Sunday, November 25, 2007

Data Blogging: Name Popularity

One website we had quite a bit of fun with while choosing a name for Quinn was the Social Security Administration's historical ranking of the popularity of baby names. Here are the popularities over the past 100 years of some of our names:

Timothy and Laura are clearly baby-boomer names (although neither cracked the top 10), while Jean and Irene are somewhat old-fashioned and have been on the decline for years (the combination Laura Jean didn't crack the top 1000). Quinn, as a name for a girl, is rarer but growing more popular in recent years (Quinn for a boy is more common).

One quibble is that I wish they provided raw numbers of people with each name in addition to rank popularity (since there are considerably more people now than in 1907). Anyway, it's a fun website to play with.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Day Five


This morning, Quinn was 4 days old, and she woke up, opened her eyes and calmly looked around at the world for several hours with nary a cry to be heard. So far she has been a very calm and unfussy baby -- of course, she's been sleeping quite a lot so that may change. Still, it seems like her personality is shining through already.


A few comments on the labor and delivery. Laura Jean was completely and totally awesome - she did 20 hours of labor with no epidural, including about 4 hours of extremely painful 'transitional labor'. I am 100% sure I would have cracked in under an hour; even Chuck Norris would have been begging for drugs. It was amazing!

That said, pitocin is not our friend. We were induced because the baby was at 41 weeks; the rap on induced labor is that it causes especially painful and intense contractions, but it does work to get the baby out soon. Unfortunately, the drug mainly seemed to make each stage of labor longer and more difficult. Laura Jean says she would definitely do natural childbirth again, but definitely not induction if at all possible.

We'd also like to give a big thumbs up to the Bradley classes we took - they were very good in prepping us for all possibilities and giving us the tools to get through it. Laura Jean's sister, Amy, was also there with us for the entire labor and there's no way we could have done it without her - she's a natural at labor coaching as well as a massage therapist-in-training.

And in the end, we got this amazing baby girl with no health complications (apart from a minor case of jaundice).

Quinn has spent a good portion of her short life being held by a wide circle of doting family members. For more pictures, click below.



Grandma has been out here for a few weeks helping out with everything ...


... and Grandpa came out for the weekend to meet the new baby ...


... along with Auntie Jessica.


Here Quinn gets a good grip on Grandpa David's finger.


Auntie Amy and baby Quinn.


Uncle Eric and Quinn (and a penguin).


Grace gets to meet her little cousin.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Best. Birthday Present. Ever.


Seriously best birthday ever, although Quinn decided that she wanted her own birthday all to herself. We came home from the hospital today and both Quinn and Laura Jean are doing really well. We're just figuring out the routines of caring for her, but everything is quite wonderful - even the part about getting up several times in the night.

Will write more later, but for right now, the baby is sleeping and so shall we.


Mama and baby getting ready to come home from the hospital.


Dad and baby taking the new rocker for a test drive.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

healthy baby girl named Quinn Irene born 5:54am. 8lbs 2oz, beautiful & amazing!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

So we're still waiting...

No baby just yet, but we've scheduled an induction for tomorrow morning, so it won't be too much longer in the grand scheme of things.

Still -- waiting is hard. All the details of everyday seem largely unimportant -- does one do the laundry or vacuum the rug while sitting around waiting for your life to transform? I guess maybe we should be using the time to pick a name or do something equally momentous.

Anyway, baby soon!

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Cell blogging

This has been a test of the cellphone blogging system!

UPDATE: The pictures from my phone don't seem to be going through. Hmmm. Maybe I'll give it a few days and try again. And, in case you're wondering, yes, this is because they don't have wifi at the hospital :)

UPDATE 2: To clarify, this was only a test. If it had been real there would have been, you know, baby pictures and everything.