Meet Emilia Ann!
She arrived yesterday morning at dawn in Juneau. (It was a long day Sunday and a long night but all are well and very happy.) She came into the world with a hi-five, her hand reaching out, eyes open with wonder, and, just like in the movies, I heard her before I saw her and then everyone cried and now we can’t stop smiling.
What a time it’s been. I have been away from home now for the longest stretch since I was hurt back in 2005, over six weeks, and to Australia and back, just in front of the virus, and have two new grand daughters. So much love in the time of Corona. (I can’t be the first reader to think of that….) Especially from the nurses at the hospital. I love nurses. None of them were scared about all the lock down procedures. The temperature taking and the hand and phone sanitizing stations and locked doors on the maternity ward that required a call on a red phone and a staff member to come and open. We entered and exited the hospital through the emergency room door only, past a guard and a bright yellow screening tent where questions were asked and temperatures taken again. All that, and there are no known cases in Juneau. I felt safer. And more importantly, that the infirm and babies and doctors and nurses inside are safer.
I will be glad when Emilia is home later today. When my oldest daughter was born, my mother said to keep the baby at home for six weeks, with no visitors. She said the Japanese do that. I’m not sure if that is true, but that’s what happened, because I listened to my mother, and by default because Chip and I didn’t have the big circle of local family and friends we do now. I had been waitressing and so was off indefinitely. He was working at a sawmill and plowing snow that winter which are fairly self isolating jobs.
I’m glad for this new family that they will be cocooned at home for a while, and that we have Facetime, texts, and phones in our pockets to give advice, answer questions, joke, share pictures, and send heart emojis.
Emilia looks so much like all the other grandchildren. It’s kind of tough to be number 9, as everyone else got to be the first at something in the birthing room– the longest, the smallest. The first girl. The first boy. We’ve had first smiles, and big brown eyes, and dimples, and red hair, and long fingers, and a little pink “stork bite.” A cone head that startled and than re-shaped to normal. Even so, Emilia Ann has managed to pull the biggest surprise right out of her tiny hat:
