Whoops, it’s been awhile.

 Sorry about that. I know I owe you guys a couple photoshoots that were requested, and I’m sure Valentine will be jazzed about doing them. I’ll try to wrangle her up for them as soon as I can, and if you’ve got any other pics you want to see, feel free to drop me a comment.

 I’ve been MIA from Tumblr for awhile, and a lot’s gone on. You might remember last fall, we lost baby Milo. I felt lost for the next few months after that, unsure what to do with myself.

 But in January, we learned I was pregnant again. Since I’d just had a miscarriage, my doctor had me do blood tests every few days to ensure my hcg was rising properly in the beginning. It’s supposed to double, which hadn’t happened with Milo (the numbers had staggered and fallen)… This time, they tripled. Even so, with the first ultrasound and that tiny beating heart wherein, I was still too wary, too scared to let myself get attached.

 The rest of the pregnancy, I could write in dramatic detail here, but I’ll go ahead and pare it down to one word; clusterfuck. Every time we’d get a handle on one complication, another would pop up. Hyperemesis, preterm labor, gestational diabetes, etc. By the end of it, I’d had so many needles in various parts of my body that you can probably use my ass to drain spaghetti. It all ended with the grand finale of fuck-you-body; 5 fun-filled DAYS of labor.

 A beautiful 6 lb girl.

 They rushed her to the NICU a half hour after she was born for breathing issues. A day later, her lung collapsed. She spent the first two weeks of her life in incubators, hooked up to IVs, feeding tubes, chest tubes, an oscillator and other assorted vents. And as stressed and scared as we were, lemme tell you, each time we walked through that NICU, it didn’t escape us that we were some of the lucky ones. It is a heartbreaking place.

 But, she’s home now. And I can show you this:

 Her real name is a Hawaiian variant on a popular stateside name, but for her internet alias, we chose Moxie. Why? She’s proved she has it in spades, and it is something we needed to get through this past year. Guts, chutzpah, soda pop…

 She may be the one dressed as little Amelia, but I am the girl who waited, and she is the one who came from the stars to heal my broken heart. Come along, Moxie. I’m so glad you’re finally here. We’ve got some adventures to go on.

Still working on the Doctor Who request photoshoot! We haven’t forgotten!

 In the meantime, I wanted to post pics of the beautiful custom pajamas that our friends at Hannah’s Pajamas made for Valentine. They’re so detailed and beautifully made; I wish Val would stay still long enough that we could get better shots of them.

 First up is Renamon. I’m a big fan of Digimon: Tamers (the third season). At the time it was new, Renamon was a really unique partner digimon in that she was gigantic compared to all the other rookies. So, naturally, I figured that a fierce, intimidating fighting machine would be a perfect costume for Valentine.

 Look how fierce she is!

 Ok, maybe not so much fierce as somewhat intimidating.

 Where ‘somewhat intimidating’ actually means ‘cute and cuddly’.

 ”Eh, haters gonna hate.”

 ”Renamon, shinka!”

 ”…MUDKIP??” Wait a second, something went awry with that digivolution…

 But I guess I can’t complain. Someone must have heard I liek Mudkip.

 Hey, Val. It’s Poke-MON, not Polka-Mom. Don’t expect me to dance.

 Showing off the mudkip…tail? Fin? Both? I’m afraid that while I love certain Pokemon, like Mudkip, I know very, very little about the franchise.

 Oh well. Throw pokeball, receive babby.

 Merry Christmas and hope you have an happy—scratch that, AWESOME New Year.

WHOBABBY REQUEST FUN TIEMS.

 Ok, here’s the deal. Valentine likes dressing up as Doctor Who, we like dressing her up as Doctor Who, and you guys seem to enjoy the pictures. We’d like to hear your suggestions for photos you’d like to see. Leave a comment with your idea, we’ll pick some, take photos, and upload!

 Caveat: It’s gotta be a costume that we’ve already made (eleven doctors, Madame de Pompadour, Captain Jack, and River Song). My husband tried this on reddit and kept getting requests for Donna Noble and Rose. Great ideas, but we don’t have those costumes made (…yet!)

 Wanna see the Sixth Doctor petting a kitty? We can do that! The Eleventh Doctor getting into a philosophical conversation with Barney? Sure! The Tenth Doctor cuddling a Lion King toy? Yes! But I’m sure you all have far better ideas than I do. :)

 So, lemme know what wacky adventures you’d like the baby Doctor to get into, and we’ll see if we can make it happen!

cybermat-herder:

noradrawsthings:

theladyem:

darthambiguous:

Who Baby

Ryan Dewalt dressed his beautiful baby girl as every Doctor (and more). It doesn’t get any cuter than this.

Damn you Tumblr! I know you don’t want people to go overboard with their photosets, but there are ELEVEN Doctors!  Not Ten!  It was a tough decision, but poor 2nd Doctor Troughton missed out (but he’s embedded below!).

Oh, and for the keen eyed observer: yes, you are quite correct. That’s actually a toy dog cosplaying as K9 in the 4th Doctor photo. Exactly as the artist intended.

I am adopting this child. 

How can a baby have this much swag???

Flea markets in the San Fransico area are the shit, apprently.
eBaying and Etsy searches help, too.

Holy carp! Looks like my daughter’s been trick-or-treating on Tumblr today! Thanks for all the sweet comments, everyone :) - whobabby’s mom.

 Video of baby!Barrowman walking around with her gun. And we all know Captain Jack’s a size queen.

 While going through Valentine’s Doctor Who costumes, I realized we already had the parts to do a Captain Jack costume for her. Well, sans the navy RAF greatcoat, but that can come later. For now, here’s baby!Barrowman doing what she does best.

Captain Jack will crash your tea party.

 The poor monkey didn’t even have a chance.

 Happy Halloween!

 Sorry for not having any cute photos of Valentine today; I’m afraid I have some bad news.

 Unless there is somehow a miracle at my final ultrasound tomorrow, I am having a miscarriage and we have lost the baby. We received the bad news at last week’s ultrasound and things began to get worse from there.

 For the most part, those I’ve told have been understanding and kind. But oftentimes, no one quite knows what to say to someone who is grieving a loved one, even more so when that loved one was not even born yet. It led to some very painful remarks and questions in which I know the other person wasn’t trying to be insensitive, but at the same time I had to keep reminding myself of that very fact because on the surface the comments seemed almost cruel.

Some are confused as to why I’m even grieving; after all, it wasn’t a baby, right? (It was to me). Others have told me, “At least you have Valentine,” and that they are only trying to think positively.

 There are a couple things wrong with that. First off, I know I have Valentine. I’m extremely grateful for her, despite what it might seem from all the humiliating costumes I shove her in. Val was conceived three months after a prior loss, and after five years of infertility issues. But mourning the loss of my baby doesn’t diminish my love for Val, nor does having Val around diminish the loss of my baby. In a way, having already experienced giving birth and that first, raw moment where your newborn is handed to you, making eye contact for the very first time, well, it makes it even more apparent what I’m going to be missing. I won’t be holding this baby. I won’t be looking into his eyes, watching as his involuntary newborn ninja faces progress to gummy smiles, and eventually giggles. I won’t watch him sit up for the first time, discover his toes. I don’t even know for sure that he was a boy; it was far too early to tell. I’m just going by my dreams and mommy’s intuition, since that’s all I have.

 ”There will be others. You can try again.” I know there will be, and we’re planning to. But that also doesn’t acknowledge the fact that this baby will always be missing. Someone said, “So what are you going to do now?”  A couple people online asked why it happened, and one added that they wanted to know so that they could make sure to avoid it happening to them. I had to bite my tongue, hard, both at the mistaken belief that miscarriages are something directly caused by the mother, and the unspoken implication that I had done something to my baby.

Why am I telling you all this, especially since this is normally a blog for nerdy baby pictures? Well, for one, to get it off my chest. It is a blog, after all, and I suppose I might as well use it as such once in awhile. Two, because October 15 is Stillbirth and Infant Loss Awareness Day. A lot of women suffer in silence because other people are afraid to mention that their babies existed. We’re afraid of being met with comments like “Just have another one” and “get over it”, and “it wasn’t even a real baby anyway”. We’re sad because we may be being avoided by our pregnant friends and those who just gave birth, many of whom don’t want to impede on our grief or make it worse, but in truth, the avoidance is what hurts. But that’s the thing. Many of us want to share your joy, even if it’s painful for us on some level. And we want to have it acknowledged that our babies did exist, if only for a too short period of time. So please, if you know someone, anyone, who may have lost a baby, either before or after birth, please just let them know you care. You don’t have to say you’re sorry. “I’m thinking about you,” will work just fine.

 Ryan and I agreed a long time ago to choose androgynous online nicknames for our kids so that we could protect their privacy. That’s why our daughter goes by Valentine and not her actual extremely girly and unusual real name. This new baby, we joked, would have been ‘Kamelion’, because how much more androgynous can you get than a shape-changing android? Once the baby arrived, Kamelion would have been shortened to either Milo or Mila Rose, even though his/her real name would have been different. In light of the circumstances, we decided to name him Milo proper. It means “soldier”.

 If you’ve read through this far, thanks for sticking with me. I promise more derpy Val pics in the future, but for now, I need to have this time to say goodbye.

“Are you my Mummy?”

 I swear to God the (plastic) egg on her face was her idea.

Tonight we checked the Eight and Nine costumes to make sure they weren’t tight anywhere. No problems with either of ‘em; she’s swimming in them both.

As a matter of fact it was opportunity enough to find out what sort of underwear the Ninth Doctor wears under that badass exterior.

 Tada! It’s Elmo!

The Eighth Doctor shots we got weren’t anywhere near as amusing, but they were sort of elegant. As elegant as a 20 month old gets, that is.

If you check the video I uploaded of the Eight fitting, you’ll see just how obsessed she was with the “Ock”.

Eighth Doctor costume fit. She was fascinated with the pocket watch.

 Ninth Doctor fit. The guide to the universe ended up being a Sesame Street book.