UPDATE: more photos are now up on Flickr, along with a video of Brighton with hiccups!
4:15 am. Faith and I are on a brisk walk before our planned 6:00 am check-in at the hospital.
6:14 am. Check-in was quick. We’re in our big room, the baby’s heartbeat is on speaker, and the nurse is taking a focused history and asking about birth plan stuff.
7:43 am. Three different nurses tried to start IVs but hit valves. Our main nurse, the mother of a blogger I met at the West Hartford townhall meeting, is very nice. She started the IV successfully on a second try.
8:20 am. The oxytocin drip is going now. Amazing how the same chemical that makes you feel good after you donate to NPR (or so Ira Flatow tells me) also brings babies out quicker.
9:34 am. Faith is bored so she’s doing work: scheduling residency interviews, checking icanhascheezburger, etc.
9:55 am. Our nurse is setting things up so the doctor can break the water. I’m not allowed to post anything specific about the labor after this. Faith and the nurse are bitching about private insurance and their profiteering ways; it’s a good thing Faith qualified for Husky (Medicaid) when she got pregnant, since there were important things that her primary insurance didn’t cover.
10:15 am. Faith reports that the contractions are “starting to not feel so good any more.”
11:37 am. Things are getting more exciting. We’re watching the BBC show Merlin as a distraction. This is the apparatus the baby goes in for his exam after he’s born:
12:55 pm. I just got kicked out of the room. It’s hospital policy that family aren’t allowed to be there when they administer an epidural; fathers tend to faint and injure themselves. Our nurse says she’s had to drag fathers out by the feet. Here’s the medicine, ready to be hooked up:
1:41 pm. Nap time.
3:10 pm. Our nurse was going to leave us for a while, but then she realized that it’s almost BABY TIME! We start pushing as soon as our doctor is available, it looks like. The nurse estimates half an hour until then.
4:23 pm. He’s here!!!
5:46 pm. He’s 8 pounds 1 ounce. He’s already fed once and he’s very good-natured. We’ve been testing his reflexes; one pic is the Moro reflex (startle reflex), one is the palmomental reflex, and one is just cute.
6:48 pm. Brighton is 19.5 inches long.
9:22 pm. Brighton has been snoozing for a while. It’s my objective assessment that he is, in fact, the cutest baby ever. Thanks so much to everyone who offered congratulations and kind words. To those scheming to steal and/or eat him: we’re on to your shenanigans, and we’ll have none of it.
