It's a minionette!

A new recruit has joined the Drek & Child World Domination Organization! It's a girl; 7 pounds, 4 ounces, 22.5 inches long, born at 2:09 AM on 9/17/09. No name yet.

Helpful hint #1: Men: take off your wedding ring during labor. This will prevent an imprint of it from being permanently embedded on the fingers to both sides.


Child twittered updates during labor. Actually, she had me do the updates, which is why one of them said, "Ho0-ah!"

A side effect of this was that my technologically-inclined cousin was one of the first to know Child was having her baby (from the Twitter stream), and posted it on Facebook, where my sister saw it and mentioned it to my mother later that morning.

Helpful hint #2: Make sure your mother doesn't hear about your new baby third-hand.

In our defense, we were planning to actually call people later that morning after we had woken up. Anyway, probably because of her distressing lateness in hearing the news, my mom rushed up to Draper to say hi and see her new granddaughter.

Child's parents visited later that afternoon. They were good enough to bring a few essentials, and it was actually Child's mom's birthday so she and her granddaughter share the same birthday now!


Mother and daughter are doing great and did great during the delivery as well. Active labor was only about four hours long, which was nice.

Helpful hint #3: Don't complain about how much your hand hurts when your wife squeezes it during a contraction.


Also during that day, Child's best friend Kestrel stopped by, also bringing an essential or two. She's actually been really great, coming by several times to check up on Child, bring little gifts, and generally support Child. A real life-saver.

Later that evening, Child's sister and brother-in-law came by and brought dinner with them, which was great. A lady from church had also brought dinner (meatloaf for carnivorous me, and zucchini soup for vegetarian Child) which we tucked away in the fridge.

My sister and brother-in-law were also came down from Idaho to buy a minivan, so they stopped by and saw the Kid also. I took the Kid outside so we could check out their new minivan, and on the way back inside I saw our next-door neighbor. We live in the end unit of a townhome and she lives right next to us, so Child and I were worried that we may have kept her awake during the birth. (Oh yeah, we did a water birth at home.) I showed her the kid and apologized for any noise, but she claimed she didn't hear a thing. Not sure I believe her.

Speaking of the water birth at home, Child had an uphill battle to convince me it was a better idea than the hospital. I'm very sciency and Child is very alternative, so we clash occasionally over things like that. Once Child changed tactics and pointed out that not only would I have free acccess to a refrigerator during the birth, but that a midwife would cost less than a third of our insurance maternity deductible, I was sold.

In retrospect she was totally right; the home birth went great, everything was relaxed (as much as could be during a birth), and having a midwife and assistant giving Child their undivided attention was great. Child had a much better experience then I imagine she would have had in a hospital, and the Kid probably did too.

Helpful hint #4: don't suggest to your wife that you might go play Frisbee the day after your daughter is born.

On day two (today), Child and Kid went outside for a brief bit o' sunshine. It was Child's furthest venture since the Kid was born. Child's a little sore (can't imagine why) so she's mostly been staying in bed while I've been running food and dishes between the upstairs and downstairs.

I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation: given that there are 14 stairs, and I've made a trip upstairs or downstairs on average every 10 minutes for the past two days, that means I've walked about ten billion stairs in the last 48 hours. Oh, my suffering. Can anything compare?