Brenner is here!

On Sunday night we had JUST laid down to bed when Laura said "Uh, my water just broke". I didn't believe her at first, but sure enough, she wasn't lying! So, we grabbed our things and were at Piedmont Hospital just before midnight. We got our room, shortly after that Laura's mom (Deborah) and step-mom (June) showed up. We sat around, played Yachtzee, etc until about 4:30 am. At that point, the "moms" hit the waiting room to sleep, I took a nap, and Laura got her epidural and a short nap. That nap didn't last too long though. Maybe 1.5 hours max.

To speed up the process, they gave Laura Petocin (sp?) at around 8am. At that point, she was about 3cm dilated. We got an estimate of "late afternoon" birth from the doctor at that point. We were told that the average is 1 more cm dilated every 1-2 hours, and she needed to get to 10cm to be "complete". At about 9:30, the nurse checked it and she was already at 5.5cm which was a good sign. Maybe not so late in the afternoon?? About an hour later, the nurse checked again at which point we were expecting about 6-7 cm. BUT, the nurse said "Uh, you're complete! I think you're going to start pushing in a few minutes!" That was a crazy, "oh my god, it's game time" type feeling!

Instead of pushing right away, the doctor decided to prop her up vertically, and let gravity bring Brenner as low as possible. So, around 11, the nurse told us that she was gonna have Laura push for a few so she could determine whether the doctor should come soon or she should hit a couple of appointments and come after that. She had Laura push through about 6 contractions and then said "uh, we better stop, you're WAY too good at pushing, and I don't want him coming out before the doctor gets here". So, we waited until about 11:20ish for the doctor to arrive. While she was setting up, she told Laura to push once. Laura started and the doctor looked at her and was like "OK, stop, you're about to push him out, let me get set up here!" After another minute, the doctor said "I think if you give one good push, you're going to have yourself a baby". Sure enough, she was right!

He came out crying and looking good! Definitely was a little cone headed and eyes a little swollen, but those have already changed by now (2 days later). We have taken quite a few pics as well as some videos. More will be posted later, the initial ones can be seen at the following link though:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89925&id=673877946&l=d9c060b0d1

and here is one of our first "family" shots.