Birth Story (condensed)

At about 4 am on Saturday morning, Melody began having regular contractions about 6 or 7 minutes apart. This lasted about 2-3 hours. We called her parents in PA and they headed down to help us watch Erin. Contractions continued on and off at various intervals all day, but not really becoming regular. Melody and I took a nap at about 1 pm and when we woke up, she was having contractions about 3-4 minutes apart very regularly. We even attempted to walk a bit in the park behind the house, but she couldn't make it very far. So, we called the midwife and she told us to come on in to the hospital. When we got there at about 3 pm, Melody was 5 cm dilated and quickly went to 7 cm then almost fully. Somewhere in there Melody got her epidural and was much more comfortable. At about 5:45 pm, Melody began to push and after about 3 sets of pushes, Anna Naomi was born at 6:03 pm. She had the cord wrapped tightly around her neck and was a fairly deep purple. The midwife quickly cut the cord and handed her off. We had heart monitor attached to her head the whole time and her heart rate was fine the whole time, so the midwife wasn't too concerned. Anna quickly regained her color and was handed to Melody. Melody's mom was in helping with counting along with me. My parents were in the next room waiting. Melody's dad was at our house with Erin and arrived soon after Anna was born.

There you have the not-too-gory details.

We came home today and are settling into being a family of four. My mom is here to help us until Wednesday and my sister will be coming down for the first half of next week.

It's 10:00 and I'm not sure why I'm still up since Anna kept us up half the night last night. Seems she hasn't realized that darkness is the time to sleep. We're working on teaching her.

-Tim