The story: his side

Thursday night as we were going to bed I gave Rachel four kisses, telling her that she would only have four more nights of no sleep, then she might get some in two hour blocks. She was very mad at me, saying that I was cursing her to four more nights, but I told her I had to go with the maximum as I wanted an excuse to kiss her as many times as I could.

Friday morning at 6 am my alarm went off and I crawled out of bed to get dressed for basketball when Rachel told me she had a dream that she was having contractions.

When I got home at 7:30 am she was on the couch saying that she might of had a couple of contractions, but that she wasn't sure. After I took a shower she mentioned that she was pretty sure that she had experienced a couple of real contractions, and that she was going to take a bath.

Since I can work from home (though it takes 12 hours to put in 8), I decided I'd hang out a couple of hours to see if they went away. While she was taking a bath, the boys woke up. When Rachel got out of the bath and I noticed her on the floor (in her favorite "I'm having real contractions" position). So we started getting things ready just in case we needed to go to the hospital.

At about 10:40 her contractions seemed to be pretty close together so we started timing the frequency and duration, which ended up being about every three to four minutes, lasting 30 to 40 seconds. After an hour of timing, a good friend came over and took the boys swimming while we headed off to the hospital.

We got to the hospital at about 12:15; if you really want to get a room fast, just drop to the floor while talking to the admissions staff (this only works if you're the one having the baby). Once in our room Rachel's contractions seemed to be getting harder and we asked for an epidural if we weren't too late. They said she was at a four and that she could probably get one.

At about 1:30 the anesthesiologist made it to our room (there were something like nine women in labor at the same time). He got her hooked up and feeling pretty good (all things considered). Apparently the catheter was a little off to one side as her right leg went completely numb but she kept some feeling in her left.

Rachel's blood pressure dropped a bit so they gave her some drugs to constrict her blood vessels and started her on her second bag of fluid (whatever they were feeding into her IV). Makaylin's heart rate was also a little low (something like 110 beats per minute - they like it above 120, but they weren't too concerned as long as it didn't drop any more than it had).

At 4:15 or so the doctor felt like it was time to start pushing and at 4:25 Rachel was cutting the umbilical cord (something she had been wanting to do). Rachel's parents made it to the hospital around 4:45. Because of swine flu, no children under the age of 12 were allowed up on the fifth floor (where the babies are), so Jacob and Ethan couldn't come and see their baby sister :( They were allowed to see their grandparents though, and even got to go home with them ;)

We were very blessed with a great delivery and excellent medical care.