Baby's First Day -- January 26, 2007

Seven months prior to birth, we chose the name "Helen," after her father's paternal grandmother.

The middle name did not come so easily.  "Aurora" was in the running.  As the sun started to rise
just an hour before her birth, melting the ice on the windows, and bathing Boston and our delivery
room in luminous orange, we felt that the name had chosen us.



40 minutes before birth, the aurora's presence is felt:
 

From the O.E.D., aurora [L],
    1.  The rising light of the morning; the dawn.
    2.  personified, The goddess of the dawn, represented as rising with rosy fingers from the saffron-coloured bed of Tithonus.
    3.  fig.   The beginning, the early period; poet.  for 'rise,' 'dawn,' 'morn,' in the same fig. sense.
    6.  The colour of the sky at the point of sun-rise; a rich, orange hue.
In usage, "Her cheeks suffused with an auroral blush."  "Hast thou marked in her eyes those gleams auroral play?"
Keats:  "At tender eyedawn of aurorean love."
Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene I:  " ... as the all-cheering sun should in the furthest east begin to draw the shady curtains from Aurora's bed."

We also thought "Aurora" sounded better than "8:13 a.m."  "Auroch," which neighbors "aurora"
in the dictionary, also failed to win us over, though we love our extinct megafauna.


Still a quiet room, the only light coming from the dawn.  (Helen's E.T.A. = 38 minutes.)  And Vanessa, always a good doula,
avoids spilling hot coffee on the laboring mother:





First photo (8 minutes old) and a nervous, excited father:





"The Newly Born" -- Rabindranath Tagore (1940)
             New deliverer --
     The new age eagerly  looks
          To the path of your coming.
     What message have you brought
          To the world?  In the mortal arena
     What seat has been prepared for you?
          What song of heaven
     Have you heard before coming?

 ... Will you, perhaps, where a tide of blood besmirches your path,
           Where there is malice and discord,
                 Construct a dam of peace,
             A place of meeting and pilgrimage?

      Who can say if there is written on your forehead
                     The invisible mark
                Of the triumph of some great striving?

      Today we search for your unwritten name:
                You seem to be just off the stage,
            Like an imminent star of morning.
                 Infants bring again and again
                      A message of reassurance --
      They seem to promise deliverance, light, dawn.






Remember when you could double in age in just 8 minutes?  Now 16 minutes old:



Our friend and superdoula, Vanessa, and our midwife, Connie (who's super, too):

Grandparents were in midflight from Miami when baby was born.  That's timing!






Twelve hours old:






Swaddled and ready for a 14-minute nap:



When you're old enough to comprehend this, Helen, you can look at the sunset on the day you were born:























Good night:



Continue on to baby's .