Maya and I got her an iPod Touch (so awesome, I think I might let her play with it soon) and a new pair of earrings.

In January I submitted the five photos below which will be turned into an on Demand video on the local channel 1111. Between February 14 and March 31, the baby with the most views will win a prize (you need at least 100 views to even be considered).

If you’re a TW digital subscriber in Cincinnati, please watch Maya’s video over and over and over!

Andy Zilch,

Thank you for submitting the pictures of your baby for our Local on Demand Cutest Baby Contest!

Viewing of these videos on Local on Demand channel 1111 will be between February 14 and March 31. Remember, you’ll receive one vote each time someone watches your baby’s video during that time. The baby video with the highest number of votes will be awarded. Prizes will also be awarded for second, third, fourth & fifth place vote totals.

Want to give your baby an edge? Talk to your friends, neighbors and relatives – especially relatives! Anyone who has Time Warner Cable digital cable! Beginning February 14, tell them to tune to Local on Demand Channel 1111 and look in the category: Cutest Baby. Vote early! Vote often!

And while you’re on Channel 1111, check out some of the other interesting videos available.

That sense of awe at the energy contained in the wind is similar to what I feel as the power of time. Just two days ago I experienced what has been my best day as a father. Maya and I spent a full 5 minutes (though it seemed like an eternity) staring into each other’s eyes where she seemed like a fully aware human being.

She was staring as intently at me as any other fully grown person would do when I was talking to them. She has these moments from time to time, but what made this special was that she started to smile at me. The smile started in her left, my right, corner of her mouth. She kind of half smiled, then with a tremendous effort the smile spread to the right side of her mouth. It was amazing. I was in awe. I’m sure my friend Chris and Sarita and my parents who were at the dinner table with me as I held her didn’t notice, but it was so powerful. She smiled and the world stopped. But to bring it back to my wind analogy, the power of time is quickly diminishing what that smile felt like. Today I came home between a long day in the office and a business dinner to kiss Maya and Sarita and I couldn’t remember the feeling of that smile. I could remember that it happened, but the feeling of peace and confidence was just a memory – no longer real but just some words I could recall to describe that experience.

I went to lunch with my friend Mike on Tuesday and he mentioned to me the power that time had and the ability of time to wipe away the real feelings. I’m hoping he’s wrong, but planning that he’s right. I’m therefore going to try to record, from the moment, what it feels like as Maya’s dad. She’s amazing. She’s life changing. I want to remember it all without having the process of recording it all to interfere with experiencing the moment. Is that too much to ask? Maybe I should tell it to the wind.

21-Jan: Maya Getting Fussy

26-Jan: Maya Sleeping Sounds

29-Jan: Maya Swinging

Click here to view the embedded video.

30-Jan: More Maya Sleeping

31-Jan: More Dancing

Click here to view the embedded video.

1-Feb: Trying to Crawl

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Amazing. Totally amazing. Though so totally exhausting. Even on good days a baby is alot of work; on bad days, when she’s fussy and grumpy, she’s alot of work plus it’s like having the most painful noise in the world playing through headphones that are sewn into your ears.

The best way I can describe it is to imagine the most precious thing you’ve ever had in your life (for me before family I would say that was like my car – which I equate to freedom – or my camera – which is kind of how I tell my stories). Now imagine that you can never let that thing leave your site. In fact, you can never take your hand off that thing. At first you don’t care cause it’s novel and you’re still figuring out how it works so there are constantly new challenges. But eventually you want to put it down and eat or shower or go to the movies.

Now imagine you start to figure out how to put that thing down, but only for 60 minutes at a time. That’s essentially what it’s been like the first few weeks. Though she’s only got a semblance of a pattern, it’s really like a 2-3 hour cycle. However, 30-40 minutes of that cycle you’re feeding her, then you change her (10 minutes); then you play with her (10 minutes – she has a short attention span and gets overstimulated quickly); then you relax her for sleep (20-30 min); then she sort of falls asleep, but needs attention every few minutes when her hand or a hiccup scares the crap out of her (20-30 min); then she falls asleep (30-60 min). Then the whole thing repeats.

So you find yourself planning during the feeding/changing/playing/calming exactly what you’ll do during the 30-60 minutes she’s asleep. Which doesn’t turn out to be much time since you still have to do all the stuff you normally do like eat, pay bills, read something, watch tv, call friends, etc. So getting anything done is almost impossible.

In the end though, she makes a few sighs that are the most sweet sound I’ve ever heard and I kiss her cheek which is the softest skin in the world and it’s all worth it. Click play below (assuming your browser shows a media player), or this link to hear what I mean.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Prior to our dance, Maya was listening to a lullaby CD and fussing like crazy.  I noticed when I popped my iPod onto our stereo (which was on some dance track) that she kind of came to attention… so then we started dancing and by the end of the first song it was like her eyelids were made of lead.  We’ll experiment with other songs an see what music works best.

Amber – This is Your Night – YES
Danni Minogue – Put the Needle On It – YES
BodyRockers – I Like the Way – YES
Gnarls Barkley – Crazy – NO

I personally had the chance to visit with Grandma C on several occasions, all of them after a stroke that had affected her memory but certainly not her strength.  During one visit Sarita and I told her we would be getting married.  Grandma C squeezed my hand tightly and in the same sentence both invited me into her family with a trip to her home in the Philippines and warned me about what would happen should I ever hurt her grand-daughter.

Sarita and I took solace in the fact that such a strong woman is now looking over us from her new phase of life.  Grandma C will be witness to Maya’s childhood and we will honor Grandma by passing on the strength she instilled in her sons and daughters and they in turn have passed on to their children.

On our most recent trip to California in October, we visited Grandma to show her that Sarita was carrying her fifth great-grandchild.  She guessed that Baby Z was a boy and suggested we name him “Rudy” – also the name of her oldest son.  We laughed and promised to put the name on the list.  Regardless of the gender, she advised us to love that baby with all our hearts.  We certainly do love Maya with all our heart, and we know Grandma will smile upon her for the rest of her life.

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What a whirlwind past couple days. I’ve written as much as I can remember down on a notepad so I can hopefully fill this post in after the fact.  It all started at 6:40A on 13-Dec, when Sarita called me into the bathroom because she thought her water had broke

Maya lays asleep on my chest in the dark as I type out this post on my phone. My arms barely can hold the phone, but I desperately want to record these memories as I already, 36 hours in the making, feel them fading.

In retrospect there is actually a funnier start to the whole thing. First, my mom’s new husband Roy, a pilot, religiously follows the weather reports and mentioned that the moon was full on Friday night. My parents had come to visit Cincinnati to help with some last minute chores and pick up some furniture. We’d heard that full moons tend to start more pregnancies (no idea if anything scientific to that). Second, in the middle of the night I woke up and tried to hand Sarita a full glass of water. I’d sworn she called out to me “water please!… Water please.” She later in the morning told me she was having a dream about her water breaking.

Sarita was mostly pre-packed, but I needed to grab a few things before we made our way into the cold dawn, and down a fairly empty Saturday morning Madison Ave to Good Sam. Admitting took about 30 minutes during which I had to sit in a waiting room anxiously watching some bad western on AMC. Another family arrived in the waiting room, a father and four soon-to-be grandparents, and provided a short but welcom distraction as they got settled and shared stories of this time for them when they were their Son and daughter.

Maya just gave a cute yawn, mom got up and is rocking her now. It’s 12:15A.

So about thirty minutes after we arrived, Sarita had been processed and I was invited back to see her. By now she and her belly were hooked up to several machines monitoring mom’s and baby’s vitals. Sarita explained that the nurse confirmed her water had broken, she was 2cm dilated, and we were having a baby today. It was suddenly real – for me at least – this moment we had dreamt about the past 8 months, prepared for in weeks of classes, and joked about just a couple hours earlier. It was happening.

The nusre inserted a few more needles, one a HEP-lock for an IV and later potosin, and a second to draw some blood, and we were on our way to the Labor and Delivery room (L&D for short).

The L&D Room is posh. You’re there basically for the entire process until about 1-2 hours after birth.  We chilled and watched some television between contractions.  At about 11AM they were getting a bit stronger and the nurse said Sarita was at 6cm.  That’s great progress (from 2cm to 6cm in ~3.5 hours).  Since it was going so quickly they recommended she get the epidural now if she wanted it – she said “sure” even though the pain at this point was bearable.

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For the next few hours we watched popped in Pirates of the Carribean and made a few phone calls to family.  By ~1:30 the nurse said she was at 10cm and it was time to push.  At that point, the posh room transformed into a clean room the likes of which you would expect at Ikea.  Another nurse came in with a portable table and began methodically aligning a series of forceps, hemastats, scissors, gauze, etc.  The whole thing was incredibly precise and efficient.

The OB came in to calm us down for the process and explain she would check in about every 15 minutes (apparently the initial pushing must be something rather administrative).  We had a great nurse, Kelli who helped me learn a rhythm for counting during the contractions and so we began…

The pushing took only about 1hr 15min (I didn’t count in my head, but because they were so regularly timed, I would say it took about 25 contractions); by about 30 minutes I could see the top of the baby’s head (and a curl of black hair).  With each push more and more came and the excitement built to meet our child.  It was incredibly suspensful not knowing if the person coming out would be a boy or girl – I vascillated many times between what I ‘wanted’ but in the end I just wanted to meet this little person.

At 3:11PM Maya emerged, her little fist pushed up underneath her chin probably making her extra hard to push out.  The rush of emotions was like a tidal wave. Ecstasy, that we had a baby Girl – exactly what I wanted. Relief, that she cried right away and all the little scores the nurses and doctor were tossing around were good. Pride, that my wife was so incredibly brave. Fear, that I had no idea what was next.

The background discussion of the nurses and doctor were kind of blocked out in that movie-cacoon-like silence and the only three people in the room were Sarita, I, and our Baby Girl, the latter still nameless.  Then like a crack of the whip, everything sped back up.  The doctor was asking me if I wanted to cut the cord. To my own surprise, the word that came out of my mouth was “yes”.

Then, like I was opening a bank or something, mom and Baby were two separate people.  The nurses were whisking Baby away to a warmer and beckoning me to follow.  They weighed her: 7lbs, 1.2oz.  Counted her fingers: 10. Toes: 10. Something to do with number of vessels in the umbilical cord: 3. Checking her color and other factors in the APGAR score: 9 at 1min and 9 at 5min.  Suctioning out mucus from her nose and mouth, and then watching her breathing.  I completely missed the fact that Sarita was delivering the afterbirth – we later laughed how far that distance was in those few minutes (I was in the same room, just 10 feet away but neither of us knew what the other was doing).

We spent the next 90 minutes or so just staring at our Baby Girl and frantically searching through our list of names for one we thought we liked.  We went over and over the list; names we thought were so adorable when we selected them.  Not a single one fit.

Around 5PM the nurses came to move us the post-pardum room.  En route to said room, we selected Maya Rose. Maya was not on our original list, but from some website was adjacent to a name we liked.  The meanings of Maya are so diverse (1) (2) (3).  Rose is significant as the beginning of my grandmother’s names (Rose and Rosemary), my Mom’s middle name, Sarita’s middle name ‘Flor’ and her mother’s first name ‘Flora’ which both mean flower.  Maya Rose Zilch – our new beauty.

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In the PP room Maya’s length and head circumfrence were measured: 18.5in and 13.8in respectively.  She received her first bath at the hands of some wonderful nurses and donned the pink cap you see at the top of this post which was knit by hospital volunteers.  The next several hours were a whirlwind of vitals checks, crash courses in feeding and diapering, and fits of crying.  At 8PM, Dad changed his first diaper; mom got the next one.

The morning of the second greeted us with a beautiful sunrise.  That light gave us some new energy after very little sleep overnight.  Sarita and I both took showers which felt like the best showers of our lives.

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The second day was filled with more feeding, vitals checks, and crying, plus visits from the new grandparents:

Maya passed her hearing test and we just spent the day together as a family. Now it’s the second night with just about as little sleep as the previous.  Can’t wait to get Maya home and us back to our own beds.