Adelaide

 I can think of no better way to spend the evening of Father's Day than recounting the miraculous event of a child's birth.

Here is the story of Adelaide's birth:

Adelaide minutes after birth

For months we've been afraid that Adelaide would come too early. We weren't afraid because of any medical reason and our other two kids have been born close to their due dates. We were afraid she'd come before or during our trip to Hawaii, but she behaved herself and stayed safely inside Emilee.

Emilee and Adelaide in Hawaii (Emilee didn't want to post this in the  post from Hawaii, but here it is anyway :)

 But then after returning from Hawaii we were continuously hoping and praying she'd come as soon as possible. I was trying to get work done, but felt very unproductive as I couldn't undertake any multi-day experiments for fear that Emilee would start labor and my experiment would be ruined.  Emilee grew more and more uncomfortable by the day and lamented that she'd probably never give birth to Adelaide.

Finally on Saturday June 8th things started to happen.  Emilee's contractions started to finally come with some regularity.    We had some extra anxiety about labor this time because Emilee had tested positive for Group B Strep.  This meant that she needed to have a 4 hour treatment with antibiotics before the baby was born to reduce the chances that the baby would be infected with the bacteria.  With Eliza and Coulson we had waited until Emilee's contractions were about 5 minutes apart to go the hospital and Emilee gave birth within a couple hours of arriving at the hospital.  This time it was much more stressful trying to decide when to go to the hospital.  We wanted to be there 4 hours before Adelaide was born but we didn't want to get there and have the contractions stop. About 2:45 in the afternoon her contractions began and were about 25  minutes apart.  But to our frustration, they seemed to stop between 6pm and 9pm.  Then as we were watching an episode of Psych the contractions came back and were very close together.  Emilee called the midwives at the hospital a couple of times and finally around 11pm they told her to come in.

Emilee's contractions.  Vertical blue lines in the time line above represent contractions.

Emmy Hansen kindly came and camped out on our couch while we left for the hospital.  We got to the UCSD Hillcrest Birth Center around 11:30pm.  We had a hard time finding our way up to the birth center as it was after hours and the front doors of the hospital were closed.  They immediately took us into triage.  They checked Emilee and determined she was 4cm dilated and 0% effaced, she was admitted.  After they placed us in a birthing room they finally got Emilee's I.V. antibiotic started at 12:15am.    Which meant that we hoped the baby wouldn't come until 4:15am at the earliest.

There were a lot of babies being born that night in the hospital.  In fact around midnight a baby was born in the room next door and her parents named her Adelaide as well. Later after our Adelaide was born the nurse said she'd never heard a baby by that name before that night. Because the hospital was so busy the nurse and midwife assigned to us were not in our room very much.  We felt more alone this time than with Coulson (he was born in the room next door 31 months ago).  They encouraged us to rest and to try to get some sleep.  As the birthing center has a large full size bed, both Emilee and I laid down and I promptly fell asleep, Emilee did not.  Then around 1:30am Emilee woke me and said that she needed to sit up.  She sat on an exercise ball next to the bed while I rubbed her back.  The nurse and widwife happened to come in around 1:50am and at that exact time Emilee had a surprisingly strong contraction.  The next contraction was equally strong so they checked her again and she was 10cm dilated and 100% efaced, the baby was coming!

Emilee sat on the edge of the bed while I sat behind her supporting her through the contractions while the nurse and midwife frantically gathered their supplies for the birth.  Each contraction seemed to me to come with more force than the last.  The midwife said that the bag of waters was still intact, which was good because it meant the baby was protected from the Group B strep.  Finally around 2:05 Emilee felt the urge to push.

After a couple pushes at 2:11am Adelaide was born!  The bag of waters did not break until seconds before she was born, so her risk of infection was reduced even though she didn't have the full antibiotic treatment.  Emilee seemed to have had more pain with Adelaide's birth than with Coulson's, even though Adelaide was smaller.  I think this is because she was less relaxed this time and had less support from the nurses and midwife.  Even so, Emilee did amazingly well.  The midwife remarked afterward how well she did and how composed she was.  I think the nurse and midwife couldn't tell very well how much discomfort Emilee was in because she hid it so well.

Adelaide minutes after birth.

 Witnessing the birth of your child is a very spiritual experience.  I felt when I first saw Adelaide how special she is and what a blessing it is to be her father.  It was a feeling of instant and deep love and great responsibility.  I imagine these feelings are even more strong for Emilee as she carried this beautiful baby for so long, experienced so much discomfort and pain, and sacrificed so much to bring her to the world.  It is a beautiful miracle.

Emilee was able to immediately breast feed Adelaide.  After this she was weighed and measured.  She was 8lbs 1oz and 20in long, our smallest baby.  Adelaide was our third baby to be born on a Sunday.  After all of this Emilee and I were able to get a few hours of sleep.

The next day in the afternoon I brought the kids to meet their baby sister for the first time.  It was  another special experience to see them react with such excitement and love.

Eliza holding Adelaide for the first time.

Coulson holding Adelaide for the first time.

Emilee and Adelaide had to stay in the hospital for an extra day to make sure Adelaide was not showing any signs of GBS infection. Luckily she was not and she was able to come home on Tuesday.  Emilee was more than ready to be out of the hospital.

Strapped in for the ride home.

Eliza holding Adelaide at home

The first night home with Adelaide was quite difficult, we had forgotten how much work and how little sleep comes with a newborn.   The next day we were just starting to feel like we could manage life when we realized that Coulson had a fever.  It appears that he has Hand Foot and Mouth disease as he also had large canker sores in his mouth.  So naturally we became very stressed that Adelaide would become infected.  So we immediately forbade the kids from touching her and bought a large bottle of hand sanitizer (which Eliza calls Hanitizer, which I think is a very clever name).  Now a few days later Coulson is starting to act like himself again.

For the record this is a new and not a used diaper that he placed on his head.

 My sister Marti also came for the weekend and was amazing. She cooked and cleaned and took care of Eliza and Coulson.  She is so good with kids and did so much to help us all  feel comfortable and happy.  Thank you Marti, you're the best!!