Xiaoniu 小妞

It’s been a long 5 days, but they have been wonderful days and only the beginning of the fun and excitement yet to come. I’m not ignoring the massive amounts of work, time and effort. I know they are there now and will only continue to grow, but we look forward to it.

Before I get into telling you how everything went, here is a picture of Emelia and me just after she was born. This was her first picture with one of us and she was only about 30 minutes old by this point. Funny enough was that she was alert and her eyes were open staring at me while I talked to her.

Everything started very early Saturday morning. We went to bed on at 10:00pm on Friday after a normal evening of watching TV and hanging out. Not long before hitting the sheets I coaxed Sue into letting me take pictures of her. Little did we know that at 2:00am just after getting back into bed after relieving herself that her waters would break.

I awoke to learn that things were happening by a strong hit to the shoulder. Apparently, I was sleeping a bit too soundly to hear Sue say that he waters broke. Since it was very early and her contractions were almost undetectable we decided to get some rest. It was going to be a long day.

We slept off and one until 6am. Then, we finished up a few chores and got our stuff ready. By 8:00am we were making phone calls to our parents, packed our car and were on our way to the hospital. On the way we decided to stop at D&D for a breakfast sandwich for me. Sue had cereal before we left, but I had a taste for eggs and bacon.

The scary thing was when we were leaving we were proceeding through the intersection and some asshole flew through the red light. If I hadn’t looked to make sure traffic had stopped we would have been in a very nasty accident. The guy was doing well over the 40MPH speed limit and would have creamed us. I was shocked that he didn’t even slow down for the light. It wasn’t like he was trying to race through; the light was green for us (red for him) for a number of seconds. It was long enough that I thought it might start to change before we got through. Fucker.

Checked in and settled down into our room. Even though a woman comes in pregnant there is still paperwork to be filled out.

Once the contractions really started to get serious a birthing ball was in order. It was far more comfortable than the bed and Sue could bounce on it making baby’s head push down even farther.

Not long afterwards Sue started to get really bad back pains during contractions. After a couple hours of this we decided it was back labor. Essentially, Emelia was facing towards Sue’s front instead of her back. She tried out a number of positions to ease the pain and encourage the baby to turn. We even got Sue into the bath for a while to relax her.

Eventually, Sue couldn’t take the back pain anymore. It was far worse than the pain of the contractions. So, she got her epidural. Ah, peace at last. It relieved the pain enough to allow Sue to take a quick nap.

By 11:30pm Saturday (about 22 hours) it was apparent that things weren’t going to progress any farther. So, we scheduled a cesarean section. Once the operating room was cleaned (somebody else just had a c-section) we would be on our way.

The c-section went well. The room was very bright and quite cold so Sue was not too comfortable. I was able to come in and sit with Sue. We didn’t get a chance to watch much of the operation though.

After a few minutes of sitting there talking the doctor said, “Daddy can look over the sheet to see his baby”. I did and found that the baby wasn’t quite out yet. Only her head was pulled through. They were suctioning out her nose and mouth. I watched for a little bit more while they pulled her out, but decided to sit down with Sue. To get the baby out they have to push down on her uterus and pull the baby on the other hand. It didn’t look very comfortable.

Shortly after we had a screaming baby. Sue was quiet, but I couldn’t help but watch the baby. They wiped her off, put her under the warmer and proceeded to do all the things they do to new babies. I grabbed my camera and took some video and pictures of her. Sorry, but I won’t torture her by posting them on the web. I was then shuffled out to the PACU. Sue worked off her anesthesia, we filled out some paperwork and by 4:00am Sunday morning we made it to her post-partum room.

She stayed in post-partum until Wednesday. I was lucky enough to be able to stay with her. For the first night I slept in a reclining chair and the next day we were able to move into a private room. Once there I wasn’t in a position to be kicked out. I even got a somewhat bed-like chair. 

I only made one trip home the whole time. On Sunday night Amy stayed with Sue to help her with the baby and moving around. That gave me about 2 hours to run home, shave, shower, put some clean clothes on, grab a few things and run home. I took a few minutes to call the boss to let him know what was going on. Otherwise, I stayed at the hospital the entire time.

We had lots of visitors.

Grandma Marie

Grandpa Dave

Po Po (婆婆)

Yi Mu (姨母)

Feifei

Jiu Jiu (舅舅)

Yi Fu (姨夫)

Yi Fu’s Mom

Last but not least, Xuemei with Mommy

Emelia a mere 8 hours old

By Wednesday we were very anxious to be on our way home. Sue was feeling better and we seemed to be hanging out at the hospital just waiting. Finally, we got word that we were being discharged. A few trips to the car to pack all our stuff, flowers, etc and we were ready to go.

Emelia in her going home outfit. Everything was a bit large even though this was a newborn set. The hat kept falling off and the slippers only stayed on for a little bit.

She wasn’t too pleased about the car seat, but she calmed down after a little while and slept the whole way home.

Unlike the trip to work, the trip home was pretty uneventful. Sue was nauseous because of her incision and the baby slept. Now that we are all home we are trying to settle in and get into a rhythm of doing things.