Introducing Elizabeth Shea Ribar

Elizabeth Shea Ribar entered the world on Friday, March 19, at 11:45 am. She weighed 6 lbs 4 oz, and was 18" long at birth. Her hair is a strawberry blond (whatever that is), and her eyes seem bluish or green. Mom and baby are both doing excellent, and we are very happy to be home. Sam's reaction has been positive so far, but we'll see if it stays that way.



Let's see, some details about other things...

Labor: It went so well it was almost boring. We were scheduled for an induction at 6:45 am, but Melanie went into labor around 4 am. We went to the hospital, and a few hours later Melanie got an epidural. This is when things calmed down. Melanie's quote was: "Let's just all praise Jesus for epidurals". There was a little drama at the end because the baby had a lower heart rate than normal. So at delivery, there was a midwife (who did the delivery), two doctors, and one nurse. There were also 2 or 3 other doctors/surgeons on call in case things turned worse. (As a comparison, for Sam's birth there was only one doctor present, and a handful of nurses who assisted.) Fortunately, the problems never escalated and Elizabeth was born 100% healthy.

Name: We've told some of you that we are calling the baby Liz. What we meant is that that is the nickname we are going to use. Elizabeth has so many different nicknames, we felt we needed to specify which one we'd be using. We will use Elizabeth and Liz (and Lizzy) interchangeably. Sam has already referred to her as Baby, Sissy, and Liz. And he even struggled through something that sounded like LizLizBet.


Sam: Sam was a good boy the past three days. He did not give Na-nah or Na-dah any trouble while they took care of him (by the way, thank you Na-nah and Na-dah for helping us). As an example, after visiting us in the hospital, Sam was the first one to walk towards the exit and say "bye-bye" to us. We are very proud of him for not complaining about being separated from mommy and daddy the past few days. He is growing up so fast.


Hair: At birth, Elizabeth's hair seemed red like Sam's. But after she got cleaned up, we realized there was a lot of blond in it as well. We know that Sam's and Liz's hair may change as they grow. But we would like to know where all this red hair is coming from.

I think that's enough for now. As I said, we are very happy to be home, and we will spend the coming weeks trying to rest whenever we get a chance. There are lots of new pictures of Elizabeth in the photo gallery.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers.