Meet Sadie
- Published: 30 April 2013
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Thursday, April 25 was the big day. Susan was scheduled to be at the hospital at 6am for the arrival of Baby #2.
The alarms started going off at 4:30am, and we were soon up doing one last round of pregnany photos in the nursery. Then we loaded up the Jeep and headed to the hospital. We arrived right at 6:00am and Susan was promptly placed in a delivery room. At 6:45am, the doctor came in and broke Susan's water. After that, it was a waiting game. By 8:30am, Susan's contractions were down to about 5-6 minutes apart. It was time for the epidural.
At 10:15, Susan had reached the 10cm target, which meant it was Go-Time. Our visitors returned to the waiting area and the nurse began final preparations for the baby's arrival.
At 10:39, we started pushing. Any by "we", I mean Susan. Though I am sure my moral support was invaluable.
11:01am: Sadie Elizabeth arrives.
The delivery process went fast, obviously. Everything went smoothly other than one minor wrinkle. As the baby was coming out, the umbilical cord became wrapped around the babie's neck. Fortunately our doctor spotted this very early in the process and quickly unwrapped it. I think this did prevent me from being able to cut the cord as I did with Colt - last time she offered, this time she didn't.
As we did with Colt, we left the sex of the baby a surprise. Almost everyone was picking it to be a girl. Not me though. And not Susan. And not Colt. Susan said the pregnancies were both very similar, so she was thinking boy. We've always heard you'll carry differently if it's a girl. Cravings will be different. Etc., Etc., Etc. Going into April, my parents had 8 grandsons. 0 granddaughters. Then last week, my younger brother had a girl. So the odds of another girl were slim. I was going with mom's gut and the statistics. I put the probability of a boy around 95%. To be clear, I didn't care one way or the other - it just is what it is.
Once the baby was out, the doctor said, "OK Dad, Call it!" So I peered over, not so much to see what sex it was, but to confirm the presence of the "wee-wee". So I looked and looked...literally for about 5-10 seconds before realizing there was no wee-wee.
It was girl. And she was beautiful.