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Valerie - 3 days old.
Photo by Amy Ritterbusch, 12/14/2002.
	Valerie May Goldstein was born December 11, 2002 at 10:22 p.m. Weight: 7 pounds, 3 oz. Height: 19 1/2 inches. Overall, the pregnancy went well. The worst part was Lyla's morning sickness for the first 4 months. Other than that, all the tests were normal, and Lyla was able to continue her exercise routine. Lyla gained a total of 23 pounds during the pregnancy. At Lyla's 37 week appointment, the Dr. told her she was 2-3 cm. dialated, and that she expected the baby to come within the week. So, Lyla went to work that day to let her project teams know. They told her to Wrap up and turn things over to other people, and she should start to work from home after that. The next day, Lyla went into the office to do some turnover to one of her co-workers, and begin to wrap up on her other projects. The morning after that, I felt contractions about 7-8 minutes apart. Matt went into his office to do some turnover, and we went into the hospital at about 2:30 p.m. At this point, the contractions were about 4-5 minutes apart, and Lyla was about 4-5 cm. dialated. Lyla got her epidural at about 5:00 p.m. Because Beth Israel is a teaching hospital, they asked Lyla if she wanted to be part of their study. This study studied the effect of small doses of morphine in epidurals to relieve pain. Lyla (actually Matt) decided that it would be a good idea, so Lyla was given small amounts of morphine in the epidural. Lyla felt no pain throughout the delivery. However, we believe that the morphine caused Lyla to be nautious, and Lyla was vomiting. Lyla was not fully dialated until 9:40 p.m., at which time the Doctor came in for the delivery. Lyla pushed for 40 minutes, and then Valerie was born. Matt attributes the short pushing time to the fact that Lyla was working out throughout the pregnancy. Lyla thinks that she just wanted the baby to come out quickly! In any case, at 10:22 p.m., a beautiful baby girl was born! Matt and I looked at baby naming books for a while, and there were very few names that we could agree upon. The two names that we liked were: Valerie and Bailey. We went with Valerie. We chose her middle name the day she was born. We wanted something short, so we chose May.