You’re here! We did it! Well, your mom did it… and you kind of suffered through it… but I definitely helped by um… emotional support? No, that was the doula. Well, I certainly earned a participation trophy by being in the same room as everyone. In all seriousness, I am so happy I finally got to meet you. The journey to birth started was a long process as you can see from my previous entry… but let’s start on the day before you were born. It was Sunday and it was the first day your mom was allowed to be induced. I had to talk her down from going in the night before and pulling a less fun Cinderella and waiting for midnight to admit her. So, we started the day pretty chill. We did a long walk, brought your brother to the farmer’s market. We ran into my friends Leanne and Ty and since they are doctors I was asked what magic words I could say at a hospital to let you stay. Unfortunately, there were no ethical answers here. No matter… we go home, we uh… tried the fix this problem the way we got into this situation in the first place. Your mom took a bath, we ate some lunch. The contractions were about as bad as they had been but now at 2pm we were like this is it. We are going to try to convince the doctors to let your mom stay.
So, Grandpa Graig came and watched your brother and we drove to Swedish. After some pleasant small talk and a bit of unnecessary emotional manipulation, they let us stay! We are in! Its F’in GO TIME! Well sort of you weren’t born for like eighteen more hours. They gave your mom so drugs to get the contractions a bit more consistent and we just sort of hung out. We watched “Elf” twice… so thank you AMC. We got bad hospital food. Your mom bounced on an exercise ball A LOT. Around 9pm her water broke (Still somehow 4cm dilated), and the other troops started gathering. Her actual doctor (Ramakrishna) was determined to deliver you so she came to the Hospital, the doula drove up from Tacoma. It was a party. At shift change we ended up with a resident who we saw a couple weeks earlier. We hate her. We don’t like her. She’s 12. She stole your mom’s pee. I think you mom was like hell no I’m not giving birth till shift change which is honestly what happened. Around 10pm I was absolutely starving and well your mom was miserable. The doula thankfully gave me permission to door dash some Dicks. So, with a bit of shame there is a part of your mom’s pregnancy where I am sitting the lobby of a Swedish eating a Dicks Deluxe, some french fries, and a vanilla milkshake. There is one key component here of course, I got your mom a chocolate milkshake which I happily surprised her with after you were born 🙂
The rest of the night was basically awful for your mom and very dull for me. I ended up falling asleep (Doula’s order), but our all-star doula stayed up and kept your mom company while she was getting all the drugs. Around 6am the epidural came in. I just want you to know Ella, there is no shame in getting an epidural. It was great, pregnancy is hard and its ok to get some assistance. Except here’s the thing, after the initial dose the doctor forgot to plug it in so your mom spent a couple hours not getting ANY pain medication. Thankfully the doula was there and pointed out to her that something was wrong and made the nurse get some help.
Around 8:30 am your mom started practicing pushing. Which honestly felt a lot like regular pushing. The Dr. had to have a talk with her about how it’s totally ok to poop, and you just need to let it all go. Your mom was having none of this. To this day I still don’t think she’s ever pooped. (I pooped halfway through writing this) The next hour was a blur of pushing and watching your mom beast mode like I’ve never seen her beast mode. On the last push though, something odd happened and your shoulder got stuck on your mom’s pelvic bone. Queue panic mode among the doctors. The resident who was delivering you stepped aside. The real doctor took over, I think 100 nurses ran into the room, one jumped on your moms belly and start pushing and you came out! Limp…
It was the scariest moment of my life. Your mom was too dazed to quite notice. You on the other hand were a limp noodle. The nurse whisked you the triage station and yelled for the NICU. Here’s the thing though in your limpness I saw a slight twitch, thank god… After either a thousand hours or approximately fifteen seconds, I’m not sure which, I heard you cry. I finally was able to come over and look at you at in all your glory. At which point the sense of relief was so overwhelming I began hyperventilating and almost passed out. I got ordered by a nurse to sit down. After about a minute I recovered enough and came over and held your tiny little pink screaming hand. This is the point where I have a video of you with the doula saying something along the lines of “There wasn’t even a tear, your wife has a magic vagina” So enjoy that fun fact for the rest of your life. In the aftermath you had an Apgar of five when you were born, probably because you were limp and not breathing (you were apparently stunned from the shock) After about a minute or so they got all the fluid out of your lungs and you jumped to a seven, and either five or fifteen minutes later (I can’t remember) you were a nine. We got to send the NICU away which was a great relief. After I checked with every nurse and doctor in entire Swedish hospital system you were judged in excellent health. So thankfully there was only a fifteen second terrifying part of your birth followed with incalculable joy.
Anyway, that’s the story of your birth Annabella Alexandra Halfpenny. You were born 7lb 4.8oz and 19 inches, on a Monday. Sadly no snow. You sucked at eating at first, but you got a lot better over time. Its been a week and you still suck at sleeping, so maybe try working on that? BTW your mom had final say in your name so if you wish you had been named Penny (Penelope) Halfpenny take it up with her.