It wasn’t long before family began to arrive and we followed the tradition of having family meet family first. We had Jillian and Lynnsey come back first to meet the newest member of the family. Jillian was so happy to see the baby! Lynnsey was kind of out of it because it was so late, but she did eventually say baby a few times. I suppose I should stop talking and let the pictures start.

Nephew Jacob came too and we exchanged the following remarks on the way back to the room:

Jacob: “Uncle Joe, isn’t it a girl?”

Me: “Yes, it is.”

Jacob: “Awww mannn, are you ever gonna have a boy?”

Me: “I’ve been trying dude!”

This time around it felt much more comfortable once Dr. Ross got in the room. We were all laughing and joking together and having a really good time. After 5 quick pushes it was 7:01 PM and our little baby girl entered the world! We were so happy and proud to meet her. It’s one of those things where no matter how many times you experience it, it’s new each time. There was nothing old hat about baby Meghan’s birth or our experience at all, being rushed was definitely not something we planned for. We didn’t exactly have a name picked out, which was part of the reason we delayed posting or calling anyone. We had a list but wanted to see what she looked like. Meghan Elizabeth was what we decided and started telling the world! It was a successful migration from cord to lungs! .

So now came the part where I could relax, right? I’m gonna go get some food, stop by the house and grab SB’s pillow and we should be all good. Keep in mind, that because SB was group B strep positive, they didn’t necessarily want baby girl delivered for at least 4 hours. So I’m thinking perhaps 11PM we’ll have baby girl. So I drive away to find some food and swing by the house. I go to Chipotle where I see Chris and Megan having some foods. So I get in line at Chipotle and at 6:15 I get a text from Sarabeth that says that she is 7cm. Uhh, so I get out of line, hop back in the car, run through the drive through at Wendy’s and continue. I then get the text that I shouldn’t stop by home, that I should just get back ASAP. Hokay, so just when I thought that hustling in the car was done for the day, I was hurrying back to the hospital. I told SB, I will be back in 5 minutes, you can hold out that long right? She then says yes that’s fine. Then she says 8cm. So yet again, I was surprised by the speed and rapid progression of the events that took place. I got back, parked, got in and came into the room ready to help deliver our baby girl. There was all kinds of carts and medical goodies ready to help, so I thought I might be just in time. And I was.

He lives on painless lane. And he is the friend of any woman having contractions. Rumor is they hurt or something. So we had the IV in, and were waiting anxiously for the Dale the same guy from last time. However, this time around we had Doctor Jagan Devarajan of the Cleveland Clinic staff. He had awesome manner and most importantly didn’t mess up. This was the only picture I got of him, but he was extremely thorough and best of all he let me hold SB’s hands all through the process, cause she was pretty cold. He gave her the local anesthesia, then put in the catheter, all the while explaining precisely what was going on. In this particular picture, SB had just gotten a test dose pushed through and you can definitely see the difference between that photo and some from earlier. You know, in general it’s a pretty good decade to have a kid. Mad props to the women we know that can pop out a kiddo with no medicine, not sure why you’d want to do that but more power to you. So this begs the question, when God told Eve he was going to greatly increase pain in childbirth, isn’t that kind of cheating because no humans had been born yet? How would anybody know what it would have felt like? I wonder if the entire birth process would have been different. Anyway, we had Dr. Jagan so thanks Eve, but we got this. w00t medicine.

I arrived home to find Sarabeth had already packed everything we needed, so I merely threw things into the trunk and off we went. What a champion. We took a picture or two, and hung out while I paced. Then Hannah came to the rescue and came over until family could get to our house and then off we went. The contractions were now about 3 minutes apart on the drive over, so I sort of had an inkling that this was going to go fast. We arrived and got into the elevator where an interesting happening took place. There were 3 ladies who were trying to find the cafeteria, who got off, then got back on but held the elevator while asking a nurse questions about where the cafeteria was, what kind of food they were serving, if there was anywhere else they could go to get food, blah blah, and I bit my tongue really hard. I was ready to say, “Look ladies, respect the contractions over here let’s go” but by the grace of God alone held my tongue. SB said a few words after they got off on the 1^stfloor, which shall remain redacted from this post.

So we got into triage and SB was definitely ready for an epidural. Here’s a pic that I may have to retract later, so we’ll see if it passes wife approval. For reader reference, I generally get talkative when exciting things happen, and my wife was not so much in the mood to hear talking during this particular set of painful contractions. Immediately before this picture was snapped, SB said, “Joe if I tell you to shut up I need you to shut up”. So instead of talking I played with my phone which included taking this picture which she may or may not know about. Well, yeah, taking a look at the trace shows that perhaps I deserved it. Or she was in a lot of pain. Food for thought, perhaps I should be quiet more often in general. Anywho, Karen our nurse immediately recognized that we were here to stay and got us into a room.

The nurse got her IV started and got antibiotics started because SB was group B strep positive, so the docs wanted antibiotics flowing through both baby and momma before delivery so the chance of infection at delivery was minimal. So SB was definitely in a lot of pain and my hand was definitely getting squeezed a lot. Until the next chapter, when the doctor (NOT CRNA) did a kickbutt job with the epidural. He was definitely Indian and I had to try really hard not to think about episode 3 of www.thewebsiteisdown.com. Sidebar, if you ever watch these, you will immediately be in on about 50 more inside jokes from work. Right, next up, epidural man.

Let me start by prefacing the following backdated blog posts with the fact that we were surprised by Meghan’s somewhat early arrival, and we didn’t have a full day to casually upload pictures and blog. I understand that traditionally the more children you have, people will joke that the less attention they will get. This is why I am going back and backdating blog posts to corresponding dates and times so that our little girl Meghan has the same story and publicity as her sisters.

The birth notification process started for me when I received a text message at 12:01PM at work from Sarabeth which informed me that she was 4cm, because she had just finished going to her doctor appointment. No contractions, so no big deal, I finished lunch and continued working on USMT task sequence migration packages with my co-workers.

At 2PM I received a text with a slightly different tone which requested that I work the rest of the day from home because Sarabeth’s contractions were 8 minutes apart. My response in the text was….OK. At which point I closed my laptop in the meeting I was in and said, “Yeah, I gotta go.” My original intent was to finish out the day remotely and perhaps we would come to the hospital the following day. However, it appeared that things were moving a lot quicker than anyone had anticipated. Please keep in mind that I work out of Canton Ohio, and live in Medina which puts me at about an hour commute. When I was about halfway home I got yet another differently toned text message. The text was “Now closer to 6-7 minutes apart. Don’t drive crazy though!!! We have time.” My dearest Sarabeth, to my credit, I did not drive like a crazy man. I don’t consider Jeff Gordon to be a crazy man, and yet he does about 220mph in straightaways. For the purposes of legality I will not disclose the rate of speed at which I was traveling, but let’s just say that the 2008 civics are capable of much more speed than I thought was possible.

I then received a third text when approaching Medina which stated “I think we may need to go to the hospital once you get home. They are getting closer and stronger. I will call the doctor’s office in a few minutes here.” At this point I was feeling a little better because I was almost back home, but in a 3 short hours, my day had gone from work as usual, to “today we deliver”. Mad props to Apple computer for including free text messaging via iMessage with iOS 5, because I’m pretty sure the 2000 text count might have been reached. Also on an unrelated side note, I am now a huge fan of Siri’s voice recognition to text message service. I spoke my text messages into my earpiece while driving and didn’t have to correct even one of them. Now that impressed me.