Our first child was born under relatively calm circumstances. My wife was surrounded by an excellent supporting cast of nurses and our wonderful doctor while I lay on the nearby couch completely passed out (I do not do well in hospitals). Boom! Out came Brielle in all of her red-haired, blue-eyed, first child glory. Some smelling salts and an orange juice later I was holding that precious little peanut and loving every minute. Our second daughter, Mercedes Jane Mosman, came into this world under the watchful eye and pomp and circumstance of an entire room of people. Imagine if the #1 college football team in the country had their starting quarterback go down the week before the national championship and had to start a wet-behind-the-ears freshman at quarterback for the BCS title. Imagine if that quarterback was forcibly pushed out of the tunnel for player introductions. The crowd is cheering, the eyes of the nation are on this poor guy, and then he looks down to find himself completely naked. That is what I imagine it was like for little Sadie.
My wife was induced, so it's not like we weren't prepared for the actual birth of the child. We had plenty of time to prepare and I can tell you that we were ready, but because of the previous fainting episode (I am told that I can thank my great-grandpa for that) my wife decided that she wanted to have more people in the room for delivery. By the time my wife was ready to start pushing we had a whole mess of nurses, our excellent doctor, my mother-in-law, my mother, my wife's grandmother, and a random male intern who apparently wandered in to see what the fuss was about. I took up my reserved spot on the couch, layed down, and tried not to let my curiosity get the best of me (one quick glance of blood or even thinking about blood and I would have been akl;hgophhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbn... sorry, I passed out on the keyboard).
It has been said many times that opposites attract. I am not sure that that is true in every case, but I can say with confidence that the differences between Aimee and I were very apparent in the mannerisms of our mothers for the duration of the birth. I want to keep this post relatively short, and since pictures say 1,000 words I am choosing to illustrate the differences between my mom and Aimee's mom during the birth with the following pictures:
My mom:
Aimee's mom:
While my mom thankfully looks nothing like Gregg Popovich and she is a wonderful and pleasant woman, this picture perfectly portrays her mannerisms during the delivery. While Aimee's mom cheered, laughed, bounced around the room like a pin ball, and set a new world record for "Longest 10-Count In Human History" my mom stood right behind the doctor with her arms folded and just observed the proceedings. You know the look on your face when you are sitting at your computer reading through the 10-page terms of agreement for your newly updated version of itunes? That was my mom.
Contractions start to pick up a little bit and it's time to start pushing. Aimee's mom is up by Aimee's head, so the nurse instructs her to count to ten while Aimee pushes. The nurse tells Aimee to push and my mother-in-law starts to count. I think that most of us have counted to ten "Mississippi-ly", but this was my first experience with someone counting to ten "Every-State-East-of-the-Mississippi-ly" because, by the time I'd reached the number 10 counting in my head, I heard my mother-in-law say, "...Two!" After the second interval of pushing for "ten seconds" Aimee had spent roughly 20 minutes pushing and I think the nurse noticed that she was getting a little tired and turned to my mother-in-law and kindly said, "We need to speed up the counting." :)
The next contributor to the maddness was our amazing doctor. Aimee and I LOVE this guy. To be perfectly honest, one of the reasons that we decided to be induced on the due date was because this doctor had informed us the he would be going out of town for the weekend and we did not want to have the baby without him on the receiving end. He really is that good. So, we made sure that everything would be fine and we decided to be induced. One of the things that really impresses us about this particular doctor is his calming presence. He walks into the room and everything is going to be fine. Another thing that we love about him is the fact that he has a story for every situation. Aimee had been pushing for a little while now and our new daughter was beginning to, uh, make her way out. She, Aimee, had pushed until the baby's head had cleared and that apparently was the end of that session of pushing because our doctor announced that the baby's head was here and then he folded his arms, sat back in his chair, and started to tell a story. The guy looked like he was at a family BBQ or something. Leaning back in his chair, smile on his face, humorous anecdote escaping his lips while my wife lays back on the elevated hospital bed with my brand new daughter's head just hangin' out! Awesome.
We were very fortunate and happy to have so many people come and support us in this beautiful life event.
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