Jul 8 2011

I’m a Daddy!

It was a Friday afternoon June 10th, 2011 at 3:22 p.m. that I heard the first of many cries from my son’s tiny lungs. He was 9 pounds, 4 ounces, and 20 inches long and already lifting his head and almost turning himself over in protest of the nurses attempts to measure and bathe him.

That was the day that more than two years of tears and prayers came to a culmination and began the long wonderful road of parenthood.

I am so proud of my amazing, beautiful wife’s strength of spirit and body. She labored for most of 14 or so hours naturally, without aid of any sort of drugs. However, we had been up for close to 32 hours and she was becoming exhausted. Because the pregnancy was progressing extremely slowly and we were afraid she wouldn’t have any energy left to push, we had her water broken to speed things up. Once we did the contractions became so fierce and close together that she was having a hard time catching her breath between them. She was exhausted. I was exhausted. I had been up with her through every contraction (barring a couple during which I actually had to do a password reset for work) making sure she had a shoulder on which to lean. And it was at this point that she acquiesced to a dose of stadol to allow her a modicum of reprieve.

She will be the first to state that labor wasn’t *that* bad. And I’ll agree to the degree that I can — it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be. However I will say this: it wouldn’t have gone nearly as well if we hadn’t had our dear friend Erin with us, helping and advising us. She acted as our Doula and was our voice when we were too overwhelmed to get the nurses to listen to our wishes. The voice of experience, friendship, and definitely love helped my wife through the worst of the pain and frustration. We are both so grateful for her help.

We’re also very grateful for all the prayers and kind words that we’ve received before, during, and after the birth.

The thought that God has given us this gift and responsibility all rolled into such a beautiful, tiny package is daunting, but I’m excited about it. I’m definitely looking forward to getting to teach him so much and to watch him grow up. Just don’t grow up too fast Wayne.

Meet Wayne!