So here is the story of Pia's birthday:
Jessi and I went to the doctors office that afternoon (4/19) and he did a check up and felt that the cervix was about 3 cm dilated. He asked us to come in the hospital at 5 in the morning the next day to undergo an induction. That evening she started to have contractions starting at about 7 or 8 pm. I went to the airport at 9:30 to pick up her mom and when we got home the contractions got longer and more frequent. we actually got to the point where they were 5 minutes apart. We decided to go to the hospital and when we got there we checked in. It took about 3 hours to get us completely into the system and all the while jessi started to get more uncomfortable and she was in a lot of pain. She almost broke my fingers when she had contractions, but eventually she got the epidural (at about 3:30 am 4/20)
I was extremely sleepy and had taken out my contact lenses, the nurse checked her out and thought she was ten cm dilated so that was my cue to put the darn contacts back in. As I opened my eyes I saw three nurses running around like chickens with their headds cut off, one of them pushing a bag of saline into my wifes veins and another fiddling with the baby's heart monitor. At one point my wife had a low blood pressure (probably a result of the epidural) and the baby's heart rate was slow....then a nurse wheeled in this large blue tray which was draped with a steile cloth and had a large number of threatening looking instruments on it. Needless to say despite my medical knowledge an training I was scared s***less.
Ultimately the doc got there and delivered the baby (after using forceps) Pia had her cord around the neck and unlike TV she didn't cry right when she came out of the canal, they slipped off the cord and suctioned her nose and she cried! her dark blue/brown skin immediately turned pink and tears came to jessi's eyes and mine. some one said "dad you want to cut the cord" and it took me a second to realize that they meant me. I cut the cord..and mind you I didn't know if she was a boy or girl yet...I'm embarrased to say that I couldn't tell right away (lol). Anyways the doc kind of tossed her on jessins belly and said "congrats mo it's a girl" That first time i saw her I was smitten...I talked to her in the goofiest high pitched voice and told her how happy I was and how happy everyone would be. I was so afraid to touch her because I thought I might inadvertantly hurt her.
I called everyone I could think of over the next 2 days...what a whirlwind!!
