Birth Story, Part III

Birth Story, Part I, got us through the first 42 hours of labor and ended at an inflection point in the story, to wit the arrival of Nurse Sharon. Part II took us from there through a Cesarian and a fairly shocking introduction to The Bean.

We pick up the story now at 1.50am on July 31st, with me heading upstairs to the NICU with Lux while Wendy stayed downstairs to go into post-op. We'd already discussed this arrangement before the operation: our wonderful midwife Maria, incredibly still with us after arriving at our house about 28 hours earlier, was going to look after mommy while daddy kept the baby company for her first few hours. I took this video at 1.56am in the NICU, with Lux 18 minutes old:

After that I pretty much sobbed for a couple of hours while the nurses poked and prodded Lux in her little glass box in intensive care.

At 3.25am, though, they released her from the NICU and I was allowed to wheel her down to meet Wendy in post-op. Here's a picture I took at 3.30am just after they were reunited:

and it was barely half an hour later that we were headed to our recovery room.

We slept from 4am until about 9am. During that time the hospital staff came and futzed with Lux, various tests and procedures to be undergone. We woke slowly and at 9.30am I took this picture of mom and daughter:

and just afterwards I tweeted:

44 hours of labor and a Cesarian brought me and @wendyverse Lux Hepworth (aka @thebeean), 8lb 4oz & 20.5". tweetphoto.com/360199299:29 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

And here she is, a Twitteresque 140 days later: