The Day and The Day After the Day

He has arrived!

To be blunt, Monday morning we went to St. Joe's to get the kid out... at 6:00 a.m. Which was great because he didn't show up until 9:28 p.m. That doesn't mean Tina was in labor the whole time, but it means that I was there doing nothing the whole time. At least Tina got drugs. A lot of them. Intravenously.

Here's the play-by-play:

5:00 a.m. - Alarm clock goes off. Alarm clock is turned off.

5:30 a.m. - Tina comes in to wake me up. Thats right, separate beds. We're like the Brady's now. Unfortunately not the Tom Brady's. The need for separate beds made itself very evident in November, but I didn't act on it until last week. I haven't gotten four consecutive hours of sleep since November and that was because I ate way too much turkey. How could this be? I mean, TINA was carrying the baby. Well, two words: She snores.

6:00 a.m. - Tina yells at me because we are late.

6:15 a.m. - Arrive at hospital. Admitted. Tina gets drugs. I have no idea what kind of drugs. by the end of the day she had been pumped so full of pharmaceuticals you would have thought she rode in the Tour de France.

9:30 a.m. - Water broken. Drugs are supposed to induce labor, doc says its generally a short process. Which is good news because I'm thinking Jimmy John's for lunch.

2:00 p.m. - Contractions become painful. Tina goes to the bullpen for the drugs.

4:30 p.m. - Drugs aren't working. A quick check reveals that not only has the baby gone BACK, but the amniotic sac seems to have magically repaired itself. This is going extremely well. Doc breaks the water AGAIN. I now know what the residents of Johnstown must have felt like.

5:30 p.m. - Drugs are not fixing the pain. Contractions are five minutes apart but not getting any quicker. Essentially Tina has been having ridiculous pain every five minutes for the last three hours. The decision is made for the epidural, which I have been lovingly referring to as "the spinal tap" (it goes to eleven!). Referrals are necessary, Tina is still high on whatever from
earlier; her signature looks like it was written by Ray Charles on drugs.

6:30 p.m. - The anesthesiologist arrives and administers what I now refer to as "The Closer". These things are magic.

7:30 p.m. - Ten hours, two McChicken sandwiches, fifteen phone calls, and one million text messages later and I've had enough. Tina even more so. The Closer hasn't kicked in yet. I'm thinking maybe our epidural was the Ryan Dempster version. It has to put the winning run on before it actually starts to work. Then you wonder if its going to get the job done by the last out. Except in this case, my wife's private parts are at stake... which may or may not be as important as the Cubs.

9:00 p.m. - Contractions are now two minutes apart, but Tina doesn't know. I am convinced she can't feel anything because her right leg is dangling like a dead animal off the bed. By now the parents have shown up, I'm sure because they thought the baby would be there by then. My mom and dad come in to say hi and deliver me Jimmy John's that I had been hoping to eat for lunch.

9:15 p.m. - Its back to the waiting room for parents and family when the doctor comes in to rhetorically wonder aloud what in the heck this baby is doing. A minute earlier I had cracked into a #1 with no tomato, regular Jimmy Chips, and a caffeine-free Coke. I'm three bites and half a bag of chips into dinner when the doctor takes a peek and says "Oh, your son has hair." Its go time.

9:28 p.m. - After almost fifteen minutes of "hard labor" (which yielded nothing more then a red face for Tina; no grunts, no screams, no nothing but pure, machine-like determination) our son entered the world. He gets the quick clean, a shot, weighed, et cetera. Meanwhile, I am honestly still kind of caught up in the sandwich. I had been counting breaths during this whole process, all the while taking Ewok and Paddock's advice to "not look down" no matter what. I'm focused on Tina, who is still game-on. After as minute or two of relative confusion, Doc comes back with our baby and hand him to Tina. I watched the whole thing through my cell phone looking to take the first picture (thanks technology). Here is the result:


Thats when I cried. Look at them. I'm welling up again just looking at the picture.

The next couple hours were spent taking pictures, sending texts, making calls, and for me generally trying to comprehend what had actually just happened. I think I could spend the rest of my life trying to comprehend it and never really get it. It was one of those feelings that you can't explain.

Today went by without a hitch. I learned how to have a baby poop, pee, and puke on me. After the bodily fluid trifecta, I decided that I needed to stay at home while Tina got sleep. Justin was staying in the nursery and I am crashing by myself. Tonight may be the last night the three of us all spend apart from one another.

Thats a crazy thought.

So I came home to sleep and I can't. I'm way too excited and I can't wait to go back to see Tina and Justin. Even if that means I'm going to get crapped on.

Nothing else to say right now, more pictures later. I think I'm going to make Tina sit down and write some thoughts as well. As of tomorrow we are back in the house, which means that we can accept visitors. Which means that I would really love it if you came to visit us. I'm going to go out and buy a bunch of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate so some of you had better come and visit. Other than cleaning up this baby's rear end, I don't really know what I'm doing until next week.

Thats all for now, have a good one.