Landus is here!

Ah yes, Yuanyuan reminds us that we have been neglectful of our blogging. Such slovenliness shall be remedied tonight. Opting for a layout that will allow for a more custom layout, should I ever get the energy to customize, I put Landus's pictures on my OCF site:

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~james/photo.htm

Yu went into labor at roughly 4 am, with strong contractions that wouldn't let up. We went to the hospital around 6:30 am. They placed her in triage to decide whether to admit her, and around 8:30, her water broke, earning her a ticket. Landus happened to choose just about the busiest day in the history of the UCSF medical center to come out into the world, because there were no delivery rooms available, so she had to gut it out in the triage room until nearly 2 pm. By 10 am, Yu was in tremendous pain with "back labor," and a pain rating that, as Spinal Tap would say, went to 11.



IV fentanyl didn't take the edge off, and for 4 hours, nurses kept reassuring us we'd get a room and... nothing. We started getting pretty angry, cursing UCSF and whatnot. I made a number of choice statements, which ought to be interesting in a few weeks or so, since I'll be rotating on the peds wards there...

Eventually, we got a room, and Yu finally got the merciful epidural, of which she was eternally grateful. She was able to sleep until about 7 pm, when she started to feel a lot of pressure again. She was wheeled into another, larger room, and started to push. She pushed again and again, and started to get quite exhausted. She hadn't eaten a substantive meal for 24 hours. Over the previous several hours, she had also developed a low-grade fever. It started to rise as her efforts to push Landus became more draining. At 39oC, they gave her another dose of tylenol, IV antibiotics, an O2 mask, and some meds to slow the baby's heart rate down (it had gone up to 180). Eventually, his meconium came out while still inside, so it became necessary to speed things along, lest he develop a serious infection. Dr. Thiet directed the use of forceps, and with one last mighty push from Yu, Landus came in to the world at 10:30 pm, 10/11.

Landus was a big boy at birth, 8 lbs and 21". He has marvelously long fingernails (he was overdue by 4 days), and some wonderfully bizarre ear hair (I have been reassured that is normal for newborns). One of these days we will file his fingernails so he won't cut himself on the face. After a few very rough nights, things are starting to normalize a little bit. Landus is very cute, usually a docile boy in the day, and is not overly fussy apart from the times he requires liquid sustenance and bowel movement management. He also likes to bend his legs like a frog, and kicks like Bruce Lee. He does crunches better than I. And we think he looks a lot like me. Today, he fell asleep to his Dad singing Rilo Kiley (appropriated from a VW commercial):



That's all for now. After getting a momentary reprieve from medical school, it's so nice to relax and be at home with family. I may post some homemade Youtube videos soon, have to review the tape first. Take care everybody.