She's here!


Braelyn Grace DeBow makes her appearance in the world

Around 5 or so, Janet was wondering why she kept feeling wetness for the past day or so and decided to call our doctor. His office told her to go to the hospital and so here we are.

6 or so: We waited patiently for them to clean out a room for us. They were already expecting us, but I guess they had a lot of women deliver before we got there. It was a bit of a wait, compounded by the somewhat awkward fact that we didn't actually know if we were going to deliver or not.

7 or so: It's official! They checked Janet and took a sample of the fluids and it turns out her water has broken. She still isn't dilated yet and she hasn't had any contractions that she can feel, but if that doesn't get started then they'll be giving her pitocin to kick it off. So we don't know when this baby will be here, but we won't be leaving without her in our arms. Very exciting stuff. I went and called all of my family to let them know.

8:00: Opened up the laptop and recorded all of this. I want to keep a record of it. As I walked outside to our car to get the stuff, I couldn't believe I'm going to be a dad tonight. What a blessing! What a responsibility! And God in His grace has chosen me. I looked up at Janet's room from outside and thought "I'm going to be in there tonight, and I'm going to hold my little baby girl." God give me strength, that I might help my wife when she needs me most.

8:20: We found out Janet is running a fever. This is what they are worried about since we didn't come in immediately when her water broke. It's only 100, but its enough to mean they are going for pitocin pretty aggressively. I'm praying it doesn't have any effect on Janet or our little girl.

It's now 8:15 am, the next morning - twelve hours later and still no baby. But we've made some definite progress. Janet did a great job wading through what seemed like endless hours of contractions in the wee hours of the morning to make it to about 2.5-3 cm. They gave her some pain medication and that helped her relax enough to make it to the 4 cm that they want before they give an epidural. So the anesthesiologist, who had an uncanny vocal resemblance to SNL's Chris Parnell, came in and hooked her up. After that we both got a little rest, though hardly any sleep and now its just a big waiting game. If all goes well, she'll continue to dilate to 10, and then have the baby vaginally.

Around 11 or so we came to a decision - Janet had stopped dilating at about a 9 and didn't seem to be progressing from there. The baby also had a downtick in her heartrate that is a bit worrisome - nothing immediately threatening but not something we'd like to see happen more than once. So do we keep trying to push past 9 and make it to 10 and have the baby vaginally? Or do we go with the C-section and get the baby out now? We opted to try for another hour and then see where we were.

After that hour, around 12:15 or so the doctor checked Janet again and she was still stuck at 9 - a very thin 9, but 9 nonetheless. My personal preference was to go for another hour and see if it would work or not, but I wasn't about to make this decision without Janet being enthusiastically behind it. She was leaning much toward the C-section, and I could see that she was very tired and couldn't stand much more of this (even if she made it to 10, she's still have a bunch of pushing to do). We opted for the C-section.

The doctor gave me scrubs to change into and the nurses began to prep Janet for the surgery. I went out to the camp of grandparents, who had faithfully stayed all night by sleeping in uncomfortable chairs, and told them what was going down. I jumped into scrubs and waited what seemed like a long time for everything to be ready. Finally they wheeled Janet down the hall to the operating room, and I sat and waited again for their final preps on her. Knowing my own weakness when it comes to surgery and blood, I walked right up to Janet's side when they called me in and never focused on anything else until I looked over to see my baby daughter.

Janet and I had a bet as to how big the baby would be - I said 9 lbs, 4 ounces and Janet said 9-2. Turns out I was right on the money, and at 1:31pm Braelyn Grace DeBow joined our family. The whole process is thoroughly overwhelming and I'm pretty sure that I have yet to assimilate all of this into my thoughts. I held her for an extremely long time tonight and I just couldn't believe she was ours and I was actually a dad. For now, I just want to thank God so much for her - that and finally get some sleep.

Posted: Tue - January 10, 2006 at 09:26 PM | | | | | | |

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