Welcome Home Marissa Ann Sutton!

Sunday night at 8:00, my buddy Nick (aka Markakis) picked us up in his friend's SUV and drove us to Prentice at Northwestern Hospital for our induction. A special thanks to Markakis as I completely forgot that he bought a new, smaller car in the Fall when I called him to see if he'd give us a ride. He gladly accepted the challenge and borrowed his buddy's car. Very nicely done!

We checked in around 8:30 and made it up to our first of two rooms relatively quickly. Around 10:00 or so, they started the induction process which started with a Cervix Ripening Balloon (CRB) and a low dose of pitocin. Upon arrival, LL was only about 1.5 cm's dilated....barely dilated at all. Around 2:50 a.m., the CRB had fallen out on its own after having done its job of getting LL to 4.5 cm's.  So they broke her bag of water and increased the pitocin level.

Around 5:30, they administered the epidural as the contractions which started around 3 a.m., were getting a little rough. By 10:30, LL was still only 6 cm's and was feeling nauseous. After we got that under control, I headed to the cafeteria to get some breakfast while LL rested and contracted, though post epidural, they weren't painful at least. LL's ob/gyn came in around 11:30 after performing a morning hysterectomy.  We were planning on another 6-18 hours of labor since there seemed to be little progress over the last 6+ hours. Much to our surprise though, the doc said,"Let's get ready! She's 10 cm's. We're having this baby!"

Yowza!!!

The doc prepped, the nurses prepped and I prepped. Wait. What? Yep, I held one of LL's legs up and back to help her while she pushed (better than nothing). And push she did. The nurse and doctor kept saying what a great job pushing she was doing, but both LL and I had the same cynical thought: what else could they possibly say? You're doing a terrible job? Ha!  Turns out, they weren't just placating her! 20 minutes after the pushing started at 12:45, out came baby Marissa Ann! She had made about 5 sets of 3 pushes and that was it. On push number 3 the doc asked if LL wanted to feel the baby's head, as it was almost out. Two more sets of pushes was all it took.

So here are the pictures. Marissa Ann was born at 1:06 p.m., was 20 inches long and weighed in at 6 lbs, 12 ozs.

More pictures and stuff to come tomorrow....ish.