Author: evancparker

up til now, these posts have been about how mommy and i met, wooed, and married … but i’m running out of good stories from the early years, and i’ve decided that the run-up to your birth is worth it’s own edition in the series.

it all started on Sunday.

your mommy and i had just spent the last couple of weekends getting things squared away for your arrival, and that night we sat down, kicked our feet up and said:

“You know? I think we are in a really good place. And, tomorrow Sparklet will be 37 weeks into her pregnancy, which means that she can’t be born premature.”

needless-to-say, that’s when all heck broke loose.

i had the next day off (it was Columbus Day) and spent the day hiking, but mommy had to pull a full day at work. that night i had a condo meeting where the board joked about how to schedule the next meeting around your delivery … and soon afterwards mommy and i ate a late dinner together and went to bed.

i was lying in bed writing a blog entry about the day’s hike (i’m *so* far behind in my entries) and mommy was doing her patented “flip-around eight times and squirm for ten minutes” to get settled for bed … when all of a sudden, she shot out of bed, said she “had to pee,” and ran to the bathroom.

about three minutes later, she came back to bed … and two minutes later, she ran back to the potty.

by the third time this happened, i was up and at the computer, googling. first came “how do i tell if my water broke” which yeilded all sorts of interesting stories about people who mistook their water breaking for peeing. hmmmmm.

by mommy’s fourth trip to the bathroom, i started googling “what do i need to pack for the hospital,” because it turns out we weren’t quite as prepared as we thought.

see, you weren’t supposed to be here for another three weeks, and mommy (especially) didn’t think you were coming for even a few weeks after that. we hadn’t yet packed a thing.

but by about 12:15 am (on the morning of the day you were born), and after an hour of running around like a chicken-sans-head, we were in our little Volkswagen Jetta, car seat in the back, and puttering off to Sibley Memorial Hospital.

soon after we arrived, we had a labor and delivery nurse looking at mommy, asking lots of questions. it turns out that only about 15% of moms’ water breaks before contractions begin. and, it turns out that you were one of those lucky 15%.

the contractions did started over night (they woke mommy up at 3:45am) but by sunrise the doctor decided she needed to help them along a little bit.

we’ll skip over the uncomfortable stuff, but suffice it to say that the drug used to induce contractions (petosin) fundamentally changes the birthing equation, and makes the notion of an optional epidural to be much less optional.

mommy was a little bummed about the change in plan — she was born in your grandparent’s kitchen, which is about as “au natural” as it comes — but less than two hours later she was pushing, and thirty minutes past that you were gurgling in mommy’s arms.

the best part? i got to see the whole thing.

and, as if one milestone wasn’t enough, that night we “formally” celebrated out 2nd wedding anniversary, with you in our lap.

we were sick of even the notion of hospital food, so daddy ran out and got mommy’s favorite pizza (goat cheese and bacon) from our favorite pizza place (listriani’s — there was one next door to our first place in Arlington) while mommy visited with Uncle Cole and Aunt Skye.

to this day, i can’t think of a better way we could have celebrated.

love,
daddy (& mommy)