Welcoming Leif!

Those of you who I know through real life or online know about the arrival of Leif on May 1st at 6:00 pm. He weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces and was 21 inches long. His name is Scandanavian, can mean “heir” or “beloved,” and is pronounced “layf.” He is amazing.

His entrance to the world was a dramatic one. We worked a regular day on Friday, April 30, and that evening I had a few signs that we might be headed in this direction, so John talked me into going to the hospital. We loaded up the car and said bye to the cats thinking that in all likelihood we’d be home in a few hours.

Long story short: found out I had extremely high blood pressure. Doctor said I was likely near pre-eclampsia. Talked us into inducing (which I wasn’t a fan of), labor was going well, but in the end needed a bit of Pitocin (which I was hoping to avoid). We tried to get him here for 2 hours. Things progressed really well for the first 15 minutes, then not really at all for the next hour and 45 minutes. We ended up going for a c-section (which I absolutely did not want to do), and Leif joined us at 6:00pm (yay!!). My blood pressure was still high, so for the first day they put me on Magnesium Sulfate. That stuff is crazy. It made me insanely hot, gave me blurry vision, and made me feel generally weird. They put us in a more traditional hospital room for hourly monitoring. We were finally alone with Leif in our room after something like 40 hours of being awake. The next evening they took me off the medicine and moved us down to the mother/baby floor. Life got a lot better there, with monitoring only every 4 hours, no IV, and the ability to walk around. We stayed through Tuesday morning, and have only been out to the doctor’s offices since.

John has been incredible throughout the whole thing. In the hospital, he was an incredible advocate and took great care of me. Now that we’re home he’s pretty much doing everything so that I can heal and feed the baby.

This first week with Leif has flown by, and we’re completely enamored with the little guy. John’s going to be home for a lot of my maternity leave, so the three of us will be spending most of our time together. I suspect I’ll be online a lot less for the next little bit, mostly updating with pictures and occasional status updates. Thanks to all for the good wishes!

10 thoughts on “Welcoming Leif!”

New blog post: Welcoming Leif! http://laurenpressley.com/library/2010/05/welcoming-leif/

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

lauren, my goodness! THAT is a labor/birthing story! take care of yourself [i *know* you'll take good care of leif] glad to hear you and family are doing well. many congrats AND happy mother’s day!!!!

Aw man, Lauren, that is more of a story than you were hoping for, I’m sure. Good job to come out of it so well. And great job, John!

Congratulations Lauren!

Thanks Anna, Lynn, and Elaine! True, more of a story than I was hoping for, but all worked out well in the end! (And really, everyone along the way was so nice that it made it easier to deal with than I would have guessed.) Now, if only I could make myself nap with Leif naps!