Baby Black and Blues

For the sake of full disclosure, this is Tony writing all this. This is my first (and likely last) attempt at blogging, but if it makes whoever reads this more comfortable, you may pretend it's Megan writing. Actually, yeah, go ahead and do that. I'll feel better about it too. So anyways, babies are exciting, huh?! I thought that the day that Hadley was born was about as wild of an experience as I could really expect. I guess it was just the thrill of the first born and not having any clue what to anticipate, but I still have every last minute of Hadley's day fresh in my mind like it was only last week. And maybe previous experience was the reason I almost came into this baby's arrival with a sense of overconfidence. We were, of course very excited to see our new little one, and Meg was very ready to find out the gender, but who could have imagined what awaited us in the next 48 hours? We checked into the hospital on Sunday night, August 17 at 9:20, and it was just strange. The hospital was soooo quiet. The two of us sat in the labor and delivery room for what seemed like hours watching the Olympics and just trying to stay relaxed. By the time 1:45am had rolled around, there wasn't a whole lot of action. By 2:30 Meg let me know that the contractions were really starting to hurt. They had BEEN hurting for a while, but Meg was being a good sport about it. After a couple of pretty severe contractions Meg yelled at me to go get the nurse. Keep in mind Meg's Dr. is still at home snoozing away. The nurse came in to check her around 3:05 and said that she was probably at about a six, which for Meg meant decision time. Epidural or no? Well, the baby made that decision for her. The nurse left to go call Meg's Dr., but it was way too late by then. Another killer contraction made Meg scream at me to go get the nurse, and they were already coming by the time I hit the hall. Meg mentioned that there was real pressure, ya know, down there. So the nurse checked and reported, "Oh yeah, that's the baby's head." The resident Dr. ran in and told Meg to only do little pushes, but that wasn't going to fly either. This babe was coming. After a few more minutes, the baby was born. Yes, that's right, I said minutes. I married Superwoman. Both of our babies have been born in a combined 40 minutes of actual pushing. For those of you who don't know, we had a baby girl. Born 8 lbs even. For those of you keeping track, that means she was born 8.18.08 at 8 lbs. Meg was surprised that she had a girl. I guess by telling her I wasn't worried about choosing a girl's name, that led her to believe that we were having a boy. Who could have guessed that? Me, maybe. Yes, I kept the secret. That's for all of you who said it couldn't be done. Anyway, we were so excited that we didn't sleep the rest of the night. Later that morning, Meg's mom showed up with Hadley, and my Dad showed up to take the second shift of Hadley so that we could get some rest. Well, that didn't last long, after the pediatrician told us to expect a longer-than-usual hospital stay, we finally tried to get some sleep. Literally two minutes after hitting the pillow, my Dad called to say that Hadley had knocked her tooth out on a slide at the playground and was inconsolable. As I went to pick her up, visions of medical and dental bills danced in my head. It later turned out to be not as serious, but still provided for more excitement than we really foresaw. So Baby Adelaine is now with us at home (yes, we did eventually choose a name). And even though this group is a bit torn, stitched-up, sleep-deprived, drugged, and yes, toothless, I think we couldn't be happier. It was exciting AGAIN, and will we do it yet again? Yeah, I guess. OK, of course. Sorry this went on so long, but I think it's done now. Thanks for reading.