Cartoonist Baby (aka Baby Z) is here!

Cartoonist Baby sleeps through her family portrait

As you may have guessed from my sudden radio silence, Cartoonist Baby is finally here... and she is AMAZING! Masheka and I are so in love with our little girl, and just in awe of her. We've been home with Baby Z (her first initial) for a few days now, and in between nursing sessions, naps and diapering we pretty much just hold her and talk to her and stare at her in happy shock. I mean, really--look at this face!

Now, when she finally decided to arrive, she certainly took her sweet baby time. I was in labor for FIVE DAYS before she deigned to make her appearance--I kid you not. I remember being scared by one of the videos I saw in my childbirth class about a woman who was in labor 48 hours, but our instructor assured us that was really, really rare. Ha! By hour 60 I was wishing to have that woman's labor. Though the sleep deprivation was certainly good preparation for around-the-clock nursing...

Here we are in the hospital recovery room the day after she was born:

Sadly, due to my extremely long labor, I didn't get to use the birth center I was hoping for, but whatever. My midwives were amazing and the setting didn't really matter in the end--the only real bummer was that delivering in Labor & Delivery meant Masheka couldn't stay with me and baby overnight at the hospital, but he was there from 8:30 a.m. til 10:30 p.m. until we checked out.

By the way, Masheka is the sweetest and most devoted dad ever, in my totally unbiased opinion. He's pretty much doing everything except for nursing her, which is of course my full-time job these days--sometimes every hour!

Staring at her Daddy:

Masheka and I dressing her for her trip home:

All dressed!

Most of the clothes I've sewn or knit for her are still way too big, but here she is in her pink hand-dyed Fool-Proof Baby Hat:

And here's a middle-of-the-night diaper change photo of her in her Green Goblin diaper soaker, which is still a bit on the big side:

And here she is checking out the Brooklyn view in one of the cloth diapers her Grandmommy Beryl made for her:

Here's the full Flickr gallery.

And with that, I'm off to cuddle Baby Z and stare at her some more.