Evelyn Pearl Dodds

She's here! Evelyn was born at 6:01 pm yesterday (Sunday, Dec 30th, 2007. 2 days after the due date). She weighs 7 lbs 6.75 ounces and is 20.5 inches long. Here are a few pictures. Stacey and I were getting pretty impatient for her to be born, and Stacey had quite a few contractions and false alarms before yesterday. She started having good contractions yesterday morning at 6 am, and we went to the hospital at 9. She was 5 cm dilated, and after 2 more hours she was 7 cm dilated. Then a few hours passed without much progress and the doctor broke her water to move things along. Transition was very hard, but we found a position and routine that relaxed her enough that she would fall asleep between contractions (which gave her about 1 minute to rest). Pushing the baby out took less than an hour, which was also fast. So we were only at the hospital in labor for 9 hours, which is very fast for a (practically) natural first-baby delivery.

We wanted to go as long as possible without getting an epidural, but we planned to take it at some point. Stacey is awesome, she never got one. She did ask for a certain narcotic they can give during labor, but she only got 1/4 of the normal dose. The nurse didn't think it would make any difference, but Stacey says it did. But last night she said that was stupid to rough it out, and next time she wants the epidural! The biggest problem was that Stacey is so apologetic. She'd be in pain and then apologize for it. She kept trying to be the nurse instead of the patient. She'd call the nurse and when the nurse arrived Stacey would ask the nurse how she was doing, and if she was very busy, and apologize for taking up her time, and finally tell her what she needed. She's so sweet, that's just how she is.

Deanna (Stacey's mom) was there, which really helped. I thought I would feel sick seeing the blood and everything, but is really was beautiful (it wouldn't have been if it were anyone else's delivery). Stacey did tear, and the stitching up wasn't something I could watch.

Evelyn is the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my daughter. All the nurses comment on her hair; it is very long and thick for a newborn. They also say she has a relatively dark, almost italian complexion. I thought all the babies in the nursery were just pink. Is dark pink a complexion? That comes from the Gurr side, apparently some of them are born with very dark complexions.

We named her Evelyn because we like the name, and Stacey had a patient a nursing home named Evelyn who she loved. Lyn is also a family name in both of our families. Pearl is Stacey's maternal grandmother's name.

Evelyn isn’t sure if she wants to be awake, cry, or breastfeed; she just drifts between those 3 states every few minutes. Her crying isn’t really loud though, she’s just fussy.

We're still in the hospital. Stacey is learning how to breastfeed and it's going pretty well. I didn't realize there was such a learning curve for something so natural. Stacey is walking around and isn't in too much pain. Of course we didn't get much sleep last night; people keep coming in the room. Some of them are certainly welcome, but even an anesthesiologist (sp?) and a photographer came in. Right now Stacey is trying to convince the nurses that she and Evelyn are ready to go home now. It looks like they might let us out after 6 tonight, but they'd like us to stay through tomorrow.

39 weeks and counting

Lately Stacey has been saying how done she is being pregnant. Here are the latest pictures. We saw the doctor on Thursday and she said she expected Stacey to have the baby "in the next couple days". The due date is the 28th, but Stacey looks to be ahead of schedule. Evelyn will probably weigh 8 pounds.

Stacey has been having contractions for several weeks, but for the past couple weeks they have become more intense. A couple times they have happened every 10 or 15 minutes for a few hours, but then they stop. When she thought she was going to have the baby the night before 2 of my final exams I almost wet myself.

She likes to show off how hard her stomach gets when she's having a contraction. Her brothers all used to do sit-ups and show off their abs, and she says she feels like a body builder because her stomach is harder during a contraction than theirs ever were.

I'm happy to be done with classes, and during the holidays I'm working on some research (finally) until I get the phone call from Stacey to rush home. I'm trying to identify flaws in the nuclear reaction models of a particle physics simulator Vanderbilt has been developing; I know, I'm a nerd.

Shawn, our new convert, is doing great. He comes to church every week and his sign language is improving (he doesn't communicate very well). We got rid of the Ford Escort, and we wanted to sell the pickup but we haven't even been able to get $3000 out of it, so we're just holding on to it.

8 months and counting

Ok, this is just a quick post to show how big Stacey has gotten in the last 2 weeks. Last week she put on 5 pounds, but she still doesn't seem to have put on any weight besides in her belly.

A few days ago she suddenly shrieked and really startled me. If you know Stacey you know that she shrieks a lot; but this was a good one. Apparently her cell phone started vibrating (it was in the front pocket of her sweatshirt) right up against our daughter's head, and the baby suddenly woke up jumping. Hmm, it was very funny at the time, but it just sounds disturbing now that I've typed it.

We just bought a used '97 Nissan Altima with 97k miles, because it has 4 doors (a lot easier to put a car seat into) and should be more reliable for us. We're still working on selling our other vehicles.