Announcing the arrival of Eliza Nicole Brunner at 8:57 PM, 15 April 2008!
Jenny surprised me yesterday with a phone call. She had this week off of work for Spring Break and spent Monday cleaning the house in preparation for the baby (due on May 9th). She was feeling a little sick and decided to spend the day sleeping and watching movies. About noon she threw up violently about 4 times and felt much better. At 1:50 PM she was lying down on the bed watching a movie and felt an explosion and lots of wet running down her legs. She tried to call me but I wasn't in my office and finally was able to talk to the hospital and her mother. She asked her visiting teacher to take her to the hospital and finally reached me just as they were getting to the labor and delivery floor of the hospital at about 2:30.
I walked home - contemplating my last few hours before the noble station of fatherhood forever descended upon me, gathered all of the things Jenny didn't have time to grab (cameras, journals, movies, books, clothing, me, etc.), and headed over to the hospital.
Jenny was having contractions according to the monitors, but she wasn't really feeling them. They were very irregular and 5-7 minutes apart. In retrospect, she says she may have been having occasional contractions like that for the previous 2 months but simply didn't realize it.
Because the water broke, the hospital wants the baby to come within 24 hours to avoid the risk of infection getting to the baby. The nurse told us that the doctor would give us up to 3 hours to try to start labor on our own, otherwise they would induce the baby. We wanted to try to have the baby without medication, so we started walking around the corridors. We walked pretty fast to try and jump start the contractions.
After an hour of wowing the medical staff with our speed walking (got lots of comments on that), the contractions were much stronger, about 2 minutes apart, and finally were uncomfortable for Jenny. She went back to the bed and the contractions slowed to 5 minutes apart, but were still twice as strong or more than original. By 6:00 PM, Jenny was having very hard contractions and was dilated to 6 cm. By 7:00 or 7:30, she had an uncontrollable urge to push and was dilated to 10. The nurse checked and the baby had dropped, so it was time to push. We were told the doctor was on her way, but we didn't know if she would make it before the birth. The nurse wanted to wait, but we talked her out of it.
The doctor got there by 8:00 PM and the baby started crowning by 8:20 PM. Jenny was pushing really hard and she and the baby were doing really well, but by 8:45 Jenny felt she had given everything she had. The doctor didn't want to perform an episiotomy because of the risk of tearing, but she thought that Jenny had enough room to be fine. She thought that a little cut would make the baby pop right out. Jenny said please do it and with a 1/4 inch - 1/2 inch incision, Eliza arrived at 8:57 PM.
Eliza is 5 pounds, 5 ounces, 18 inches long, and has a little brown fuzz on her head. Her APGAR (measure of "aliveness") scores were 8 and 9 out of 10 at 1 minute and 5 minutes.
Officially, Eliza is 3 weeks and 3 days early so she is 3 days premature, but the pediatrician considers her essentially full term.
Mother, Father and Baby are all doing well. We are excited to have Eliza with us. She is so tiny.
