She's arrived!
After 10 months and a week of pregnancy (the nine months thing is a lie), Lucienne Reese arrived Wednesday, March 31. She weighed 7 pounds, 8 ounces and was 20 inches long. Not a bad size!The labor lasted a LONG time, but, thanks to my epidural, I was able to spend a relatively pleasant day in the hospital. Travis and I checked in at 7am on Wednesday morning, after a night of REALLY painfull contractions. I called Labor and Delivery 3 or 4 times that night, but they kept telling me they didn't have any room in San Francisco and I had to go to Vallejo. I really, really wanted to have my OB deliver Lucie, since we had become friends. So I put up with a night full of contractions and bugged Kaiser SF until they called in more nurses and told me I could come in.I got my epidural as soon as I could, to the dismay of the hippie admitting nurse (more about her later). Then Travis, my sister Megan, and I lounged around in the delivery room all day, napping, reading magazines, and becoming friends with our great L&D nurses Tina and Kristi. My "active labor" didn't start until Dr. Valentine (one of the residents I'd seen in prenatal) broke my water around 5pm! He "said" it accidentally happened when he was checking to see how much I was dialated, but I think he wanted to get things going. It ended up being perfect timing because my OB, Kate, was scheduled to come in at 6pm that day.
The nurses said I could start pushing whenever I wanted, so I shrugged my shoulders and looked at Trav and Megan and said, I guess I'll start now? They couldn't think why not, but for some reason, we were left on our own. It was almost like the 3 stooges deliver a baby. I didn't know what to do and Travis and Megan were really nervous. We all started laughing, which didn't make the pushing easier. Or did it? The hippie nurse came in at one point and tried to convince me to try a bunch of weird birthing positions. I amused her at first and then thought, what the heck? This is too weird. So I went about the delivery the old fashioned way.Finally, Kate came on duty and we got down to business. Really, the pushing was pretty easy. By then, my epidural had worn off and the pushing canceled out the pain of the contractions. So I was all about pushing. Then, about an hour later, Lucie came out!
She scored 9 out of 10 on her Apgar and was a good eating from the get go. She was amazing! Kate laid Lucie right on my chest and Travis cut the umbilical cord. We got to bond for a good while before Kate and the nurses cleaned her up and did all that other stuff.
We had a lot of family itching to see Lucie that night, and plenty of friends have come by too. She's really, really cute and we're enjoying her so much.Yeah Lucie!
