My new neighbor
Alexis Victoria was born yesterday Feb 20 at 3:12pm weighing 7 lbd 5.5 oz and measuring 19.5″ long. The process was interesting in how it differed from Anna’s arrival nearly 2 years ago.
Like last time we got to the hospital early. Leigha knew what was coming and the two things she least looked forward to (the breaking of the membrane and the epidural) turned out fine where as the things we’d completely forgotten about were the only things that didn’t go perfectly.
The nurse doing her IV while pleasant and friendly, was not the most graceful or gentle IV inserter. At nearly the same time, the lab guy shows up with every intention of assaulting the other arm while the first one is enduring its trauma. The lab guy was all business and completely unsympathetic to my request to wait until the nurse was done with the IV. The nurse with the IV happened to need to take.a break to let the fluid drain out of her hand so they did end up taking turns, but I don’t know what would have happened if he was unwilling to wait his turn. I imagine the conversation would have ended up going something like: “Unless you want to walk out of this room smelling of vomit you will probably want to wait.”
The epidural came a little late and there was some confusion because most of the anesthesiologists were occupied but we ended up with a great lady who was fantastic and Leigha didn’t suffer one bit.
We sat around mostly bored through the morning and in the afternoon we were starting to think that this kid was trying to beat her sister’s record.
At around 3 Leigha said she was starting to feel pressure so we got the nurse and the nurse got the doctor who told her it would be faster to push the baby than redose and talked her into pushing and a few minutes later we’d met our new kin. It happened so quickly, in fact, that the doctor only had one glove on when the head was out. He was holding her head with gloved hand and with the other handed the glove to the nurse and asked her to put it him. Alexis started crying before her legs were out and as soon as her exit was complete I snapped her very first picture. I put the camera down, cut the cord, and picked up the video camera to get some footage of Alexis and Leigha as they were recouperating. The doctor offered Leigha the baby but she said they should clean Alexis up first and she would hold her afterward. They cleaned her up, weighed her, and measured her before getting back to Leigha. In the meantime the doctor was cleaning Leigha up, and there was a nursing student observing so he went into very specific detail about all the little bits. It was actually lost on me because I was caught up in what Alexis was doing, but when I turned around he was explaining the various features of the placenta.
During the labor Leigha and I entered into a friendly wager as to how much the baby would weigh. She guessed 7 lbs 12 oz, and I guessed 7 lbs 6 oz. The baby weighed in at 7 lbs 5.5 oz and when announced I raised my arms in celebration and announced my victory, unintentionally with too much enthusiasm. Once the hoopla died down, Leigha put in her order for food while she waited to regain the feeling in her left leg. We spent some time with Alexis, and Leigha nursed her in between my picture taking frenzy.
Just as we were wrapping up in the Labor & Delivery room and getting ready to move to the recovery room Leigha’s mom arrived with Anna in tow. We relocated and Anna was pretty pleased with the baby although we’re pretty sure she has no idea she is a permanent visitor nor that she will be bunking with this peanut. They left around 8pm and Leigha and I were pooped and we were winding down as possible in between the endless nurse and staff visits. They took Alexis for her bath around 10:30 so I crashed pretty much the moment that finished.
I’ve started adjusting this website to add equal representation to Alexis. I’ll be making adjustments over the next few weeks but right now you can find current and future pictures of Alexis here.
