven Mile, Pedro and Parade of Lights



Seven Mile Public Beach



Pedro Saint James

Long and busy day today with Grandma Mary Anna, starting at Seven Mile Public Beach, then a visit to Pedro Saint James and ending with a trip to Camana Bay for the Parade of Lights.



Waiting on the Parade of Lights



Observation Tower at Camana Bay



One of Boats in Parade of Lights



Grandma Mary Anna

This afternoon Arianna was introduced to her Grandma Mary Anna who is down for a visit.  After an overnight flight from Seattle and layovers in Dallas and Miami, Grandma Mary Anna arrived in Cayman this afternoon a little tired but very excited to meet her granddaughter.  We had a picnic dinner on the beach at Smith's Cove and spent the evening catching up on all the news from home.  We have a full couple of days for Grandma who is here through Tuesday morning and had just one condition for her visit, lots of Grandma and Arianna time.

One Month Old

Arianna turned one month old today.  Unofficially she weighs 10 pounds and is 23 inches long.  That puts her right in the 50th percentile for weight but way up at the 90th percentile for length.  We have noticed how much longer she seemed with her clothing and the measurement today confirmed it.  Tomorrow her Grandmother Maryanna arrives and she will have the chance to show her Grandma just how active and involved a baby she is. Here are some photos we took of her this morning on the Penguin Christmas material for the 12 months of Arianna quilt that Katie plans to make.   

Harry Potter Day

Some of you may remember that one way we managed to stay sane during our first two months on the Island back in 2007 when we were in the little apartment at the college with no car and no TV and no real connection to anything beyond the college was looking forward to what we called Harry Potter Day.  That was the day that both the seventh book came out and the fifth movie premiered here in Cayman.  Ever since "Harry Potter Day", the day we get to see the next Harry Potter movie has been a big deal for us.  Yesterday we got up the nerve to ask a trusted friend to babysit Arianna and headed over to Hollywood Theatres at Camana Bay to watch the first part of the Deathly Hallows movies.  As always we were on Arianna time so the plans to be out the door by 11:30 and have lunch before hand at A La Kebab ended up not happening.  Still we enjoyed the movie immensely though both of us kept looking at our phones throughout the movie to make sure we hadn't missed a call.  It was a small first step but it showed we could go out on a date night (or in this case afternoon) and everything would be OK.  The movie was really good but we couldn't help whispering to each other several times that "hey that's different from the book".

Family Walk

This week we have really gotten into the routine of doing an evening walk with Arianna.  Since the road we live on isnt the greatest for walking a newborn, we drive over to the Royal Bank of Canada on the main road next to Grand Harbour.  It is just a few minutes from our house and sits at the bottom of Bimini Drive which is fantastic for walking and biking.  We park in the RBC lot and then walk the just over a mile distance to the North Sound where the road doubles back after a roundabout there at the water.  It is just about 2.1 miles round trip and it takes a little over 40 minutes for us not in shape people.  Obviously with some more walking under our belts we hope to cut that considerably.  It has been very good exercise for Mommy and Daddy and Arianna seems to view it as her nap time as she enjoys rolling in her stroller.  Today in fact we used it to help Arianna finally fall asleep as she had been up all afternoon and was obviously very tired but just couldn't fall asleep.  These picture are from a few days ago when we remembered to bring the camera on our walk.



Daddy near the start of the walk

Mommy and Arianna at the half way point
which is a roundabout at the end of the street
at the North Sound.



Arianna asleep in her stroller



The view as we walk south on Bimini

Hurricane Season Ends

November 30th is the traditional end of hurricane season and for the second year in a row we didn't get any uninvited visitors.  We will be pulling down our hurricane kit and using the water we had stored over the next several weeks.  These next couple of months are when Cayman truly is a Caribbean paradise and we plan to slowly introduce Arianna to the various things a young baby can do down here during these next several months when it is great to be outside.  Arianna has yet to establish anything remotely like a routine, she eats and sleeps at various and inconsistent times and in general is a newborn who is acting like, well, a newborn.  I have two more weeks of leave before I return to work on the 14th.  My Mom arrives next week for a visit and this weekend we have a friend watching Arianna for a few hours while we go see the new Harry Potter movie.  We found with Katie's relatives that we were OK going out and running errands and leaving Arianna with her grandparents and great grandparents. This will be the first time we leave Arianna with someone other than immediate family so we will see how, as parents, we handle leaving our little girl alone with someone who isn't a relative. It is only 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon but it should tell us how much we are comfortable with finding a sitter and having a date night/afternoon once or twice a month.

Arianna's Second Mommy

One of our biggest fears about bringing Arianna home was how our cat Gypsy would react to her.  Would she be jealous?  Would she try to retain our attention by acting out?  Or, in the extreme might she do something to the baby?  So for the past two weeks since we came home we have been watching her like hawks.  We have discovered to our joy that Gypsy has adopted Arianna and acts like a second Mom to her.  She watches over her in the Bassinet and Pack N Play, she comes to get us when Arianna is crying and generally keeps an eye on her whenever she is doing her floor time.  She also is very careful around her and seems to know that this is a new member of the family that she is also taking care of.  She has definitely imprinted on her as one of her own.

Happy Thanksgiving

A very Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  In honor of her first Thanksgiving, Arianna is wearing her Thanksgiving onesie from Johanna and Brent Bernard and is looking forward to the turkey and stuffing her mom will be eating later today.  We are getting Thanksgiving dinner from a local restaurant Chicken Chicken which today is going by the name Turkey Turkey in honor of American Thanksgiving.  Katie is a bit under the weather with a cold so we aren't doing too much today beyond me going out to get the food and resting.  Of course the big Texas-Texas A&M game is on later tonight so I have to show the colors.

Visit from Great Grampa Gene

This morning we had a chance to introduce Arianna to the only living great grand parent on her Daddy's side Grampa Gene.  Gene was on island for a few hours off a cruise ship he was on with his daughters and grand daughter.  After Scott picked him up at the ship terminal, Gene had breakfast with us at the house and then we took him and Arianna to see the college that Arianna's Great Granny Maude had helped when its library was in need.  After that we took him for a tour of the island and had lunch up on the Northside.  We had a great couple of hours with him until it was time for him to return to the ship.  It was a happy coincidence that he had planned this trip several months ago and thus got chance to meet his great grand daughter.



Arianna prepares to be loaded in the car



Parents on our own

For the first ten days of Arianna's life we have been very fortunate to have some much appreciated assistance from Katie's grandparents Bruma and Brupa (Joyce and Chuck Carlisle) and her parents Russ and Gail.  We also had a visit from my father, John, who was in town for a groundbreaking ceremony at the college.  John only got to see his newest granddaughter from a far (thus no pictures of him as we had with the other grand parents and great grand parents) as he had a cold and as a result ended up staying at another place.  He ended up only stopping by briefly to minimize the chances he might pass on what he had to Arianna. Yesterday we put John, Russ and Gail on their flights home and for the first time were a family of three and just the three of us in the house. We have about three weeks before my Mom comes and are both excited to have it be just us and at the same time a little scared.  There is a comfort level of having others around to help and to call on with questions as new parents.  We want to pass on our sincerest thanks to the great grand parents and grand parents who helped us these past ten days and wish Gail a very speedy recovery from her hip surgery that she goes into later today in Dallas, she will be in our thoughts.

Wreck of the Geneva Kathleen

This afternoon Russ and I headed out to do some snorkeling.  The excuse was to give the ladies some "girl" time but we all knew that this was a chance for Dad and Grandpa to get out and see if we couldn't find the holy grail of snorkeling for us since we got down here, the Wreck of the Geneva Kathleen.  Back in June of 2007 when we first moved here we saw a snorkel site on the map for the Wreck of the Geneva Kathleen near the Reef Resort on the north side of the island near East End.  We asked where the site was and never could get a straight answer.  We never did find it and over the years several attempts to locate it have gone unfulfilled.  It even became a running joke that there was no such thing as the Geneva Kathleen.  Then about two months ago I found a website with explicit directions about how to get to the wreck site from a beach we had been to on Northside. 



Lion Fish swimming
 around the wreck



So today when Russ wanted to do some snorkeling, this was the perfect excuse to follow the directions and see what we could find. We headed out into some strong swells and the waves crashing into the shore. The wreck was supposedly next to some cliffs and so we had to be extra careful not to get caught in a wave.  After swimming about a hundred yards along the shoreline we came upon the first wreckage and exploring led us to discover three or four distinct sites where wreckage could be found.  At the end of this post are some photos of the wreckage and above and below this paragraph is a lion fish we found swimming at the site along with a juvenile.   



Very poisonous spines so no touching and
pictures only from a safe distance



Lion fish are not native to the Caribbean but are actually invaders from the Pacific.  They are dangerous so we give them a wide berth whenever they are sighted.  It is believed that some escaped from an aquarium in Florida during Hurricane Andrew back in  the 90's and they breed so quickly that they have expanded through the Caribbean.  This fish is actually quite bad for the local waters as they are in large numbers and they eat off all the young of other species so they are not a welcome sight even if they make for pretty interesting photographs. There are lion fish tournaments held quite often down here for the expert divers who are the only ones that can catch them since you must have a license to do so.  This is part of a concerted effort to cull the herds of them now in Cayman waters.

Arianna's Birth Story

This is a pretty long post, a more condensed and somewhat more rhyming one is on the baby blog. Scott had three jobs during the labor and delivery: provide support, make note of all the people and events that happened, and take pictures.

Arianna Macias Cummings’ Birth Story

Sunday night, November 7, 2010, while out at Deckers, I started to have contractions. At first we weren’t sure whether they were contractions but when a particularly hard one hit me on the way to the car, we started to get excited. To test them for staying power we decided to go to Camana Bay for lattes and hot chocolate and to walk around.

At Camana Bay the contractions continued even through the walking so we headed home to see what would happen, convinced that we would be calling Dr. Richter to come to the hospital. However, like the previous Friday the contractions died down when we went to bed.

On Monday after picking up Bruma and Brupa and then dropping them off at Smith’s Cove for a sunset, Scott and I headed to Dr. Richter’s to get the catheter put in. We learned that Tanya and Ian, a couple from our Lamaze class, were also doing the same thing!

There were two babies about to be born so Dr. Richter had to head to the hospital which meant that we had to wait. Around 6:30, Dr. Richter returned and we got the catheter in. The plan was to go out to eat afterwards but it was pretty uncomfortable so Scott ran out to get Chinese takeout and we went home to eat.

While eating, I started to cramp. When we went upstairs I gushed blood which made us very worried. Bruma reassured us that it was perfectly normal and a good sign. I called Melanie and Stephanie (we’d called Mom and Dad earlier) and settled in to try to get some sleep.

At 6:00 the next morning we got up, showered, and got dressed. Bruma and Scott made a breakfast of scrambled eggs and oatmeal and, at 7:15, we left for the hospital. After first going to the wrong entrance, we made it to maternity to check in at 7:30. Tanya and Ian were already there so we chatted some with them. They’d also had blood and cramping but Tanya’s cramping had stopped the night before so we thought maybe it was a good sign that I was still in pain.



Hooked up to the fetal monitor

At 7:40 we were moved to room 8 and met the midwife who was going to be helping us, Mairead. She got us hooked on the external fetal monitor at 7:55 and left us to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. We had to do the monitor for a bit longer because on one of the contractions her heart rate dropped to 90 and they were worried that the contractions were impacting her. After the extra time everything was okay so they think she just moved away from the monitor for a bit (wiggle worm!).

Mairead and Marion

We started to go for a walk but ran into Dr. Richter so we turned back. He inspected me and said that I was around 3.5 cm dilated, pulled out the catheter and put in the prostaglandin gel. We had to be on the fetal monitor for an hour so we watched a Blue Planet episode. After the fetal monitor showed that everything was good, we walked around and explored. The contractions started to get more intense as we walked.

When we returned to the ward to eat lunch the contractions seemed to lessen. Another walk got them going again so we kept that up in hopes that we could really jump start labor. After a while, I started to get very tired so we returned to the room for a bit of a rest and to watch some episodes of “How I Met Your Mother”. I had a few contractions about seven or so minutes apart while we watched the episodes and found that getting on all fours on the bed helped them feel better.

At 2:00 p.m. we were moved to Delivery Room 3. Dr. Richter inspected me and indicated that I was somewhere between 5 and 6 cm dilated. He broke my water which is when we realized that she had passed her meconium inside which would change some of the procedures when she was born. Since they wanted to avoid her inhaling any of the meconium, they would do their best to keep her from crying when she first came out. She would also be moved to the care unit before we could hold her as the midwife worked to suction everything out of her nose and mouth. We wouldn’t be able to hold her until they made sure that everything was okay.

After the water broke while hooked on the fetal monitor

The contractions started to come more frequently. We tried watching more episodes but I couldn’t focus very long because of the contractions. We decided to put on some music and look through vacation pictures. We also started trying our comfort measures. We found a few positions that helped like standing with my elbows on the bed and rocking. Scott also used the tennis balls to massage my lower back. I sat on the birthing ball which helped in between contractions but didn’t feel good at all during contractions. The contractions were starting to last about a minute and I had only a minute or two in between them so we were excited that things were moving along. Mairead said that I should be between 7-8 cm at the next check and Scott joked that with how things were moving I was going to be at 9 cm.

That’s why it was really disappointing when I was still the same dilation at 4:15 when Mairead checked. She tried moving the baby’s head out of the way to release more of the amniotic fluid so that the baby could move further down and help open up the cervix. Scott says that I passed a “lake” and Mairead said that with the size of my bump and the amount of fluid I was passing, this was most likely going to be a small baby (didn’t quite turn out that way).

I was laying in bed at that point because I was getting tired being on my feet all the time so Mairead told me try laying on my left side. She warned me that the contractions would feel different. I was offered pain medication at this point but I wanted to wait even though the contractions were coming pretty quickly. After working through about 5 contractions on my side on the bed, I realized that I DID NOT like lying down. The contractions were starting to come almost one on top of the other. I had only about 30 seconds to a minute between each one. Scott wanted me to try pain medication but I really wanted to exhaust all of the comfort measures that we had in our arsenal before we went for the pain medication. One of the things that we hadn’t tried was water so we got into the shower (no baths in the hospital). The hot water felt very good and helped for about 30 minutes before its usefulness wore off.

We returned to the room and tried a few more things but none of the comfort measures that we had did anything to ease off the pain. At this point the contractions were just about constant and I was barely getting time to breathe in between. Each single contractions wasn’t very long but they were very frequent. We were trying to work through a contraction standing with my elbows on the bed when my legs buckled. Scott caught me and had to hold me to get through the next contraction. I didn’t want to get in bed because I knew that it hurt more when I was lying down but I no longer had the strength to get through the pain on my feet. We tried doing things on my knees but my legs were spasming too hard to allow me to keep myself up. Mairead came in to check and I was only at 7 cm. That meant that after four hours of labor with contractions one on top of the other I’d moved only about 1 cm. That was a disappointing blow.

After a series of particularly painful contractions that were about 1 minute to 1.5 minutes long with less than a minute in between and sometimes only about 20 seconds in between, we decided to talk to Dr. Richter and Mairead about an epidural. Dr. Richter indicated that he thought I had until at least midnight before I was going to have the baby and I was still far enough away that I could get an epidural. We decided to do it.

It took nearly 45 minutes for Dr. Anwar (the anesthesiologist) to get the epidural in because the contractions were so intense that my arms and legs were shaking uncontrollably during the contractions and there was only about half a minute in between each one which wasn’t long enough for her to get it in safely. First Scott held me up and tried to keep my body still during the contractions so that Dr. Anwar could work but when his back gave out from supporting all my weight, Mairead had to do it.

Resting after the epidural

When the epidural went in, it wasn’t working well on my right side so Dr. Anwar gave me another shot and told me to lay on my right side to help the medication work there. Dr. Richter came in to inspect me again for Dr. Anwar’s records. An hour after Mairead’s last check and the hour of intense contractions that caused all the trouble with the epidural, I was still only at 7 cm dilated. At 7:30 I was resting well and was ready to settle in for at least the next four and a half hours before this baby was supposed to come. I was hungry but wasn’t allowed to eat anything so Scott took my dinner but threw most of it away because it wasn’t any good. At 7:50 we watched a Blue Planet DVD and, at 8:00, we were introduced to our new midwife Hamerika.

Hamerica checking the fetal monitor

Dr. Richter wanted to use Oxytocin to try to get labor moving some more since I’d seemed to stall. Hamerica came in at 8:10 and got the Oxytocin started. Within 5 minutes I started to feel pain even with the epidural. By 8:30 I was really pushing for something because the contractions had returned. Although much less intense than they had been without the epidural, the pain was starting to slice through my right side. Before Dr. Anwar had left at 7:30 she had mentioned an infusion of the epidural medicine so that the medication would be continuous but no one had given me one yet. I pointed that fact out to Hamerica. As she was getting the infusion ready, the pain started to spike back to where it was before.

At 8:45, Hamerica examined me and said she must call Dr. Richter because I am ready to give birth; the baby is right there! I didn’t believe her because the pain in my right side was pretty constant, intensifying with the contractions but lingering the whole time, and it felt similar to when the baby would move and kick into my side during the pregnancy. I didn’t think she was in the birth canal; it felt like she had moved up into my rib cage in protest! All throughout labor she had been moving a lot and kept moving away from the monitors when we were hooked up and kicking and punching me in between contractions. I hear that is pretty rare as most babies settle in for labor and stay quiet; she has always been a wiggle worm!

Dr. Richter arrived at 9:15 and said that it was time to start pushing. He gave Scott the option of looking down the birth canal to see her head. Scott had indicated before that he was going to be a strict above the waist guy during the delivery but the temptation to get the first glimpse of the baby was just too much! He was able to see her right at the beginning of the pushing and watched throughout the delivery as the baby got closer and closer to coming out. It was amazing watching the excited expression on his face as the baby got closer and closer!

The pain in my side was so intense that it made the time in between contractions much worse than the contractions themselves. I would push with each contraction and as soon as it ended my leg would start shaking violently again and my side would feel like it was being ripped apart. Dr. Richter held that leg and told me to focus on what I would do with pushing on the next contraction instead of on the pain. He said that the pain would go away as soon as the baby was out so it was important that I get the baby out.

Dr. Richter was on my right trying to keep my right leg from going crazy, Hamerica was on my left holding the leg that was still partially numb from the epidural, and Scott was close to my face on my left counting for the pushes and encouraging me. At some point he said “Just one more push” and I stared straight at him and said “Liar!”

After an hour of pushing Arianna Macias Cummings was born at 10:12 p.m. They pulled her out, suctioned her immediately, then took her over to the care unit and laid her down to clean her off. She was screaming her head off. While I pushed out the placenta and Dr. Richter stitched me up, Scott was able to be over by Arianna talking to her and taking pictures.

Arianna screaming her head off in the care unit

Dr. Richter, Arianna and I after Hamerica cleaned her up

They measured and weighed her while they worked to get all the messy amniotic fluid off her. Arianna weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces and was 52 cm long (about 20 inches). She was in the care unit for 30-45 minutes, screaming the whole time. Arianna was not pleased to be out of her nice warm home and all by herself while they checked everything out. Finally, I was able to hold her. After some time breastfeeding and being together as a family, Arianna was taken by Hamerica to be washed and changed. Per Scott’s instructions, she was put into the Texas Longhorn receiving blanket.  She was then taken from the delivery room and met us in my regular hospital room. It was an exhausting day but we had a beautiful baby girl by the end of it!

Arianna's first step on U.S. soil

This morning we headed over to the U.S. consulate to register Arianna's birth with the US government, get her a social security number, and order her a passport.  When we crossed the threshold I said to Katie well here is Arianna's first taste of U.S. soil and the consular officer inside chuckled.  We were very lucky that the consular officer from the Embassy in Jamaica is on island this week and so we could turn in all the forms without having to send them off island for processing.  It was an extremely fortunate coincidence as otherwise our paperwork would not get processed as quickly as it would have to be shipped to Jamaica for processing instead of being sent directly on to the U.S. 

Arianna got her picture next to the flag and amazingly enough, Katie's roommate from the maternity ward was also in to register her child so there was a happy sharing of first week at home experiences.

Arianna's day trip to Northside, Rum Point and East End

With a successful excursion under our belts last night to Camana Bay we decided today to get very adventurous and take Arianna around the Island.  The morning actually started with Katie and I going to the General Registry to register her birth and get her birth certificate.  Today was the first day we could do it since yesterday was a national holiday and Friday we didn't get the necessary paperwork from the hospital until too late in the day.  After getting home from the Registry, we packed the two vehicles and headed up to the Northside of the Island where we had lunch on the water at the Over the Edge Cafe.

After finishing lunch we headed on to Rum Point and took Arianna out on the dock to a gazebo where we got the photo's of four generations of the Carlisle, Loski and Cummings women and four generations of the Macias middle name.  After an hour or so at Rum Point we headed east to the Wreck of the Ten Sail Monument and the Blow Hole.  Arianna had been fed some expressed milk while we were at the registry and that knocked her out as she was asleep almost the entire four plus hour excursion waking only to be fed at the Monument and again briefly at the blow hole.  She is still struggling with the whole when is day and I should be awake and when is night and I should be asleep concept.

Katie is furiously working on the birth story and will cross post it both here and the baby blog.  We kept pretty good notes of everything that happened on November 9, 2010 and so she has a lot to write about.