Holy crap! The baby is here?

What a last couple of days. I can't believe what a whirlwind. Man I thought I had an idea of what to expect, but it turned out to be nothing like what was anticipated.

So the saga begins last Tuesday. My wife (39 weeks) goes to see her OBGYN and we are both pretty pumped because the previous week she was 1cm dilated and we wanted to see where we were at today. Sadly she was in the same condition as last week. So because of this lack of change the doctor asked us to start thinking about when would want to induce if things don't progress in the coming week. Disappointed my wife called me at work to tell me the news. I did my father to be duties and told her that there God will deliver the baby when the time is right. At the time I had no idea of how right I was.

Each night after work we would take our dogs for long walks and then I would rub her feet when we went to bed. All in the hopes that the birth would come naturally without the need to be induced. Saturday comes and it is just like all the other days in the past week except my wife is really antsy and wants to go someplace. We spend the day with her sister shopping and everything is going swimmingly. Our last stop in the late afternoon was at every American's favorite store Costco. Didn't even really need anything she just wanted to go. In the parking lot she starts having to stop walking when a contraction hit. She had been getting contractions for a little while now but none of them really made her stop doing whatever she was doing. So this was new. But the contractions were pretty few and far between so I thought nothing of it and we continued our shopping.

When headed back to our place where I proceed to work on a mural I am painting in the nursery. (Didn't want to do wall paper and had to put all that money I spent on a fine arts education to work) She came in the room and started asking me if I had any ideas as to when the baby would come. No answer I had for her was sufficient. She would grunt from a contraction and waddle around the nursery talking in what I would describe as a stream of consciousness rather than having a point. A little while later we settled down for a dinner of take out and a DVD rental. About half way through I began noticing that my wife was grunting with a fair amount of regularity, and thusly started timing her grunts which were coming in at about every 5-7 minutes but they were pretty short and while very painful they were not agonizing. We call her doctor and she recommends that if the contractions keep getting closer together and grow in intensity we should go in. Time 9:30pm

Movie finishes up, her sister goes home, and we start getting ready for bed. My wife felt compelled to shower and I grabbed her things as a just in case so I am not scrambling around in the dark at 4 am looking for everything. She comes out of the shower and she now has to hold her belly with the contractions and they are hitting at 4 minutes apart like a Swiss watch. I make the command decision for us to go to the hospital. Time 11:00pm. We get there and are taken up to the baby area almost immediately. She changes into her hospital gown and the nurse examines here. Dilated 4cm. I guess we are on our way at this point. Time 11:30pm. Contractions start coming a little faster, hitting at about every 3-4 minutes. Things start to get a little scary because my wife starts to shake fairly violently when the contractions are hitting. They say it is normal and it is due to the hormones in her system. She really wants to have a natural childbirth and for about an hour and a half she tries to work through the contractions, but finally decides on the epidural. The anesthesiologist walks in and 5 minuted later there is a tube hanging out of my wife's spine. It is always fairly obvious when people are good at what they do but I digress. No sooner is he done than the entire hospital goes black. The part of the building we were in was in a U shape around a court yard. Out of the corner of my eye I could see this wave of darkness travel around the building and then though our room. The entire hospital had a blackout. Time is around 1:15am Thankfully a minute or so later the distinct sound of diesel engines could be heard and the room lights back up again. The hospital is building a new wing and I guess somebody did something they weren't supposed to and it knock out the power. With the epidural in my wife could actually get some rest, so I take take advantage of that too and try to sleep in a chair. I have apnea so I wake up fairly often so the next few hours seem a little surreal to me. Think Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but with baby's, if that makes sense to anyone.

The next thing I am aware of is the incredibly loud speaker with the nurses voice on it. "Yes" says the nurse, "Um, I think my water just broke" responds my wife. This promptly gets my full attention and wakes me up. Nurse comes in and checks her out. Yep, water is broken and she is now at 10cm. Time 4:30am. The nurse calls the doctor and it is decided that we should wait for her to "labor down" (if I am using the term correctly) for about an hour. 30 minutes go by, thanks to the epidural my wife is talking and laughing while in labor, and the nurse comes back in to check on things. Low and behold there is a head crowning out of my wife. So everyone goes into get busy mode. The nurse has my wife push 2 times and she is ready for delivery. Doc comes in and we get down to business. Head comes out and the umbilical chord is wrapped around the neck of the baby. The doctor manages to hold onto the chord during the delivery and keep it from choking out my child. 3-4 good pushes and my baby girl (FYI-Chloe Grace) was in the world. Time 5:52am.

Soon as her feet popped out she gave out a resounding "hello" scream. I got to cut the chord. She weighed in a healthy 8lbs 1oz and a leggy 20 1/2" long. The nurse who took her foot prints grabbed my arm and put the baby's foot prints on my forearm like a tattoo which I though was pretty cool. All in all it was a pretty amazing delivery for a first time mom and my wife handled everything wonderfully. Wish I could say the same about myself. We are home now and I writing this entry at 1:15am because it is one of the few quiet moments I have had since Chloe came home. As a matter of fact I haven't heard any noises for a while so I better go and get some sleep before she wakes up. Mom and baby are doing well for the most part. The baby isn't eating like she should and that is compounding a jaundice problem. Plus she sleeps like the dead during the day and screams bloody murder at night. So with my apnea I have not physically slept since Monday. But those problems should eventually sort themselves out and my daughter is quite the cutey. Man am I going to be stressed in her teenage years.