She's Here!

Mina Jeanette Bradshaw was born at 8:51 pm on May 4th, 2007. She was a pert 7 pounds 5.7 ounces and has coppery brown hair and peaches and cream skin. I am in love (though I have been since early on), Damon is smitten. The last few days have been pretty good overall.

For those who are terribly interested, below you will find a transcript of Damon's running account of our birth. I will comment more later.

In the mean time- you may see pics of Mommy, Daddy, and Mina

Mommy Daddy and Mina

DAMON'S ACCOUNT

8/4/07
7:16am
Free wireless access at the hospital! Huzzah!

Checked in Thursday night, and as of now we are still in the early stages of induction. She had a pretty rough night, and this morning was in a lot of pain with cramps and contractions, but that's getting better now and she's taking more control over it.

We'll know more when the doctor gets in around 9ish. If I have time I'll try to keep a running account.

8:52am
The doctor was just in, Lauren had her first "real" contraction, so he broke her water and put in a fetal monitor.

So we're officially under way now. He said he'll be back in an hour and a half or so to assess things.

She's really tired, she didn't sleep much last night.

5:36pm

Everything is still going very slowly at this point.

She opted for the epidural this afternoon, and has felt much better since.

When he last checked her, about an hour ago, she was only dilated about 4 centimeters.

So we're still sort of up in the air. He had thought that the real action would be taking place around 9 tonight, but who knows. Lauren is resting now, and having regular contractions about every 3 minutes.

I think we'll probably know more about the evening's plan within an hour or so.

Final birth entry
By 8pm, Lauren hadn't dilated any more than 4cm, and the contractions weren't consistently strong every time. So our doctor was 50/50 about waiting to see, or having a c-section. (This guy has literally one of the lowest c-section rates in the country; he's very reluctant to do them.)

The issue was if we wanted to wait and continue with contractions, we could maybe get her born at some point, but who knows when. However if it came to us needing a c-section, it was past quitting-time for the anesthesiologists, and they would have had to page one on call, and by the time they got in, it could be the wee hours of the morning.

So after 20 hours of fruitless labor, we decided to go ahead with the c-section. There was apparently a kidney transplant in prep in one of the ORs, so the doctor wanted to do it and get it done asap, in case the resident anesthesiologist needed to run.

So they sprung into action. It was really quite impressive. This was by no means an emergency c-section, but we had two anesthesiologists, two surgery nurses, two birthing nurses, the doctor, and what appeared to be an intern.

She had already had the epidural installed, so they pretty much took her immediately for prep. I went with her, so I had to put on the scrubs and poofy hat and mask and shoe covers.

They strapped her down and got the anesthetics going, put up a little scrim, and the doctor went to it.

I sat next to her head, but didn't watch the surgery (not sure I could have done that, actually). It went amazingly quickly.

We tried not to listen to what they were doing. She didn't feel any pain, but was able to feel pressure of them pushing and pulling. It only took a few minutes.

She was turned on her side (and thus has a cervix-shaped bruise on the side of her skull) and it's possible we could have gotten her out the old fashioned way, but it would have been lots of more labor-work, maybe hours and hours more.

At 8:51pm, Mina Jeanette Bradshaw was born, 7 pounds 5 ounces, 19.5 inches.

I have pictures, but brought the wrong USB for the camera, so I'll get them posted later.

She is a very well-mannered baby. Easily feeding, keeps quiet. She's the only girl baby on the floor, and all the nurses are just fawning over her.

So, that's that. I will post my account soon.