A Recent Addition

Dear Family,

I'm staring at a round alarm clock. The display reads 11:14, and directly below are the words "Dream Machine." I'm not sure why it's called that. It started beeping incessantly at 7:00 this morning, effectively dispelling any chance I had to dream. Elizabeth told me to turn it off, so I unceremoniously yanked the cord out of the wall.

But the alarm, and the several hours of sleep that preceded it (for me, anyway =) ), weren't all that bad. Nor was our time here in our hospital room last night. A nurse kept popping in to check vitals, bathe the baby, check vitals, take careful notes of income and expenditure, etc. The baby was kind of fussy, but he nursed and would quiet down.

Before that, Elizabeth's labor went quite well--"as I have been informed and believe." Her water broke around 7:35 in the morning, but not in a big rush like I had seen in the movies. Maybe I'll return the four dollar plastic sheet we got from Wal-Mart. We got ready without a rush, and came out to the hospital, arriving around 9:00. Things went pretty slowly, some pitocin was started, after a while some heavy contractions came, and an epidural was administered shortly thereafter. The nurse, or anesthesiologist, or whatever, who gave the drugs to Elizabeth, worked with the skill of an artist. Elizabeth was able to maintain control of her legs throughout labor, but complained of no pain throughout her "transition" (which happened surreptitiously) nor during pushing. We had a great doctor, and several fantastic nurses. The second fantastic nurse, Mary, was coaching Elizabeth through pushing. She would feel around for contractions in Elizabeth's stomach--looking from time to time at a graph the displayed pressure measurements from her tumtum--and then tell her it was time to push. I would hold Elizabeth's neck in one hand, and push on her foot to get her knee near her chest, while she grabbed her other knee. She would take a deep breath, push for ten seconds, then repeat 2-4 times for each contraction. In between the contractions, we were able to talk about the experience, and she was doing great. She did not scream. She got a tad moist from sweat. She took about 1.5 hours to push him out. She was a champ!

That's pretty much all I feel like writing at the moment. He was 20 inches long, 7lb, 5oz. His hair color is hard to tell. It's curlyish-straightish, blondish-brownish-reddish color.