ta-da!

introducing: Ian Dale Rogers!
born November 16th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
8 pounds 12 ounces
20.5 inches

sorry this post is a day late...i'm sure you all understand, though. we came home from the hospital this afternoon around 4:30 or so.

birth story:
we went in for the induction on the morning of the 16th at 11:30 am. we got admitted and all the paperwork filled out, and things got moving around 1:00 when they started the pitocin (after 5 IV attempts). i started having contractions pretty much right away, which proved my suspicion that it wouldn't take much to get things going. i decided i wanted to walk around to aid the process, but baba ghannouj wouldn't stay still so they could keep the monitor on his heartbeat. so, 45 minutes of the nurse trying to get him to stay on the monitor, and we both gave up. i decided that i'd wait a little bit to walk around and get back in the bed so they could monitor him a little better. i laid back down, the nurse got him back on the monitor, and my water promptly broke as she walked away. :) things REALLY got moving at this point (2:30pm). the contractions got much stronger, and i quickly lost my ability to deal with them. i requested the epidural at 4:30, and i'm very glad i didn't wait any longer because it took an hour for the epidural man to show up. so, got the epidural at 5:30/5:45ish, and was 5cm at that point. baba ghannouj got picky at this point and only wanted me to lay on my right side...every time i switched, his heart rate would go down. the next few hours passed relatively uneventfully, and at 9:00 i was 10cm and supposedly ready to push. well, i couldn't feel anything, but i tried anyway. after about a half-hour of "pushing" i was finally feeling enough that i started making some progress. but, around 10:30/10:45, serious frustration and discouragement was setting in. progress was very slow, and i was having a LOT of back pain (FORESHADOWING ALERT) which led me to ask my doctor to check and make sure he was faced the right way (faced down toward my back). she checked and said, "yep, faced the right way, you just need to push harder." sigh. close to 11:40, his head had been partially out for quite some time but wouldn't come the rest of the way, no matter what i did. so, she cut a little episiotomy, and with the next push, he blasted out like he was fired out of a cannon. and it ended up the doctor was WRONG. he came out "sunny-side up", facing straight up to the ceiling with his eyes wide open. this is a bad way for the baby to be faced because it means the biggest part of the head has to come through first...it's much more difficult to get a baby out this way. it would have been nice to know, but i suppose it wouldn't have made a huge difference to know it beforehand.

ian's doing really really well. he's a champion nurser and a champion pooper already. abby approves of him so far, although she initially wouldn't say his name at all, and today has called him lily several times (after auntie jenny's 7-month-old daughter), and also "baby dale rogers." so, we're working on that. we're also working on remembering to use "inside voice", but that's been an ongoing project anyway. but, she's been a big helper already with diaper changes since we've been home.

i am uploading all the pictures to snapfish and to flickr (for those of you who don't want to register with snapfish) now, and will post the links as soon as they're done. he's super-cute...enjoy the pictures!