Baby Alden Michael says hello to all his fans

Day one
01-17-08 – 01-18-08

This was a regular day until about 10pm. I worked at the office and Ilana skipped off to her job to borrow a laptop because ours had a hard drive failure. Rest in peace IBM T23 hard disc. When I got home I did some work on the kitchen lights and we made sweet potato quesadillas. Around 10pm Ilana went for a pee and lost her mucus plug…eeew. I got really excited and wanted to go to the hospital, but Ilana said she was feeling fine and that in some cases the plug comes out days in advance. We timed her contractions but they were not particularly regular or painful, and by 11:30 we headed for bed.

I began to drift off and then Ilana got up with a start – her water had broken – it was about 11:45. We called our doctor and got the answering service. We told the answering dude who we were and what was going on. He said he would notify the hospital and we should hang tight and wait for a call. I did not trust the answer dude, and we left for the hospital by midnight… I have still not received a call telling me to come to the hospital – Never trust a dude whose life-path has lead him to a job of answering telephones at midnight.

After her water broke Ilana began feeling discomfort with her contractions (before this there were not uncomfortable). We got to the hospital just after 12:30 and were shown to our room. The nurses on the floor had not been informed of our arrival and made a call to the on-call doctor who I suppose was at home sleeping.

To make a short labor even shorter, at 2:43am little Alden Michael was born. The labor was swift and intense. He was delivered by 3 nurses. The doctor did not arrive till the very end to help remove the placenta and cut the cord. We spent the next several hours getting to know each other. Alden Was 8 lb 8oz, was 20 1/2” long and had a full head of light brown hair. The swift birth was kind of hard on the fella. His face was bruised and he had a puffy left eye and his right was swollen shut. The left half of his bottom lip was three times the size of the right because one of his hands was against his face inside Ilana. His right ear was sticking straight out from his head, because it was folded against the womb. He looked like he had been in a fight…. Which I suppose in a way he was.

He looks a lot like me- ears, nose, eyebrows, and eyelashes, are all from my genes. Chin is questionable (he has the puffy baby cheeks right now) as are his eyes (swollen). Oh yeah, the poor imp has my hairline as well.

The kid had great timing. He broke the membranes before we were sleeping, and we got to the hospital before a 2am freezing rainstorm had begun. I called into work to get the Friday off, and Monday is the Martin Luther King Holiday. Thanks kiddo.

We have loads of pictures, but I don’t have my camera to computer chord here at the hospital. I will post them soon.