Baby Ila

Around 5:10am est this morning, after about 10 hours of labor, Rad gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She shot into the world weighing in at about 6lbs.3oz. Apparently she came equipped with a Mehra nose (poor thing) and already has more hair than she'll ever need. Apart from a little bit of crying in her first few minutes of life, she's chilling out now … busy taking in the sights and sounds of glorious Spanish Harlem and stealing the hearts of the doctors and nurses.

My niece's name is Ila. Supposed to be pronounced "eee-lah", although our guess is that most will pronounce it "eye-lah" … or for you gangstahs out there, "illlll-uh". Word.

So, the original due date was roughly March 4, but Rad got the a bad case of the flu Monday night, which led to wild fluctuations in the baby's heart rate and several harrowing moments yesterday afternoon. After all that craziness settled down (and a c-section was averted), the doctors basically told Rad that she wasn't going anywhere until the baby popped out, which turned out to be ohh … about 12 hours later.

Anyhow, Rad still has a rather high temperature and is going to be up at Columbia for a few more days, but all is good. When I spoke to her this morning, she said "it was the coolest experience ever … the baby just kinda slithered it's way out!!!" :) Drugs can make anything "cool", I suppose.

Check out the pictures under the links to the right.