I threw out a couple of numbers in the original announcement that seemed somewhat off, and a few curious folks wanted to know what the scoop was. So, finally, I’m stealing a few minutes to explain the mysterious, divergent numbers.
Thirty-two hours is the time that elapsed between Liz’s water breaking on Sunday the Ninth and the baby arriving on Monday the Tenth. The short version is that, once we got to the hospital, the on-call doc didn’t want to get things revved up right away (probably she didn’t want to have to come in for late night activities on a Sunday), so we got delayed a bit by the JV squad, and by late Sunday night the contractions had stopped (probably because of the level of “comfort” afforded by being planted in a hospital bed for twelve hours and told not to go anywhere).
Our regular OB, however, was eager to get the show on the road (trying to head off chances of infection), so the induction process was started at Eight AM on Monday, and we had a lovely, screaming baby by Ten o’clock that night–thus the fourteen hour measurement, and my use of phrases like “once it got rolling for real.”
One other temporal measurement of mild interest is twenty-five minutes, the time that elapsed between the 6.5 and almost-10 centimeter measurements, during which the opportunity for Liz to have any painkillers whatsoever vanished.
Yes, that’s right–Liz pushed out our whopper of a little girl, in a furious and intense labor, without any happy drugs.
Have I mentioned that I’m in awe of my wife?
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Tags: children claire life liz photos12 CommentsPrint This Post
12 responses so far ↓
I love it when I hear of women not using pain killers during labor.
Your wife is indeed awe inspiring.
I would add another measurement of 2.5 to 3 hours of pushing, hence why I now have problems with my right knee.
Wow, that’s insanely long.
Amazing, indeed.
The guy who sits in the cube next to me is also a relatively new dad (his son was born in February). His wife did something like 44 hours of actual labor–ie, without the 12-hour pause and restart cycle in the middle of it. So I am quite thankful that we had things a little faster.
Ick. 6 hours of painless induction and 12 hrs of actual labor were quite enough for me, thank you. And by the way, I’m pleased to report that the bad things that happen to your bottom after pushing for 2-3 hrs heals up quite nicely by week 6.
My hats off to you lady! I am inspired and in awe.
What a woman!
Sounds like monica’s active labor. they tried twice to give her epidurals and the never took, so she got Ariana out in under 30 minutes of pushing.
Yeesh, I’m coming to the conclusion that all my female friends (who are new moms) are superwomen!
Also, that’s a very sweet photo, Mike. What is Claire lying on?
Confession time: did you put your daughter on a drop cloth until she fell asleep, you photographer you?
I bought two yards of black suedecloth at Joann Fabric. Then when we had a sufficiently sleepy baby, I draped part from a baby chair and spread out the rest on the carpet in our office, and set Claire down onto it. I shot a bunch of stuff of her asleep, then we woke her up to get shots with her eyes open, mouth doing stuff, toes being wiggly, etc.
Between the kid being inherently adorable and her dad investing in and practicing with the right photo stuff (a decent flash and a pretty good 50mm lens), we ended up with a lot of really good pictures. I’ve got a bunch of them on Flickr, but with restricted access since Liz is starting to put her foot down about Claire’s internet privacy (which I more or less agree on — I just like showing off good photos though!). If you’ve got a Flickr account, I can grant you rights to view the rest of her stuff.
It’s a great shot! I would love to see more of the series, if you wouldn’t mind. (…and I see that you’ve added me as a contact! Well never mind, then.)
I’m really impressed, and think you may be spurring me to get back onto the photography horse once my paper is done and out of my hair!
Also, what brand of prime lens did you get? I’ve been idly thinking of investing in one myself.
I bought the Canon f/1.4 50mm from Amazon… It’d dipped down to being something like 45% or 48% off. It’s pretty sharp at f/2 and above, and for sub-f/2 you can get some really really narrow DoF if that’s what you’re going for. It’s taken a bit of getting used to, but I’m having a lot of fun.
(Of course with a crop-sensor body like my XT, 50mm is really 80mm, so…. YMMV.)
Also, thank you for the nice compliments.
I meant to say that and am a bit too fuzzy-headed to remember things right away at present time.