Friday, April 21, 2006

How We Met Quinn

This time, it wasn't Salvadoran food. Friday evening, Evelin and I were both beat and with the timing of Celeste's bath/bedtime, we were finding ourselves unwilling to really cook anything for dinner. After going back and forth over the idea of leftovers or a bowl of cereal, I ran out to California Tortilla for some salads. (Evelin is fond of the Southwestern Chicken Salad.)

On the way there, I called my grandmother to leave her a message. She had mailed the as-of-then-unnamed baby a nice blankie, and it arrived on the due date. However, we were still only a one-child family, so I wanted to let her know that we'd gotten the present although not the child. It turns out my grandmother was on to something ...

Around 9:30 p.m., I was sitting on the couch, watching television and transferring the last few CDs to slimline cases, and Evelin was across the room doing some work on the computer, when she paused and said "that feels different" and promptly called the midwives. While waiting for the callback, she said it didn't really feel like labor, just different.

Since Evelin is GΒS+, the midwife said to come in just in case it was labor. The hope was that we were still in early days and there would be time to give her the two doses of antibiotics with a space of four hours between the doses. We called our neighbor G--- and started gathering what we needed to take with us. As soon as G--- arrived to stay with Celeste, we headed out.

Around 10:30 p.m., we arrived at the birthing center a few minutes ahead of H---, the midwife on duty that night. Before even examining Evelin, H--- started the antibiotic drip.

At 10:50 p.m., I tried to post from my phone to my blog (as well as to e-mail/text some friends and family): "We're at the Maternity Center ... Looks like this might be it ..." Eleven minutes later, I sent a follow up post to the blog: "8 cm! The midwife says the baby isn't waiting for a second dose of the GΒS+ antibiotics ..." I'm not sure if the text/e-mails worked, but they certainly didn't post to the blog for some reason ...

As the evening progressed, Evelin felt the contractions getting stronger but for the most part bearable until around midnight. As soon as we crossed over to the 15th, things started moving more quickly. Around 1:00 a.m., she started getting the urge to push. Things were going pretty well, except that Evelin ended up having a blood vessel in her nose burst during the pushing, gushing an unexpected bit of blood across her face.

About 10 minutes into the pushing phase of labor, the midwife broke Evelin's water, and about 10 minutes after that Quinn's head was out. There was an unexpected complication in that she was a little twisted, which required the midwife to turn her shoulders, but by 1:20 a.m. Quinn was all the way here, squealing and squeaking.

Quinn may have missed her due date by 80 minutes, but she now enjoys a birthday that — barring some radical tax reforms — will be very difficult for anyone to forget. Also, for 2006, she was born on Holy Saturday/Easter Even; and, one of Evelin's friends pointed out that, for 5766, she was born on the first day of Chol ha'Moed Pesach (חול המועד פסח).

Interestingly, even though Easter has fallen on 15 April twice since 1990 (in 1990 and in 2001), according to these sites at least, Quinn won't have her birthday coincide with Easter until she's 57 (2063) and then again when she's 68 (2074) ... unless she converts to Orthodox Christianity by the time she's six (2012).

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