Clara Isabelle Muench

We have a new family member as of Wednesday. Everyone is doing well. Here are the vitals:

Name: Clara Isabelle Muench

Born: Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 1:23 p.m.

Height: 19 inches

Weight: 8 lbs. 3.7 ozs.

Clara after her required hospital "bath" in the delivery room bassinet

Clara a few hours old on my Flip video camera

Clara sleeping tonight as I begin writing this

More details (if you don't need birth details skip this)

Here's the birth story. Hadden was a C-section and Yvonne wanted very much to try a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). She was a good candidate for this (you can ask her detials about this if you like) so off we went. Clara was "due" (as near as we can guess) on June 13th (Saturday). No baby so instead I played softball that evening. On Tuesday evening, during the movie that we got to see (thanks Angela) - "The Hangover" - Braxton-Hicks contractions seemed to change, which was a good sign. I woke up at about 6:15a.m. and Yvonne said she was in labor since 3am. It got progressively better (or worse, depending upon what your goal is) and the Doula came over at about 1oam (she had 2 births the previous night). Water broke at about 11:30am and we were off to the hospital at 11:45am with Yvonne working not to push (we had passed the "transition" phase). Perhaps we left a bit late. After 15 minutes in the car with Yvonne hoping not to deliver in the versatile (but not as versatile as a hospital delivery room for this sort of thing) Element we made it to the Swedish emergency entrance. In the wheelchair and up directly into a birthing suit. Yvonne (or Clara, depending upon how you look at it) was far enough along that we skipped the triage room and all the admitance paperwork (nice!). About an hour and 15 minutes later Clara was born. Things were going quickly enough that the doctor sprinted over from their office and asked, "You wanted this to be natural, right?" Good thing we did because there wasn't much time for much else. This time around our "birth plan" for Clara consisted of fishing out the old one for Hadden from our files while Yvonne was in labor and crossing out "him" and replacing it with "her" in a few locations. Didn't matter though, the birth plan stayed with all our stuff in the car that was now illegally parked in the emergency room ambulence turn-around zone. The hospital and Doula moved our cars (the Doula drove separately) so everything worked out.

Clara came out OP (facing up rather than down), which supposedly made the birth harder. No matter, she came right out. Everyone is doing fine (Yvonne, Clara...and me). Hadden says there is no more baby inside mommy. He's right.

During the birth the only camera I had was the really crappy one on my mobile phone so no pictures from immediately after birth - no big deal. Our friend Sandy from two doors down came by at 4pm that day and did a full birth photo shoot. Turned out great - Wendy (Yvonne's mom), Angela and Hadden all stopped by with Sandy at 4pm. We moved into the post-partum room at around 6pm and were discharged for home the next day at 1:30pm: a total in-and-out process. For comparison:

Total time in labor:

Clara = 10 hours, 20 minutes (occurred naturally)

Hadden = 36 hours (induced)

Amount of equipment used in the delivery room:

Clara = IV (required for VBAC), fetal heart monitor, mommy heart monitor

Hadden = everything (actually I don't remember turning on the TV so maybe not everything)

Total time in hospital:

Clara = 24 hours

Hadden = 90 hours plus

About her name:

Muench = obvious

Clara = Yvonne had a great-aunt named Clara and it's also my grandmother's original middle name - so it has meaning to both of us

Isabelle = name of Yvonne's cat while growing up. True story. Better hers than the Muench cat my sister had while growing up - Muffins. Cara Muffins Muench would not have worked.

More to come I'm sure...

steve