Day Zero - The Birth

She's here!

After expecting an early baby (folk wisdom says that by the 3rd baby, they're just shootin' out of there, right?), and going exactly 5 days past the due date, our sweet little girl came on September 11th, 2016.

I will go easy on the birth story-- That story is Jen's to tell--, but I'll fill you in on some details.

At about 3:45 AM, Jen woke me up and told me it was time to go to the birth center. By baby #3, I figure she knows exactly when it's time, so I didn't argue, just packed up the few things on our list and got ready to go. I woke up Edgar and Sabrina and they were super excited.

At the birth center, I helped a barely-walking Jen upstairs to the birth center, with Edgar and Sabrina buzzing about excitedly. Soon came Auntie Dani, who, with my parents, would be caring for Edgar and Sabrina in the interim, and with some tearful goodbyes, things got a lot quieter.

Labor was tough. This was Jen's most difficult and painful labor by far. All three of our children have been waterbirths, born at Andaluz birth center in Tualatin, about 45 minutes away from home (less, if it's the middle of the night and you're speeding!) Jen made it through, and thanks to the expertise of skilled midwives, what could have been a crisis birth ended up natural and good. A mite painful for Jen, but good. This would definitely have been a C-section in a hospital, but Jen made it through naturally and with a minimum of damage to mom or baby.

So, baby is a girl (name is forthcoming). Born at 10:11 AM on 9/11/2016. 9lb, 11 oz. 22 inches long. She's got ten fingers and toes,and is super big and chubby. When they measured her, they said her chest is 1 inch bigger around than her head, hence the difficulty in delivery.

After birth and some bonding time in the birthing tub, I took baby while the midwives saw to Jen and made sure she was clean and comfortable.

beards over babies!

The rest of the day was spent recovering, texting, calling, and entertaining family. My mom and dad brought Edgar and Sabrina by for about an hour and a half. Immediately upon seeing the baby, Edgar wanted to see her eyes to see what color they are. Edgar is a natural big brother. Sabrina thinks she's cute, but doesn't have the caring thing that her brother has.

We had two big meals from restaurants (love the Andaluz hookup!), and now get to settle down in our hotel-like room.

She's a cute, mellow baby who is surprised by the sound of her own voice. She loves snuggles, and calms down immediately when she's held. She has only cried a few times when she has a poopy diaper.

Day Zero

Whoa. Okay, so here it is. Baby came yesterday, so I guess yesterday counts as day zero of my 42-day adventure.  Jen was up with contractions all night, but they calmed down right before I left for work. To be honest, neither of us felt ready to have the baby, so we were quite relieved when the contractions eased up. We were both pretty realistic, however, about the possibility of the baby coming really soon, so it was a day of final preparations.

I'm glad I made it to work today, because I was able to tie up several projects and feel really good about being done with work. I even sketched out a lesson plan for getting a sub for Sunday's Primary lesson.

Home from work, a kindly soul from church had taken Edgar for the afternoon. Plans were underway to go see a movie, but contractions began to pick up, so we made last-minute preparations to go. Jen will tell you differently, but I got the impression that the urgency to leave to go to the birth center was coming and going in waves. One minute, I was calling my parents and asking them to meet us, the next, we were lazily looking for missing coats and miscellany. Called Greta our niece, who was filling a role as unofficial helper at the birth. From this call, we learned that my nephew Gavin had his brand new baby that morning at 11ish AM. Anyway, eventually, we got on the road and picked up Edgar from the sitters where he had overstayed his welcome by several hours. Edgar and his mother spent a few tearful moments together (the hormones had already begun flowing), and we were off.

We still hadn't picked a name for our baby girl, but our top three choices were Ruby, Sabrina, and Ida. We were discussing this, as well as new baby Logan, when Edgar yelled from the back seat: "Name it GONZO!!!" He was quite pleased with his joke. To be honest, so were we. This girl might have a new nickname.

We met my parents at the birth center, and after a tearful, hormonal goodbye, went about the business of having a child. We had a waterbirth, and for those unfamiliar with the process, it's a pretty hands-off process. For the sake of Jen's privacy (and the sanity of any male who is reading this), I won't go into too much detail about the birth, but Jen would give you all the details if you'd like. I was hunkering down for a labor like Edgar's, which took 13 hours and was considered relatively quick. I was pretty surprised that when, after less than two hours in the birthing center, we were holding our new baby girl who was born at 10:30 PM.

She's got a shock of dark hair, pretty typical for a Carmichael baby, although just a shade less than Edgar had. She's got cute chubby cheeks, and is the cutest thing on the planet right now. We won't have picture-publishing capability until Day 2, so I'll post appropriate pictures later.

So, our baby girl shares her birthday with her cousin Logan. That ought to make for fun family parties.

Anyways, by the time all the post-birth stuff was done, it was 12:30, so we called our parents and called it a night. We were certainly glad to get some sleep, as with Edgar we missed out on a whole night of sleep. We still hadn't decided on a name, so our cute baby girl was nameless, at least for the first night of her existence, in this strange new world where the atmosphere is 79% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and trace amounts of Carbon Dioxide and Argon.

Oh-kay. Got a little weird, there... but what do you expect from an unstructured daddy blog?