The Birth of our family!

Sarah went to the hospital a few weeks ago with high blood pressure and swelling.  The hospital just sent her back with what I felt was a rather rude sendoff saying that more or less she had no idea what she was talking about and she almost definitely did not have pre-eclampsia.

Fast forward to last Friday when the Dr. Said she should go in because there was protein in her urine, her blood pressure was high, vision blurry, and her swelling was worse.  I proceeded to work on my mom's car as Katie went with Sarah.  I kind of figured that they might induce Sarah but I was not sure so I just told Sarah to call me when something happend.  Less than an hour later I got a call from Sarah saying that she was being induced and that she needed makeup, a blanket, cellphone charger, and pillows.

As an aside, my wife and sleep are good friends and when people try to split them apart with bad pillows and terrible beds she is a different, less happy person...  

It is always a good thing to make sure that my wife is comfortable and can sleep.

 But I digress.

I went and gathered the things for my wife and left for the hospital.  I drove Katie's car because I knew that she would be driving back (Katie Maier and I need to talk about car cleanliness).  I got there Katie took the car and I forged ahead into what will probably have been one of the most life changing events in my short time upon this earth.  This being second only to and because of  marriage.

I got to the maternity ward and the nurses there pointed me to her room.  I was greeted with a woman who looked like my wife but was hooked up to hoses and sensors and momentarily I thought: We have the technology...

Fast forwarding through hours and hours of contractions and nurses comming in to readjust the heart rate monitor for the baby and the contraction monitor.  On top of that one seemingly unpleasant water breaking.


Five hours before birth and about 26 hours later Sarah gave in and got an epidural.  She was really a trooper throughout all of the labour.  The epidural helped her to relax and she was able to dilate much faster.

And the main event:

A few hours after the epidural one of the Doctors checked her and said the magic words "you are at +2" which means that the baby was 2cm into her birth canal.

She began to push.

And push.

And push.

And push.

And Push.

By this point Sarah was getting exsausted and she was having trouble keeping it up but the nurses(coaches), the doctor(catcher), and myself(cheerleader - don’t picture that it may be hazardous to your eyeballs health) kept telling her to keep going.

She kept going.  

By this point the baby was getting close, she was still doing amazing.

With one final round of pushes she finally shoved our little girl Zoey into the world.  I took pause for a moment because I was sure there had been a mistake and God had sent us an alien instead of a human child but after some cleaning I could recognize the creature as human and a very cute one at that.  

I had a few moments panic when Zoey was not breathing, I now know that is very normal but it scared me then none the less.  She began breathing quickly and let us know that she was in the world with her very vocal reassurances.

They handed Zoey to my wife and the look on her face was priceless.  She had seen her baby girl for the first time.  

Then they took her.

They needed to put an iv into her because of the long period of time that she had spent in Sarah's woumb.  It was hard on us because we had just seen her and she was already gone.

Sarah was only distracted for a short while for food she had not eaten since Friday night.  During our wait we both were worried about our newborn daughter not being with us and instead being in a sterile hospital ICU unit.  Just to explain she was not actually in intensive care that was just where the most qualified nurses were to put the iv in her.

Three, yes three hours later we were again reunited with our daughter.  If Sarah and I were not so utterly exhausted we would have spend the rest of our day just looking at the beautiful child that we had (mostly Sarah) created.  However we did stare as much as we could.

The next two days were spent in the hospital waiting and waiting for them to let us go home.  I did not leave because I just did not feel right leaving my girls alone like that and I am lucky enough that the company where I am interning at is rather easy on paternity leave.

When we finally returned we slept wonderfully.

I LOVE my girls! I hope that we will always have a wonderful life together.