Dear World:

Dear World:

I am pleased to announce the arrival of Miss Lucy Joy Diana. She has Robb's last name, which you either, ya know, know or don't. It's all good.

Miss Lucy was born Sunday morning at 9:04am. Labor kicked in around 12:30 am with some wussy contractions (as much as contractions really ever count as wussy). By 1am I was thinking "No way after just starting that I'm having contractions 7 minutes apart." By 2am it was "4 minutes? Seriously?" Of course, there was a huge snowstorm starting, so I woke up Robb, we called my doctor, and were off to the hospital.

Side note: vomiting during a contraction is the worst thing ever. Ever. It beats vomiting with diharrea, vomiting with strep throat, any of that. Worst Thing Ever.


The labor, taking off so fast, was very intense. I lucked out and got the "Tub Room" at the hospital, and got to spend several hours in very warm water. It was super good. I was 4cm when I walked through the door, something that impressed the heck out of the nursing staff.

After about two hours, though my pressures started to jump up, and they started having trouble finding my little girl's heartbeat. When they could find it, it was irregular, going too fast during some contractions, too slow during others. By 7am, I think there were ten non-family people in my room, all trying to make us better so we could continue with our natural birth plan. But it was not meant to be. By about 8:30, they'd broken my water to get better fetal monitoring, both of her heartbeat and of the contractions, which meant I was on my back and in total agony. I'd've needed an epidural to continue to labor, but they realized her heartbeat was dropping AFTER every contraction, not DURING or BEFORE, and we were getting prepped for a c-section.


The surgery went beautifully, and Robb got to be there, and hold the baby for me while they stitched me up. As soon as I was stable, the put her right on my chest and covered us up so we could have some time together.

I hemorraged twice after the surgery, almost needed a transfusion (but didn't, in the end, because even though my crit was low, I was asymptomatic, so they decided it wasn't worth the risk of blood products, but I had to swear to take vitamins with iron), and got to go home yesterday morning. Miss Lucy is unbelievably healthy, and I'm doing surprisingly well -- both my nurses, one of the residents, and the lactation consultant commented that there are mothers who give vaginal births that don't recover as well as I have done.



I think the best part of all of this is watching Robb fall utterly in love with his little girl. She adores him, turns toward him when he talks, and he loves her back. I could not be happier. I am not even upset about the loss of the natural birth -- I bitch a lot about how c-sections are unnecessary a lot of the time, how they can hurt mothers and so on and so forth...but mine saved lives. Probably not mine, but hers for sure. My doc was pretty sure that what happened was that the dancing back and forth with preeclampsia damaged the placenta; it held up fine throughout the pregnancy, but during the stress of labor, couldn't supply my baby with enough oxygen. By the time they got her out, she was covered with meconium, and they had to suction out her lungs and stomach. If my doctor had dilly-dallied, if I'd fought to keep laboring -- I might not have had this beautiful little girl here with me.

All the good pictures were taken by the grammas, or are on my phone. I'll work on getting them up on the photosite, and let you know when they're there. In the meantime, please say hello to my little Lucy!