his BIRTH day

I suppose you all want to hear the story of Ben arriving in this world. And if my assumption is wrong, I apologize and advise you to stop reading.

I should tell you that on Saturday my sister-in-law Angela asked what my perfect timing would be for Ben to be born. I told her Sunday or Monday. Well, Monday started with me going with the birth mom to a check-up appointment. We learned at that appointment that she was 5-6 centimeters dilated. [She was just short of 39 weeks, for those of you keeping count.] Really, given that initially dilated two months ago, we were happy to be just eight days from his due date.

The doctor, who also happens to be a family friend, said he was worried that if he sent her home, then she wouldn't have enough time to get to the hospital if her water broke. The doctor sounded confident that we would meet sooner than later.

Turns out, he was right.

After we each gathered things from our houses and made childcare arrangements, we met at the hospital. That was about 11 a.m. A couple hours later, the doctor broke her water. Then a couple hours after that, Ben was born.

The birth mom was a champ. She was holding my hand during delivery, but rarely really squeezed it. I could tell a couple times leading up to delivery she was really hurting, but she grinned and bared it. She never complained and told me thank you a couple of times. Um, no, really, I kept thinking, THANK YOU. Really, thank you doesn't even begin to express how I my appreciation for her.

Once Ben was born, the nurse took him to a neighboring room to clean him up. After hugging the birth mom multiple times, we followed the nurse, who was carrying our son. She tended to him, and then we got to hold him. This great nurse even was good with the camera and took the picture at the top of the post, which is one of my favorites from the day.

The nursing staff arranged for us to have a room, so we went there while the nursery staff did the things they do to newborns. They brought him to us and then Gran-Gran and Granddaddy [that's Greg's parents, if you're wondering ...] brought Cate to meet her brother.

That's our first family picture. A family of four. How blessed we really are.

There are more pictures here.