Musings of a technophile

Last night we finally welcomed our third addition to our family, our baby girl Madelyn Paige. Mariel had some high blood pressure so, after talking to her midwife, we decided to have her.

I went and got our babysitter @ 6:30 pm and bought the boys some dinner (Burger King always works). After they ate I gave them a bath and then got them interested in the trains with the babysitter until the midwife and her assistant arrived @ 7:30 pm. They brought in their suitcases full of medical equipment and stuff, and started setting up. By 8:30 pm, I put the boys to bed, and they broke her water @ 9 pm.

It was pretty uneventful overall, I kept having to go back and get Ethan to get back in bed until I finally managed to get him asleep at 10. The contractions really picked up by 11, especially since Mariel was standing up, which she said made them more intense (and thus moving the process along faster) than when she laid down. At 11:30, we thought the baby was coming so she laid down, but after 15 minutes of that she decided to stand back up as we didn’t seem to get anywhere. Finally at 12:10 Mariel decided to lean on me for support, and by 12:14 am on January 3rd 2009 (with me basically holding her completely up) we finally had her. She is beautiful and the midwife checked her over and said that she is in perfect condition.

I went ahead and took the babysitter home @ 12:45, since she was still awake and at that point I would be able to watch the boys if something happened. She had to think that was the easiest job ever since all she had to do was play trains with the boys for about 45 minutes

The midwife and assistant cleaned up and talked to us a bit about things to watch out for before leaving at 2:30 am. Madelyn decided that she was hungry so she kept Mariel awake until 4 am. At that point, Mariel woke me up an made me boil some pacifiers to give her, which she was able to use to get her to finally go to sleep.

An eventful night for sure, but we are glad she is finally out. I’m especially glad that everything went fine even though we decided to have her at home. Mariel really enjoyed the at home birth, saying that a pitosin free birth was much more relaxing and painless than the previous hospital births we had with the boys. Anyways, both girls are doing fine now, and I’m a happy daddy once again.