Christmas Has Come Early!

Weight - 7 lbs 3 ozs
Length - 20 1/2"
Date & Time of birth - 12/20/2006 - 5:31 (that's AM) - by Cesearian

After the uneventful trip to labor & delivery that morning, Mom made spicy enchiladas for dinner hoping to speed things along. It worked soon after dinner she started having contractions every 5 minutes. Dr. Chen told Mom to have a glass of wine and take a hot bath.

Around 10pm Mom's contractions were 3-4 minutes apart and getting stronger, Mom and Dad headed to the hospital. We walked over to Broadway to catch a cab Mom holding onto the light pole during contractions. Not only were there no cabs, but there was a guy across the street also aggressively trying to hail a cab. Dad was ready to punch the guy, in all fairness Mom doesn't think he knew what was going on. At least that is what she hopes, if not he is an ass.

At the hospital Mom was checked in (again) and hooked up to the monitors. Since she was only dilated to 1cm, she was given something to induce labor. Mom had a bad reaction to the drug and the contractions were brought on very strong and fast with uterine spasms in between. She was given her epidural around midnight, a beautiful thing!! Mom and Dad went to sleep for a couple of hours.

Around 4am Dr. Chen woke Mom and Dad up, apparently Ella's heartbeat was dropping with every contraction. They had given Mom a shot to stop the labor until they could determine what was wrong, it didn't work and the contractions continued. Dr. Chen told us that we needed to deliver via C-section. Mom and Dad said fine and asked when it would be scheduled, figuring we would go back to sleep for a few hours and do something later in the day. Dr. Chen corrected this misconception saying we were doing it now.

Ella was born at 5:31 am. Healthy and crying.

Afterwards Dr. Chen told us she thought Ella's head was at a bad angle in the pelvis putting pressure on her airway also causing labor not to progress normally.








PS. I threw in a view from our hospital room for the folks that have never been to Manhattan and are curious where babies are born in the city.