Welcome Home!

As some of you may already know, Brigid Elizabeth was born at 11:23
on Friday, July 23, 2004.

Thursday night around 8:00, Jessica started having contractions that we
were pretty sure were more than Braxton-Hicks contractions. Being the
good, well-informed parents to be that we were, we figured that we
probably had at least 12 hours of early first stage labor to go before we
needed to be anywhere, so we went to bed. I managed to get about 6 hours
of sleep, and Jessica managed to doze a little between contractions for a
total of about 2-3 hours of sleep.

We got up the next morning, puttered around, and eventually decided to
take a walk up and down the culdesac, which increased the frequency and
duration of the contractions, confirming our suspicions that this was
'it'. We called Jess's doctor's office around 9:00 and talked to the head
nurse/assistant there who assured us that we should head to the hospital
ASAP, so we picked up Jess's mom - the assistant birth coach - and headed
in.

The bad news is that when we got there, the baby's heart beat was
decelerating slightly at the end of every contraction, which isn't usually
a problem, but they wanted to keep it monitored. This meant that a good
portion of the Bradley stuff that we had spent the last 12 weeks attending
classes for went right out the window, since Jess couldn't really walk
around or change positions much.

The good news is: Drugs!

They put her on pitosin around noon or so on Friday to help speed things
along, but by the time her doctor came by at 5:30, she was 90% effaced,
but only about 3-4 cm dialated. He broke her bag of waters to help
encourage progress, which also made the contractions harder. At about
8:30, the nurses switched and we got the most wonderful night nurse named
Cathy. She asked if Jess wanted an epidural (for a Bradley birth? Never!)
and Jess decided that, you know, some pain doesn't need to be experienced.

The anesthesiologist came in and got Jess into the right position - curled
up about as tight at can be with a pregnant belly - and had Cathy hold her
legs and me hold her head. She said in a voice that was 100% confidence
that "According to the textbooks, this is a 30 minute procedure. I can do
it in 3 with your help," and then proceeded to prove herself.

Things got noticeably better after that. Instead of grunting and having to
really focus to breath and relax during every contraction, Jess just sort
of sailed along happily.

By 10:30, Cathy declared that there was no longer anything standing in the
way, and it was about time to start pushing. With her mom holding one leg,
and me holding the other, and Jess holding both, she pushed like a
champion until Cathy said "Just keep doing that, and I'll go get the
doctor," so she did.

The baby was born after about 45 minutes of pushing, with a full, dark,
thick head of hair, and the most squished, bride-of-Frankenstein shaped
head (now a perfectly normal, beautiful, baby-head-shaped) and her mom's
eyebrows and her dad's feet and hands.

We spend the next day and a half in the hospital so that they could poke,
prod, check, measure and document mom and baby to within an inch of their
lives (not really, it just sounds good) and finally made it home yesterday
around 2:30.

Pictures will be distributed soon.

Thank you all for praying.

-Adam (and for Jess)