Girl Frazier
We weren’t quite sure where to begin but since this is her blog, we thought it best to just start with the day she was born.
My water broke at 3:45am, Friday July 18th. I called the doctor’s office and they promptly informed me to go back to bed for a couple of hours, have some breakfast when I got up and then call back later that morning (which is exactly what I did after telling Forrest that he wasn’t going to work that day).
We ended up in the labor & delivery wing at Beverly Hospital around 10:30 that morning. There were no contractions at this stage, just a lot of monitoring. We did a lot of video documenting and photo taking to kill some time. Contractions started around 3:30 in the afternoon, but they were irregular and not very strong. Progress was slow. The decision was made for induction so there was 2 rounds of “cervical ripening” and eventually a Pitocin drip (and boy did THAT speed things up!).
Click on the images to view larger
The contractions were very strong and regular. Forrest was a great support & coach during the whole thing. We watched tv for a few hours, I was either laughing at “America’s Funniest Home Videos” or crying through the contractions. Comic irony at it’s best.
The day had been super hot and that night there were thunderstorms in the area. I noticed some heat lightening outside, so at one point we shut off all the lights and watched it as it lit up the sky. There was also a full moon that night and I guess there was an abundance of deliveries that day/night because of that and the change in the barometric pressure.
Around 11:45pm an epidural was finally administered and I was more than ready for it. The baby was being monitored the whole time and couldn’t have been happier throughout the process. We got some blissful rest for an hour or so before I realized that the baby had moved down into position putting pressure on my pelvis. We called the nurse and midwife to let them know that we were ready to rock.
They came in and got the room prepared for the inevitable. Whether I was ready or not the baby was coming. The pushing process began around 1:35 am and she was here at 2:17am. I was in labor for under 12 hours and delivered her in under an hour, not too shabby for a first time birth!
She was placed on my chest while they cleaned her off. I looked up at Forrest and he looked a bit like a deer in headlights, but a happy deer. He looked down at me and said “wow, she’s pretty.” He was expecting a shriveled, little old man-looking, red raisin of a baby. But our little girl was pink and pretty with a head full of dark, downy hair and large dark eyes.
She cried a little bit while the nurses were fussing over her, but it wasn’t the incessant wail of a newborn. She just sounded a little irked. Forrest cut the umbilical cord and then they wrapped her up, stuck a sock hat on her head and she quieted right down. Her dad and I looked at her with amazement. She grabbed my finger with her little hand and quietly studied us, very alert and serious.
They took her away to be weighed and measured and Forrest was there with the camera. She netted out at 6lbs. 15.5 ounces and 20″ long. A mere peanut considering we thought we would have a bowling ball for a baby since Forrest and I were both fairly large babies.
Forrest got to hold his little girl for a little while after all of the commotion was over. We spent about an hour with her after she was born before they carted her off to the nursery to be bathed and tested. At that point it was after 3am and we were pretty exhausted.
At this point we didn’t have a name for her. She went into the nursery as Girl Frazier. We had a few names in mind, but it was something that would wait a day or two. Sleep was the immediate necessity. Since the maternity ward was packed solid, we went to the annex in labor & delivery. Forrest slept on a cot and I fitfully slept for a few hours. It certainly wasn’t the sleep I had hoped for.
Early Saturday morning we made the calls to the excited new grandparents, aunts and uncles. Everyone was thrilled and chomping at the bit to come up to visit us, which they did later beginning that morning and throughout the day. That night we discussed what to name the baby and after some deliberation we decided to name her Lucille Violette. It just seemed to fit her more than any of the other names we had.
Lulu with both sets of grandparents
The next morning we were more than ready to go home, even though we had the option of staying another night. We figured that since the baby was doing great and I was doing great there was no need to stay. We put Lulu in her going home outfit and were home by noon.
The rest of that day yielded a revolving door of visiting friends and family. Then we headed into our first worry-minded, sleepless night!