It's a girl and a wild ride!

Well, most of you already know that Amber and I finally met our newest child, a girl, Lily Jane. But, most of you may not know the story behind her entrance into the world so Amber asked me to fill you in and share some photos.

Our Tuesday evening started out pretty normal we had a friend over for dinner and during the dinner Amber started to have some, what we thought were "mild" contractions, about 5pm. After our dinner Amber thought that we should go on a little walk to help the contractions pass. We walked around our neighborhood for a little bit having to stop every 2-3 minutes so that Amber could work through the contraction (you would think this would prompt us to go to the hospital now, but no). At 7 we got back to our house and Amber once again stopped for a contraction, but along with this contraction came some water (again another hint to start heading to the hospital). Amber decided to take a shower to help with some of the contractions, I took this time to call her parents who live 3 hours aways to tell them that they may want to start the drive to Nashville. After her shower Amber came out to the living room to lay on the floor and by this time the contractions were coming faster and stronger, we still thought that she was in the very early stages of labor and we had plenty of time, wrong! Amber wanted to call her twin sister who has three kids of her own to get some advice, Annie said, "if your water broke you may want to get moving to the hospital because your second child and move pretty quick after the water breaks". Had Annie not filled us in on this little piece of knowledge we would have had an unplanned home birth! At this point we called the doctor and filled her in on the situation and in a very calm but concern voice she says, "yeah lets just have you come in". Amber then tells me to get someone to come over and watch Ava while we get going to the hospital so I ran next door to our neighbors to ask if she could sit at our house while one of our friends came over to watch her for the night. The neighbor was a little concerned because her daughter, who lives with her, just went to the hospital in labor an hour ago! (There is a funny side story here, but I will stick to our story for now) Our neighbor was able to come sit at our house for a couple minutes while our friend Angela, who was over for dinner earlier, came back to watch Ava.

Once the neighbor came in our house, I ran out and got our car ready for to go, then ran back in and picked Amber up off the floor and helped her to the car. Once in the car I downshifted and started to run every stop sign and red light I came to. I tried to be the good calming husband to Amber saying, "just breath, stay calm, keep relaxing" and she responded to me, "this baby is coming now and I need to start pushing!!!!!".
Now let me pause for a moment. When you hear your wife exclaim this, a few things go through your mind. First, "No, I am not a licenced delivery doctor so lets just relax and wait until we get to the hospital", second "Should I pull this car over and then pull this baby out and save the money from the hospital stay, no, if I do that then I have to push this car in the river because the resale value on this car just dropped down into the negative", third "Let's see how fast this little car can go because I ain't about to deliver this child".

So there I am racing through the streets of Nashville, my car riding the red line and my pregnant wife in some serious pain the passenger seat. We finally arrived at the hospital and I drove straight to the Labor and Delivery door and helped Amber through the door. The admitting clerk looked at us and didn't really seem to care that she was about to witness the birth. She finally grabbed a wheelchair for Amber and not so speedily took her back to the delivery triage rooms. The clerk finally came back to me after what I can only assume was her lunch break, smoke break and coffee break all in one because she was taking her sweet time. She forced me to sign some papers, and I can honestly say I have no idea what they were, but working in the hospital industry I know they have to collect tons of signatures to prevent lawsuits, but these were the least of my worries at the time.

Finally she allowed me to pass her mind games and go find my wife. I wandered through the halls of the hospital for Amber and one of the nurses stopped me and asked who I was looking for once she knew who I was she said, "you better hurry". So I started a trot. I finally walked into the room with Amber in a bed, an armada of nurses around her each sticking her with a needle or monitoring machine. Two minutes after my entrance into the room Amber had another contraction and she says, "I'm about to push, can I push?" The doctor tells her it is ok to push, after Amber hears the ok she lets out the loudest scream I have ever experienced, so loud in fact that (remember our neighbor that went into labor 2 hours before us?) our neighbor hear Amber and the neighbors nurse said, "Well, I guess she's not getting an epidural" After the first yell our new doctor very calmly says, "lets take all the energy that you are expressing through the scream and re-focus it into a push". Amber then started to apologies to everyone for screaming, because if you know her you know that she is not a screamer. Two minutes later another contraction came along and Amber (minus the scream) started to push, and surprisingly we now had a daughter.

And just like that, as quickly as it started it was over and we had a healthy baby girl. I will end this very long description with a run-down of the timeline for everyone keeping track.

5pm - contractions start to come consistently

7pm - water breaks

7:45 - Amber on the floor with strong contractions

8:15 - Annie says, "go to the hospital"

8:30 - doctor says, "yeah, lets just have you come in"

8:45 - neighbor enters our door

8:50 - we leave for hospital

9:00 - speeding up I-65

9:10 - enter hospital doors

9:12 - Amber is wheeled back

9:17 - I finally find the right room

9:21 - Lily Jane is born

Pictures will be on the next post because of space.