the chap
Yesterday, Nat kicked me into semiconsciousness around 5:00a to let me know she was having contractions.
"Cool," I thought, "no work and a bit of a sleep in." I staggered out of bed and turned off the alarm clock.
By 8:00a, however, her contractions had stopped and Nat told me to go to work. I was at the office for all of an hour of work when I received a phone call from her saying the contractions were back and really bad. I asked how far apart her they were. She didn't know but offered to ring back directly. A few minutes later she informed me she was at six minute intervals.
The one thing iterated to us over and over ad nauseum during our six weeks of Babies for Idiots classes was not to show up to the hospital until Nat had been contracting at a three to five minute intervals for over an hour. I began the intentional dragging of feet before leaving work. I managed to stall for a half hour, told Rita I was off to try to have the baby, filled the car up with gasoline on my way home and bought Nat a slushie at the QuickieMart.
Twenty minutes later we were waiting for parking at the hospital. Nat let herself out of the car and waddled off to labor and delivery. I eventually followed with her bags.
When I arrived, she was already in a room and events had shifted into a kind of fast forward. Nurses flowed in and out. It turned out she was fully dilated and birth was happening soon. The anesthesiologist arrived directly and quickly became Nat's favorite person. Dr. Pieper appeared in short order and Cole was born at 1:45p MDT.
At the time of birth, Cole was 19.5 inches long, 6 pounds 11 ounces. As promised, tacky, sentimental, poorly framed, badly lit photos of the chap. As a bonus, constant reader, photos of the completed nursery.