D‑Day (Delivery Day)

Our first child, Dana Marie Davis, arrived March 25, 2004 at 4:03pm PST. She was 6 lbs 7 oz, and 18″ long. Ten fin­gers, ten toes, the whole bit.

Deliv­ery was actu­al­ly very easy for Paula. From the time she start­ed push­ing until the time of deliv­ery took less than an hour. To top it off, Paula felt rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle pain through­out. We’re still count­ing our bless­ings and thank­ing every­one who prayed in that direc­tion!

See pho­tos of Dana in our gallery.

That’s the essen­tial outline–if you want the blow-by-blow, read more.

I actu­al­ly wrote most of the fol­low­ing at the hos­pi­tal (yes, I brought my lap­top with me–it amused the nurs­es, I think), so please for­give the verb tens­es.

We’re hav­ing our baby at Sequoia Hos­pi­tal. It’s a very good hos­pi­tal, espe­cial­ly for women’s health issues.

Check­ing in was a breeze—the nurs­es and staff were extreme­ly friend­ly and help­ful. The room is nice—it’s well dec­o­rat­ed and com­fort­able. There’s even a lit­tle roll­away bed for me to sleep in.

I’m a lit­tle weird­ed out when I learn that this is the actu­al room the baby will be born in. I guess that’s what they do now—keep the moth­er in one place and have the dad help.

Paula is hooked up to some mon­i­tor­ing devices and a short Fil­ipino nurse sticks her head in the door and says, “Did you know you’re hav­ing con­trac­tions? A lot of them?”

Paula shakes her head no—she’s not feel­ing any­thing.

The nurs­ing staff seems pret­ty amazed by this, but the machines show that Paula’s con­trac­tions are indeed com­ing quite reg­u­lar­ly.

We go to sleep.

In the morn­ing Paula is still con­tract­ing, and still not feel­ing any­thing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the same can­not be said for her encounter with the IV. She’s got small, mobile veins and is pret­ty hard to stick. It’s very unpleas­ant.

The doc­tor showed up around 9am and broke her water.

Paula start­ed to feel the con­trac­tions after that, but the nurs­es were still sur­prised at how lit­tle Paula felt.

Then they start­ed to hurt. Paula asked for and received some painkillers, and con­tin­ued hav­ing reg­u­lar con­trac­tions.

Our rather sassy nurse (not the Fil­ipino, this one is a white girl from Philly who is quite hap­py that Stan­ford got bumped from the NCAA tour­na­ment) stopped in and dis­cov­ered that Paula was pro­gress­ing pret­ty far. Long sto­ry short, she got the epidur­al and then things real­ly start­ed to hap­pen.

I remained in the room, and helped coach Paula through the deliv­ery process (by which I mean that I told a lot of jokes dur­ing the deliv­ery). For­tu­nate­ly, I only threw Paula out of her groove once. I was real­ly restrain­ing myself, too. )

I saw things I will not speak of and am glad that I did not record.

And then I met Dana. That was cool. Paula start­ed cry­ing with joy as soon as she saw her head and heard her cry.

I then learned that they don’t slap the baby on the butt any­more (at least in the Unit­ed States–evidently doc­tors in oth­er coun­tries still do it, and it can be quite shock­ing to Amer­i­can nurs­es when there’s a vis­it­ing doc­tor).

I called my par­ents and told them the name and then invit­ed Paula’s par­ents to come in from the hall­way (I fig­ured since they got to see her first I’d give my par­ents hon­or of first noti­fi­ca­tion).

My ini­tial impres­sions of Dana? She’s qui­et for a baby. At least, that’s how it strikes me–she does­n’t cry much (a fact that Paula and I are des­per­ate­ly hop­ing proves to be a ten­den­cy). She’s also very active and squirmy. She near­ly turned her­self over sev­er­al times.

Which of us does she resem­ble most? Whichev­er of us has red blotchy skin, a pres­sure-mis­shapen skull, and no teeth.

Seri­ous­ly, I’ve been told that she has my nose. I feel for her–what daugh­ter wants to have a promi­nent facial fea­ture that was clear­ly derived from her father?

Side note–this hos­pi­tal has some real­ly cool secu­ri­ty fea­tures for babies. For instance, every baby is giv­en an elec­tron­ic tag that sounds an alarm if it is removed, tak­en off the floor, or giv­en to the wrong moth­er by mis­take. There are all these sen­sor tiles in the ceil­ing that track the babies, and if they’re tak­en off the the floor all the ele­va­tors are locked down auto­mat­i­cal­ly. I think nin­jas appear out of the laun­dry chutes, too, but I could­n’t get the nurse to con­firm that last detail.

Any­way, I’m pret­ty tired (but nowhere near as beat as Paula, I’m sure), and so I’ll stop now.