{"id":237,"date":"2004-03-25T21:14:57","date_gmt":"2004-03-26T05:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2004\/03\/25\/d-day-delivery-day\/"},"modified":"2004-03-25T21:14:57","modified_gmt":"2004-03-26T05:14:57","slug":"d-day-delivery-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/03\/25\/d-day-delivery-day","title":{"rendered":"D\u2011Day (Delivery Day)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> Our first child, Dana Marie Davis, arrived March 25, 2004 at 4:03pm PST. She was 6 lbs 7 oz, and 18\u2033 long. Ten fingers, ten toes, the whole bit.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re still counting our blessings and thanking everyone who prayed in that direction!<\/p>\n

See photos of Dana<\/a> in our gallery.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the essential outline\u2013if you want the blow-by-blow, read more.<\/p>\n

I actually wrote most of the following at the hospital (yes, I brought my laptop with me\u2013it amused the nurses, I think), so please forgive the verb tenses.
\n
\nWere having our baby at Sequoia Hospital<\/a>. Its a very good hospital, especially for womens health issues<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n

Checking in was a breezethe nurses and staff were extremely friendly and helpful. The room is niceits well decorated and comfortable. Theres even a little rollaway bed for me to sleep in.<\/p>\n

Im a little weirded out when I learn that this is the actual room the baby will be born in. I guess thats what they do nowkeep the mother in one place and have the dad help.<\/p>\n

Paula is hooked up to some monitoring devices and a short Filipino nurse sticks her head in the door and says, Did you know youre having contractions? A lot of them?<\/p>\n

Paula shakes her head noshes not feeling anything.<\/p>\n

The nursing staff seems pretty amazed by this, but the machines show that Paula\u2019s contractions are indeed coming quite regularly.<\/p>\n

We go to sleep.<\/p>\n

In the morning Paula is still contracting, and still not feeling anything. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for her encounter with the IV. Shes got small, mobile veins and is pretty hard to stick. Its very unpleasant.<\/p>\n

The doctor showed up around 9am and broke her water.<\/p>\n

Paula started to feel the contractions after that, but the nurses were still surprised at how little Paula felt.<\/p>\n

Then they started to hurt. Paula asked for and received some painkillers, and continued having regular contractions.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. )<\/p>\n

I saw things I will not speak of and am glad that I did not record.<\/p>\n

And then I met Dana. That was cool. Paula started crying with joy as soon as she saw her head and heard her cry.<\/p>\n

I then learned that they don\u2019t slap the baby on the butt anymore (at least in the United States\u2013evidently doctors in other countries still do it, and it can be quite shocking to American nurses when there\u2019s a visiting doctor).<\/p>\n

I called my parents and told them the name and then invited Paula\u2019s parents to come in from the hallway (I figured since they got to see her first I\u2019d give my parents honor of first notification).<\/p>\n

My initial impressions of Dana? She\u2019s quiet for a baby. At least, that\u2019s how it strikes me\u2013she doesn\u2019t cry much (a fact that Paula and I are desperately hoping proves to be a tendency). She\u2019s also very active and squirmy. She nearly turned herself over several times.<\/p>\n

Which of us does she resemble most? Whichever of us has red blotchy skin, a pressure-misshapen skull, and no teeth.<\/p>\n

Seriously, I\u2019ve been told that she has my nose. I feel for her\u2013what daughter wants to have a prominent facial feature that was clearly derived from her father?<\/p>\n

Side note\u2013this 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\u2019re 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\u2019t get the nurse to confirm that last detail.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I\u2019m pretty tired (but nowhere near as beat as Paula, I\u2019m sure), and so I\u2019ll stop now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first child, Dana Marie Davis, arrived March 25, 2004 at 4:03pm PST. She was 6 lbs 7 oz, and 18\u2033 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, \u2026 Continue reading \u201cD\u2011Day (Delivery Day)\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-3P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}