Day 9

Its been nine days. You are still beautiful.

... and terrifying

This is a picture of you
you are 1 day old here
you are in your mathdaddy's hands

It took 6 tries to get this right
you were so very small

I never knew that latching was so hard.

Align mouth & head to breast

time wide-open with push toward breast

maximized areola capture

don't occlude the nose

its as hard as docking the space shuttle

no wonder post-partum psychosis exists

nobody trains mom to dock the shuttle

but at 3am with 2 hours of sleep in the last 48

with a baby who doesnt know how.. she is expected to perform

or pay the price in greater lack of sleep.

Is this against the geneva convention?

When you, mathbaby, are looking by touch it is called rooting.

Your proportional control coefficient is way to high

you have many overshoots and oscillations

I have lost the exactness of your eating and pooping models

to lack of parental sleep and my ability to lose documents

to complexity of interactions in adaptive breast let-down and your adaptive hunger

The gynecologist did not want to hear about fourier filtering.

I will tell you about it.
I know the day you were concieved.
... without even using fertility-friend

We recorded these temperatures (detrended).
notice the small range

notice the noise in the signal

notice the discrete measurement levels

Saturday mornings we slept in all the way to 7am. Notice the temperature spikes? They are artifacts.

I fast fourier transformed it

I truncated the series

removing high frequency information - Saturdays don't show

leaving longer-term trends - the ovulation does show

I picked a 5-term approximation

Here is the improved curve and the original. It is not a bad fit

We though ovulation started at day 17. It really started at day 14.

it was the last day of the ovum..

You were conceived on the 17th

Some say life starts at birth.. before that you are tissue.

Some say life starts at conception ... before that you are dna
I say life starts at joy... you were conceived in joy

Baby girl, you were wanted.

We loved you before we ever met you.

You belonged with us before you ever saw light.

Your mommy and mathdaddy love you, baby girl!

Day 2

You were born on a friday.
The wife pushed - the doctor pulled, and somehow you came out.

You are my baby girl. I am afraid of you, and still love you ... terrified.
7 pounds, 12 ounces.
19 inches.
cute enough to deform space-time.
... terrifying.


I tried to prepare for you with programs.
That was not the time.
There is a time to write a program, an analytic tool.
There is a time to just hold a tiny desperately peaceful baby, and let her rest in her daddy's hands.

Today you are home, and are confused.
Tabula Rasa except you know three things ... hunger/full, comfort/uncomfort, sleep/unsleep.
Still learning to suckle... how does the mammary gland work?
Now is the time for programs.

I tracked your numbers.. eating, pooping.
Least squares fits are not so useful on the direct data, but they are relevant to the time steps, the numeric first derivatives.
How long between diapers? How long between nursings?
The mean is useful, but my data is so sparse that a median does not say much.

You prefer to eat about every 3.5 to 5 hours.
Still learning how to nurse.
Still trying to operate a breast... get good latch.
You have tasted colostrum.. pre-milk.
You don't like formula.

You calmed down when I put my finger in your mouth. You sucked on it like it was a pacifier. I think that confused you. There is a difference between a pinky-finger and a nipple. Your sustenance comes from the latter.


You poop about every 3 hours.
A victim of metabolism and small size.
It is no longer meconium.. its from actual digestion.

You pee about every 6 hours... but with an upward trend.
You gotta get this nursing thing down. There is always some confusion in the beginning.


I can hold you in my numbers as well as my hands.
I can find out what you cant say..
- when you will need a diaper change
- when you will be hungry
- if you are having "enough" or not
I hope you grow up and learn to love pi, and programming computers.
I hope you have an IQ, and don't have an unhealthy fascination with pink.
Know how to rebuild a carburetor, and numerically solve Navier-Stokes.
Know what a true friend is ...

You came with a manual. Its encrypted. Im decoding it.
It says that my job is to be a superhero for you. I need to provide, nurture, and protect.

I love you baby girl.
Please grow up loving God.
Please stay away from unhealthy people, and the things of darkness.
Don't make the stupid mistakes of your parents.. and grandparents.. and great-grandparents... and...