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Sorry for the delay. The hospital's network limits what guest users can send out and it took me all day to find the wire to attach my camera to the computer. 
This Yarden's first picture. She blinked.
Afterwards Aliyah felt a little woozy from the drugs.
Both recovered quickly. Aliyah felt strong enough to hold Yarden about an hour after leaving the O.R.
Aliyah tired to teach Yarden how to thumb wrestle.
Yarden quickly re-invented the sneak attack using charm and her gums in place of her index finger. Aliyah was gracious in defeat.
We hated to put her down, and she didn't like it much either, but she had visitors... Bubbie and Grandpa.
She sized up Bubbie first.
I gave Yarden the secret sign that Bubbie was okay.
Yarden relaxed.
Then Kendal, Clarke and Gina burst in. They had been checking every room in Maternity and the hospital police were after them, so we gave them asylum.
I think this is before Kendal cried.
Gina refused to trade Brady for Yarden because Yarden isn't housebroken.
Visiting hours were over so I took Grandpa and Bubbie back to Sycamore.
Yarden went to sleep unsure if the outisde-Aliyah world was real or if it had all been a dream.
The next morning Dr. Shahedee came by. We were very happy to see her, but it felt a little weird to have this close a connection with someone I interviewed once 2 months ago and have not spoken to since. Still, I know we picked the right doctor for us. She gave it to us straight and was pleasant to talk to. I still have a little trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that Dr. Walden and Dr. Shahedee really adjusted their lives around our family. 
After Bubbie and Grandpa arrived, I left to finish getting the house ready for Yarden. I can't believe she's one day old and has already run out of closet space.
In the evening, more people came to visit so I went back to the hospital.
Alan, Sonja, and little Jocelyn came first. The girls nursed together. Alan had made me a New Dad Survival Kit: Beef Jerky, Powerade, and other stuff non-patients may need for a long stay at the hospital.
Deb came too. She's been very helpful in getting the word out to people who I may have lost touch with.
Alexa and James showed up.
James thought if he saw the baby, he would pass out so he sat on the other side of the privacy curtain. 
Unfortunately he accidentally caught a glimpse of the baby.
I was able to revive him with a book on sharks James is reading to study for the 7th Grade.
Dan came by too. He brought six or seven meals from Jerry's deli. I was able to snap this picture just before he was sure he would drop her.
Time for sleep again. We will resume transmissions tomorrow.
Yarden Fenway Hurley was born at 1:57 PM via c-section.
She is gorgeous at 7 pounds and 21 inches. Pictures to follow after mom, dad, and baby spend some time together.
Either she is her father's child and is being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn, or she is her mother's child and trying to hold on until the official due date. Since it's unlikely she has a day planner in there I'm going to guess the former.
The baby won't turn into a position that allows her to fit through the exit. With over 24 hours of this and Aliyah having the shakes and nausea from the medication and fatigue, Dr. Walden is ready to start talking about cesarean delivery. We'll see what develops over the next 2 hours. The nurses and Dr. Walden are trying to coerce our little girl along by putting Aliyah into different positions. It takes three people and a half dozen pillows propping things up.
We're coming up on 11:00 AM (which would make 24 hours since the water broke). Dr. Walden is around somewhere reading a good novel. Aliyah is napping through some medium sized cotractions. Jay's and Tamar's flight has just taken off. I'm just sitting here listening to my daughter's heart beat over the monitor at a steady 140/minute.
I'm currently hooked up to:
I.V. (2)
Epidural
Oxygen
Catheter
Internal contraction monitor
Blood pressure cuff
External baby heart monitor
Given that I don't like needles or taking any sort of medicine, I'm going to go ahead and say I'm being a trooper.
Seamus is being an amazing support. This process started 2 days ago - Sunday at 1 am, when the pain got so bad that Seamus had to help me in to the bath where I stayed until 8 am, with Seamus sleeping next to me on the bathmat.
And if you think that Seamus is blogging comprehensively - you should see the journal the nurses are keeping.
At this point I'm 7 cm dilated - finally - and my doctor is going to stop in on the way to her office.
And the nurses are all confident the baby is coming today so Seamus has started investigating her birthday. Also born on this day: Pol Pot, Malcolm X. Ho Chi Minh, and Pete Townsend.
Until this morning, the labor has progressed so slowly that it hasn't felt real. Now, we are close enough to pushing that I'm getting pretty scared.
The nurses decided to move Aliyah to a delivery room on the north side of the tower. I decided to come too. It's got a great view of the rich people's houses over-looking the Sunset strip.
She's on oxogen now. She's dilated 5 centimeters. The baby has hiccups.
It was time for the epidural. The nurses' shift had changed. It was getting late. "Runaway Jury" was coming to an end. And no matter what or when things happen next, Aliyah needed some sleep. And that wasn't going to happen without medication.
About this time it became clear to Aliyah that she was going to have to give up the dream of giving birth a nightgown chosen from from that would be slightly nicer than a hospital nightgown but not so nice it couldn't be thrown away after becoming saturated in umbilical cord juice. But after the nurse (#4) explained where all the wires and tubes go and that little part of her vision for a perfect delivery died and the floral-print, previously-worn-by-sick-people, cotton hospital gown won out.
During the epidural procedure, two things happened. (1) Aliyah once again performed that magic trick in which she 'accidentally' finds out that everyone in the room besides me was in some way from Midwood Brooklyn and (2) it officially became Monday.
Once it was over Aliyah was tucked in, the TV turned off, lights out
and time to get some sleep. Then... about two minutes later an alarm on the I.V. drip machine goes off. The bag of neutral liquid has emptied. About five minutes later, that's fixed and it is again time for sleeping. I don't think I'm exaggerating that about 2 minutes later a different machine starts making an alarm noise. However in this machine's defense, it was a very soothing alarm. It was a gentle, two-toned alarm that sounded a glockenschpeel played with felt mallets. Unlike the I.V. machine which clearly displayed a message as to what was wrong, this machine appeared to be working exactly as it had for the last 13 hours Aliyah had been hooked up to it. We decided that this relatively friendly alarm could only mean one of three things: (1) It was the "Time for Sleep Alarm," warning the patient that he or she is tired and needs to go to sleep (2) It was the "Your Sushi is No Longer Edible Alarm," warning the patient's husband that even very large amounts of wasabi will not kill all of the bacteria on sushi kept at room temperature for 6 hours; even if said sushi is tuna wasabi roll (3) This was the "Everything's Alright Alarm" indicating that everything is alright and that as long as this alarm was going off there is no need to worry. We were pretty sure it was an "Everything's Alright Alarm" but also that it was broken because Aliyah clearly needed sleep and by virtue of the fact that the alarm going off right next to her bed and keeping her awake, everything was not actually alright. [A side note to any engineers designing medical equipment: alarms should go off at a nurse's station or a doctor's cell phone; there's not much a patient or a patient's spouse can do.] Eventually a nice doctor from Framingham, MA thought our laughter might wake up other patients and turned it off.
Then I.V. machine went off again half an hour after that. I'm not kidding, and by that time it wasn't funny anymore.
Aliyah's still barely dialated, but the epidural has let her sleep through some very big contractions. The monitor shows there are some fairly small ones coming right now about two-and-a-half minutes apart. It's about 5:30 AM on the East Coast right now, so I'm going to post this so my mother can read it with her morning tea.
It's been 12 hours since Aliyah's water broke and 11 since we checked in. We've finally had our fill of "Law & Order" and "The Office" reruns. Aliyah was allowed to walk around the halls for a while and evidently we walked too far because Amanda, our nurse, came looking for us.
Since we started, Amanda has turned up the pitocin dosage 3 times. We've moved on to "Runaway Jury" [which I think is Rachel Weiss' best performance], but I can't sleep in spite of how tired I am. The drugs have finally forced the contractions to about 5 minutes apart. When we get to about 2 to 3 minutes apart there will be another exam. Maybe then it will be time for the this young lady's debut.
It seems like this little girl is going to make sure Dr. Walden also doesn't get much sleep tonight.
We got dinner from a Japanese place down the street. Alan, Sonja, and little Jocelyn came by to visit though Jocelyn wasn't allowed in the room. The hospital has a policy of not allowing babies which are outside of their mothers into Labor and Delivery. Jocelyn didn't seem to mind though; she now has her ears pierced and was busy flirting with older boys.
A resident did a fifth round of tests to determine if the fluid coming out of Aliyah is, in fact, amniotic fluid. Shockingly, it is. Our friend Helga texted to say she was sent home after a similar situation and got an infection for her troubles.
There's nothing resembling active labor now, and there hasn't been for the 9 hours since Aliyah's water first broke, so we're talking about inducing to avoid infection. Aliyah has an I.V. in now - which makes her very unhappy. Sometime in the next few hours she'll get a dose of Pitocin. Looks like it will be a late night delivery. Make that 3 sleepless nights in a row. Good practice for the future.
We are at the hospital. Aliyah's water broke around 11:00 AM. Unexpectedly, we are sooooo bored. And hungry.
We've been here since 12:00. Now it's about 4:45. There's no clear test result that will say the constant trickle of liquid coming out of my wife is amniotic fluid. They were about to send us home, but when Aliyah stood up she splashed the floor. Our nurse asked us to wait. Now we're waiting to see if they will let Aliyah eat.
There's a "Law & Order" marathon on TNT. It's what we'd be watching if we were at home, but every time they say Lenny Brisco's name, the voice inside my head becomes Homer Simpson and says "Mmmmm.... brisket."
This Yarden's first picture. She blinked.
Afterwards Aliyah felt a little woozy from the drugs.
Both recovered quickly. Aliyah felt strong enough to hold Yarden about an hour after leaving the O.R.
Aliyah tired to teach Yarden how to thumb wrestle.
Yarden quickly re-invented the sneak attack using charm and her gums in place of her index finger. Aliyah was gracious in defeat.
We hated to put her down, and she didn't like it much either, but she had visitors... Bubbie and Grandpa.
She sized up Bubbie first.
I gave Yarden the secret sign that Bubbie was okay.
Yarden relaxed.
I think this is before Kendal cried.
Gina refused to trade Brady for Yarden because Yarden isn't housebroken.
Visiting hours were over so I took Grandpa and Bubbie back to Sycamore.
Yarden went to sleep unsure if the outisde-Aliyah world was real or if it had all been a dream.
The next morning Dr. Shahedee came by. We were very happy to see her, but it felt a little weird to have this close a connection with someone I interviewed once 2 months ago and have not spoken to since. Still, I know we picked the right doctor for us. She gave it to us straight and was pleasant to talk to. I still have a little trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that Dr. Walden and Dr. Shahedee really adjusted their lives around our family. 
After Bubbie and Grandpa arrived, I left to finish getting the house ready for Yarden. I can't believe she's one day old and has already run out of closet space.
Alan, Sonja, and little Jocelyn came first. The girls nursed together. Alan had made me a New Dad Survival Kit: Beef Jerky, Powerade, and other stuff non-patients may need for a long stay at the hospital.
Deb came too. She's been very helpful in getting the word out to people who I may have lost touch with.
Alexa and James showed up.
James thought if he saw the baby, he would pass out so he sat on the other side of the privacy curtain. 
Unfortunately he accidentally caught a glimpse of the baby.
I was able to revive him with a book on sharks James is reading to study for the 7th Grade.
Dan came by too. He brought six or seven meals from Jerry's deli. I was able to snap this picture just before he was sure he would drop her.
Time for sleep again. We will resume transmissions tomorrow.
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