Eila's umbilical stump fell off this morning. I'm a little sad to see it go (not really). She has now joined the group of babies that don't have a dried up stump attached to their bellies. I'm so proud.

I'd put a picture up, but Shannon tells me that's too gross. Maybe it'll make the Picture of the Day before too long.

Shannon and I were sent home from the hospitial about 8pm on Saturday after Shannon had been having painful contractions most of the afternoon. We spent the rest of the night laboring at home until about 7am, we decided to leave for the hospital.

I got all the bags packed and the car ready and we were off for the hospital. I was all ready for another full day of contractions. The roads were pretty clear early on a Sunday morning. Shannon was doing well in the bumpy car, but when we were almost there -- Shannon mentioned that she felt like she had to push (oops!).

When we arrived, I dropped Shannon off at Emergency. After getting a wheelchair and someone to help her, I was off to park the car and admitting. (Which didn't take long since I had been there the night before).

When I got upstairs, we were informed that it was time to push. This was a little before 8:00am. At about 8:40, we had Eila. It was amazing.

This story often gets mis-intepreted as "You only had forty minutes of labor?". Forty minute of pushing, really (Which is still a short second stage). But all-in-all Shannon had been in labor for about 36 hours. We just happened to spend almost all of it at home.

I started today with a new feature, Picture of the Day. You'll see today's image on the left side of the page. (I'm pretty much taking this straight from The Trixie Update, the best daddy-blog around -- you all should definitely give it a look). I give all the credit to Ben from Trixie Update for the idea/inspiration and almost all of the source code.

I've added more pictures to the photo albums. I won't put every new picture up on this front page, but I will put some good ones here. So go to the "Photographs" sections to see the latest. Here's a teaser:

(more finger sucking)

Eila has a strong sucking needs. The nurses told us this after her first night. She'll always want to suck on something, and it is extremly soothing to her. However, we can't give her an artificial nipple for another week to prevent nipple confusion, not even a pacifier. So in the meantime, Eila spends a lot of time with a pinky finger in her mouth, which means Shannon and I usually end up with a pruny pinky finger. (see the picture below of Shannon and Eila lying on the bed).

More Pictures!

More to come....

Despite being dubbed "average" while in utero (having been placed in the 50th percentine in weight)... Eila is quite the overachiever scoring 9.5 on her one minute Apgar test. Way to go.

Some pictures:

Eila Rose Yee was born January 16th, 2005. She was 6 pounds, 10 ounces and 20 inches long.