12:30 a.m. Easter Sunday. Named him Oden Godzilla as per my promise/threat. Pictures are here - but I don't have a digital camera so they're either taken by someone else or taken with my camera phone. http://www.flickr.com/photos/uberwensch/sets/72157617694970768/

Congratulations!

bravissima!

Congratulations! That is one cute baby.

Yay! Margret, dude, what is up with the tiny pictures? I click on a few to zoom in on the munchkin, and the biggest size is 140x104. That's not right.

I can't believe you held out on us for SO LONG. He is really adorable, and I don't generally say that about new babies because they usually look like aliens. But no, not Oden Godzilla! He's totally destined for greatness.

Yeah, ok, have to confess that while in the day I was able to program a VCR quite handily - the tekk, she has bypassed me. The pictures are all from grandma/grandpa/uncle Joe and I have not clue one about how to make them better. As to holding out - my water broke at 11:17 p.m. on the 10th and I had to call my best friend/birth coach and ask her if when your water broke it felt like someone else peed your pants. She confirmed that it might feel like that, so she walked over (we bought a house 4 blocks from her, since she's my best friend) because she was DRUNK and we all trundled down to the hospital with my husband driving and me on a towel because god forbid I mess the Honda. We got there, the midwife checked me out and said indeed my water had broken but I wasn't dilated so I could stick around and walk around or I could go home. I chose (b). So we went home and I laid on a towel and slept between contractions (really; I would nap for 4 minutes, wake up, and go back to sleep). At about 8:30 in the a.m. the contractions had intensified enough that I couldn't sleep between them anymore, so we went back and I was admitted. I wasn't dilating, so they gave me some shit and wouldn't give me the epidural I had been prepping them for MONTHS that I wanted (they're midwives - while they want you to have the say-so over your birth experience, their preference would be that you say "I want to do this the NATURAL way" - fuck that). But they gave me some good drugs at around I want to say 11:00 a.m. or noon that lasted a couple of hours - and they did the drip of the open-you-up shit. So then by like 4:00 p.m. I was fully dilated (0 to 100% in 4 hours - apparently that's brutal). Then I wasn't contracting enough, so they let me have the epidural but they upped the dilating you/contracting you shit. I started pushing for reals at about 6:00 p.m. and they called in the OBs sometime around 9:00 p.m. The OBs were working a caesarean, so I didn't have to deal with hard decisions until they finished up with that. Everyone was quite worried because there's a high risk of infection the longer you go without delivering after your water breaks. So then it got super sucky and we tried vacuuming the baby out. Not as horrific as it sounds, it's like a special jar opening almost device. But you can only try it 3 times because it's pressure on the baby's tiny not yet finished skull. Well, we popped it 3 times. But the attending OB liked the fight in my eyes and said I could try for a little longer. And they had him so close with the jar opener that I could feel him. So I asked for the mirror to double check that there really was readiness there (they'd kind of been blowing smoke up my ass for a couple of hours about me being almost there) and low and behold I saw bloody baby head in my cooter. So I pushed like HELL and the baby came out. 3rd degree tear, for those of you who know what that means. Turns out I have an actual abnormally small pubic arch. Hips wide enough to drive a truck through, but with a teeny tiny access gate. Anyhoodle, I was in the hospital for 2 days with the bebe - me on IV antibiotics, him being monitored for baby jaundice and the bruising on his little baby skull (he was fine, I had an infection). Went back to work (though from home) after 2 weeks and have essentially been doing nothing but eating, feeding the baby, cleaning the baby, talking to the baby and working since then. Today I thought "hey, I bet the rest of the world is still out there..." And lo, you were. We're doing great, you all, thanks for the well wishes. If I can find it, Sabra documented the unmessy parts of the labour process and I'll link yinz. We had many adventures in Labour & Delivery, and if I can recall them with focus I will post some of the snippets.

Congratulation! :-)

I didn't get to see a bloody baby head in my cooter, but Sem did. I believe he described it as "Vagenourmous" and compared me to those apes whose genitals turn inside out after they give birth. Thanks. Sem.

He's adorable Margret I was wondering about you, thanks for letting us know about about this new beautiful little baby.Glad to here your doing well too. Kazu,men can be insensitive they don't mean to,that's just men. I have a friend whose husband said when their baby was born that it was like a bloody basketball coming out of her.She really held that against him for years.

Congrats Margret! Love the names! Thanks for the laughs, Kaz, Sem, and J!

Since you have a baby on the way Dougie you've been forewarned:)

It was kinda freaky, because I didn't know that happened and I wasn't prepared for it. I hope my dear Kazu can some day forgive me for the fact that when I saw her enlarged lady parts, my mind immediately went to the bonobos in the zoo.

I'm over it.

From all accounts, it's rather startling to be on the other end. All I remember is that Dave cried, and it was one of the only times I've ever seen him cry in all of the years I've known him.

Malek was forbidden to look at the bits. I tried to eject him from the room, but he was not to be budged. He sat in there facing the window, listening, occasionally saying soothing things, and played his DS. In both of our defense, he's super squeamish unto barfiness. I really was concerned he'd throw up and pass out and I would have to be worried about my concussed husband when I should be worrying about ejecting a tiny human.

margret, congrats to you and your family. oden is simply gorgeous. isn't it all so amazing and shocking and wonderful and strange? sorry to not acknowledge sooner, i've been tied up myself.

way to go margret. once again, baby fever continues to spread around here. with eva, i saw the whole works. I was a leg holder along with best girlfriend for most of the hard part. i cut the cord. i was sprayed with blood. and i cried like a baby before the baby cried. who says that because men don't physically carry the critter they cant have an intense, undesribable emotional bond!

oh and what the hell, let me be the first.... cute baby nice rack :-P

I like the laughing Oden pic. And Sarah, what have you been up to?

My father fainted when my brother was born. The story we were told as children was that he hadn't eaten in a while, but later we learned it was because he had witnessed my mother tearing and the subsequent blood. Then he had hiccups for eight days.