Hey everyone, pull up a seat and grab a cup of hot cocoa. We're gonna tell you about our birth experience!
On Wednesday at exactly 10:05 pm, just after Project Runway, Christine started feeling contractions. Apparently Hannah was disturbed by Jerell winning and she started to express her disappointment. Okay, maybe I'm just projecting. Why was Blayne given the boot? And what's up with Kenley's defensive attitude? Anyway, I digress. Back to our story...
Christine was unable to get any sleep because the contractions lasted all night long. At about 8:30am Thursday, we went to Cedars-Sinai and discovered Christine was only 2cm dilated. The doctor recommended we take a walk around the hospital and return in an hour to see if the dilation increased. It did not. They did offer to induce Christine, but since we were scheduled to be induced on Sunday, we decided to see if the delivery would happen naturally. And there's that whole 9/11 thing. We were discharged at about 3:00pm that day.
It turns out we did not have long to wait. As soon as we got home, Christine's contractions became more intense. Again, we were hoping to get some rest, but at about 10pm the pain became too unbearable. We returned to Cedars at 11:00 pm.
After all that time, we were hoping Christine would be dilated even further. Unfortunately, she was still only at 2cm. Sometime during this period, Christine's water broke, but it was just a trickle. At about 2:30 am Friday, Christine and I finally requested an epidural. It was smooth sailing ever since.
The epidural caused Christine to dilate rapidly. Unfortunately the epidural also caused the contractions to weaken. The doctors administered a small amount Pitocin (+2 out of a possible +40, I think) at about 4:30am to get the contractions back on track. At about 9:00am, Christine was finally at 10cm. The nurses stopped the epidural so Christine would be able to push better. At that time, we called our good friend Jenny to help us out with the birth.
The epidural did not run out but Dr. A (see earlier post) arrived in her Olympic Delivery Scrubs and we all started anyway. Because there was little amniotic fluid when Christine's water broke, there was a huge flood after Hannah came out, not unlike the elevator visions from the Shining. Christine did an awesome job -- the birth process lasted only 40 min and Hannah was born at 10:31 am. And no, Christine did not take a poo during the process. I almost did though. Hooray for Hannah and Christine!
Hannah is now 2 weeks old! She's now one ounce over birthweight, and she grew an inch and a half (but lost about an inch of her cone head). We also think she's gotten a little chubbier. But most importantly, her eye muscles are developing so she doesn't look so cross-eyed anymore. She isn't inheriting daddy's vision...Yay!
Grandma Anna has been here all week to help Mommy out during Daddy's first week back at work. What a perfect opportunity for Grandma Kazuko and Grandpa Taka to stop by!
After only 9 days, Hannah's umbilical cord dropped! This item will fit in nicely with our meconium poop, orange urine crystals and early booger collection.
The resemblance is uncanny!
Earlier today Margot, her parents, and Wil came over and we all commisserated. The parents stuffed their faces with Indian food while the kids stuffed their faces with breastmilk. We all had a great time! Hannah and Margot are soon going to be beeeeeest frieeeeeends! (Cue psycho music here)
The image on the left is a picture of our daughter just ten minutes outside of the womb. Yikes!!!! Luckily, Cedars has an awesome Costco-style return policy, so we ended up taking it back and got one of these really cute ones on the right instead. They even threw in a designer hat for our trouble. Thanks Cedars!
Just two photos here. I'm embarrased by my lousy photo skillz when compared to Mike's wizardry!
Hannah finally arrived on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 10:31am. She was 6lbs 6oz.
For the most part, Christine has had a smooth pregnancy -- no morning sickness, no Braxton Hicks contractions, little soreness and pain. She's only now starting to feel a little discomfort. One of the more pronounced symptoms has been swollen feet. We took a walk the other day...check out the marks around her ankles!
Captain's log: Sept. 6th, 2008. Today is Hannah's official due date. It's about 4:30pm and there have been absolutely no signs of labor. Looks like North Carolina will be seeing more of Hanna than we will (badump bump!). We were hoping to take a picture of our daughter with the day's newspaper, and it would have been cool to have a headline like "Hanna's Destructive Force Rips Through the Nation!!!!!" We would change her name to Ike but we already bought the letters for her room.
The wait for Hannah is totally agonizing! So to speed things along, we decided to have spicy foods for dinner. Panang Curry: Nature's Pitocin. Soon Tofu is next!
