What a Day...Happy Birthday Kaniela

Sorry everyone, unfortunately we don't have a picture of day number 30. We think that this video will make up for it though:

So yes, there is no "30 day left countdown" because well...we didn't have 30 days left. So here's how it all went down. Well first...let's back up and put some things into context. So we were on track to have this baby. Kaniela wasn't due until Feb. 27, so that gave us a month to get things done. Our crib was on schedule to be delivered on Saturday from the Shaffers on their way down to Southern California. Last weekend we had picked out our changing table and a chest for all his blankets, and we were going to be picking those up over the course of the next week. Birthing classes were scheduled to start on Feb. 4, and we were going to do a hospital tour and register for his birth the following week. None of Cea's sisters had delivered early, so we thought, "Ah, we've got time."

Now that we've established some sort of context, you can imagine Kevin's surprise when he was sitting in a manager's meeting at work and he receives a text message that said, "When are you going to be done? The Doctor said I have to go to the hospital." Cea hadn't been feeling good the past two days...you know, the normal, back pain and heart burn. She had been hesitant to go to call the doctor because she didn't want to be a "sissy pregnant lady".

On their way to the hospital Cea was cautiously counting contractions. The receptionist had told her, "Count your contractions, if you have five in an hour, call us and we'll probably send you to the hospital." That was 30 minutes prior and Cea had already counted four.

Upon arrival, Cea was having contractions every two minutes or so. With a little stick in the butt of morphine, the pain went away, but the contractions never stopped. The doctors decided to run some blood tests and because we were early, they began giving Cea medication to stop the contractions. Midway through the treatment our nurse Danette came in and said, "You're doctor said that we're going to deliver the baby tonight."

(as you can tell...Cea loved the morphine)

To not confuse, but mostly because Kevin can't remember all the technical terms and Cea was too drugged to remember the specifics, the nurse told us that there were some conditions that required us to begin inducing labor. They also needed to monitor Cea and give her fluids and medication to get her ready. Here's where our little picture book begins:

So here is a good shot of what was shooting through Cea's IV (did we shoot out too many versions of "shot" in that sentence?). Kevin wanted to get a picture of her walking around with her IV pole, but she was forced to stay in bed.

So she waited....
...and waited...and waited through the night. She got some good sleep because she was given her epidural very early and had a long time to wait. Her contractions really seemed to slow down over night, so our nurse decided to put an internal monitor on to make sure that we were reading the contractions right...when she reached down to her cervix and surprisingly said, "Oh, his head is right there ready to go."


The preparation began and the Kaniela's birthday party began. Not that they'll ever read it, but we would like to say thank you to all the Doctors and nurses there that night: Brook, Danette, Heather, Ashley, Brittany, Dr. Reese, Dr. Jacob, and Dr. Jay. After pushing for an excruciating 45 minutes (sorry to all the other women who've been through the pushing before), we welcomed our little boy into the world.

(how can you not love that pouty face)

There he is, our little 6 lb 1 oz 18.5 inch long Kaniela...born at 8:45 AM on January 28....and here's what the rest of the day looked liked! We think that the pictures now will speak for themselves!

(sitting with Grandma Shaffer, and Aunty Mandee on the phone)

Glad you could share this day with us. We hope that you all enjoy these pictures as much as we enjoy him. Should I do a picture a day the opposite way?