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.