Introducing Lukas Anthony Lager

As most of you probably already know or probably have guessed from my lack of posts, our little boy Lukas has finally arrived. There are 2 of you out there who guessed it correctly. It's been a whirlwind experience, but here's how it all started...

On Wednesday morning, I woke up around 7AM and went to the bathroom like I do every morning. I went back to bed and 10 minutes later I noticed that the bed was wet. I'm thinking to myself, "Oh no, not again. Did I just pee on myself again?" Then I remembered that I had just gone to the bathroom, so I probably didn't pee on myself. I called Jeannette, who is an OB, Edwin, and my OB's office. My OB's office told me to call them when my contractions were 5 minutes apart. I stayed at home for most of the day and Edwin came home from work to wait for those contractions. Here were my activities that day after my calls:

1. Had some breakfast.


2. Took a 2 hour nap. (I mean, I should get some rest before the big event, right?)


3. Had some lunch.


4. Watched some TV, emailed, and read. Edwin decided he would clean the house.


5. I called the OB around 4:30PM because I wanted to talk to them before the office closed. They told me that I would need to check into the hospital that night because there would be a risk of infection if I didn't deliver within 24 hours of my water breaking.


6. Went out to dinner with the Banerjees for Korean food.


7. Checked into the hospital at 9PM.

One of the worst parts of the process happened at the beginning as I was getting admitted into labor and delivery. I had to have my blood drawn and an IV inserted in my arm. The nurse that inserted the IV was terrible. She missed my vein which hurt a lot and hit a valve, so there was a gauze pad full of my blood. Then, she had to do it again and I'm thinking to myself, "Do you know what you're doing?"

After checking in, they brought us to the labor and delivery room. The original intent when I arrived at the hospital was for them to give me a drug to start dilation, but when the OB checked me at midnight, I was already 3cm dilated which meant that I didn't need it. At 2AM, they checked me and said that I my contractions weren't strong enough or regular enough, so they wanted to give me pitocin to make them stronger and more regular. They seemed strong enough to me! The contractions were the worst part of the process. Edwin suggested trying to sleep between contractions, but they were so strong that there was no way that I could.

Edwin was pretty sleepy since he spent his day cleaning while I took a nap during the afternoon. I'm also more the night owl than he is because he is more a morning person than me. To focus on something other than the pain from the contractions, I asked Edwin to talk to me. Edwin thought that this meant that I wanted to converse, so he started asking me questions like, "When are your parents arriving?" This was not the type of distraction I was thinking of. I didn't say that I wanted to talk. I just wanted him to talk to me. Then, Edwin had a brilliant idea. I had put together a playlist on my ipod for the labor and delivery. He put the music on and I was able to focus on the words and sing along. They should offer karaoke for women in labor. Just a suggestion.

At 4AM, the nurse asked if I wanted an epidural for the pain since the anesthesiologist was nearby. My original thoughts on a drug free delivery were that I would try and do it without the drugs for as long as I could, but that I was not opposed to an epidural. Several of my friends have had them and I have not heard of anyone having a bad experience with it- though my friend Lei said that her bad experience was that her epidural stopped working. I thought for a minute that I could rough it a little more and then I thought, "Why am I doing this? This hurts a lot. Who knows how long this will take?" So I changed my mind and said, "Yes, I would like an epidural, please." Labor after epidural was VERY nice.

After the epidural, I was able to sleep from 4:30AM to 8:30 AM. This is the closest thing I can think of to sleeping through labor. It was SO nice. The nurses and doctors were still coming in to check on me intermittently throughout the night and I didn't care. Some people say that they don't like epidurals because it doesn't allow the mother to feel how she is pushing. At around 9AM, they told me to start pushing and an hour and a half later, Lukas showed up. Funny thing is, I had a dream when I was 8 months pregnant that I was sleeping and woke up with a baby. Maybe it was a premonition.

The labor and delivery nurses said that they really liked my playlist. Maybe I'll publish it someday to the blog. It was like 5 hours of music, so we'll see. We were listening to Cowboys and Angels from George Michael when Lukas arrived.

Another funny anecdote about one of the labor and delivery nurses who was a nurse in training was that a Jem song started playing and she said that she used to listen to that song when she was studying in high school. I think that Jem became popular only 5 years ago. How old was this nurse? Just a little scary, but the other nurse was clearly more experienced, so it was OK.

I'll definitely be posting more pics of Lukas's first week, but here is the birth announcement that we sent out via email. The time was actually 10:44AM when Lukas was born, but who really cares except us?