Welcoming Cooper David Sterne

You might have wondered where we have been over the first part of 2016. Admittedly my blogging fell off a cliff and now I can share one of the main reasons why.

On Friday, May 13th Jules and I had our first son, Cooper David Sterne. He was 20.5” long and 8 pounds, 7 ounces coming out of an emergency C-Section (he has a large noggin). He (and Mom) are totally ok. I was with them both in the operating room and through the hospital stay after – with a camera of course.

This was a difficult pregnancy for us both. Our prior attempt ended in a miscarriage soon after we announced our pregnancy on social media so this time around, we didn’t announce anything. In fact, we kept it a secret (except close family and friends) for as long as we could. Once Jules was unmistakably pregnant, we told people when they asked but largely kept to ourselves about it. It’s been challenging to deal with pregnancy symptoms (I didn’t experience any of them myself) while protecting ourselves from jealous friends, bad “juju” from former friends, and dealing with career effects as we both work for the same company. It’s been stressful to keep this “secret” when all we wanted to do was share our joy openly.

Not to mention being a first time (human) parent is somewhat terrifying. I worry constantly about protecting him from the insane state of the world while not being overbearing in the future. Dealing with the myriad of development related questions flowing through my head while extremely sleep deprived has been tough, but not insurmountable. So far, we haven’t encountered anything worrisome and I hope it stays that way. We are very fortunate on two fronts: he is a VERY ‘chill’ baby and we have a tremendous local support system of family and friends. I did set up a parenting related Slack channel- let me know if you would like to join.

We are super excited to welcome Cooper into our world! You might see the occasional photo shoot on the blog, but I do plan to keep this blog true to its roots (a little bit of everything in our lives).