Wow!  It has almost been almost three weeks since the birth of our daughter Lilith Giovanna McDermott.  Who would have thought that after all of that pregnancy thing, there would be a baby forthcoming?  Despite the rather obvious inevitability, it was still a surprise when it happened.

Both Laura and Lily are doing very well.  Daddy Kevin is doing well too, but he hasn’t had as rough a ride as the other two parties involved in this whole birthing process.

Laura’s water broke at 6am on Sept 1st, 2008.  About 8 hours after dancing up a storm at a friend’s wedding in Niagara. On “Labour” day, if you can believe it!

She might have been rather rotund, but she could sure cut a rug!

We didn’t think that there would be any issues with Laura going into Labour, because Laura wasn’t due until Sept 13th, a full two weeks away.  But sure enough, the next morning Laura says to me in bed, “Holy cow, I think my water just broke!”

I started running around packing things and saying “Oh my gosh, this is it, this is it!”

We called the midwife, and she came and gave Laura a good once over and said that indeed we would be bringing a wee-baby home very soon.

By about 10 or 11am, Laura’s contractions began and by 1pm, they were intense, regular and frequent enough that we called the midwife and she called us into the hospital.  Unfortunately when we got there, and Laura was given another examination, she was found to be only 2cm dilated, so they sent us back home.

By 5pm, Laura was pretty much ready beat up anyone who claimed that she wasn’t ready to be admitted into the hospital, so we jumped back into the car and headed back to Guelph General Hospital.  This time it took a wheel chair to get her up to the “Family Birthing Unit”.  Sure enough, she was 6cm dilated and in active labour.

All this time, I was updating all of our friends on Facebook from my Blackberry.  It was pretty funny, we were getting messages of support from dozens of people.  People from around the world knew exactly what was going on, and were encouraging me to update them on the situation.  So I often found myself getting my left hand squeezed by Laura during a contraction, while I said “Way to go, you can do it!” to Laura, while updating facebook with my right hand.  A less understanding wife might have smashed my Blackberry against the wall, but Laura was enjoying hearing the messages from our friends.

By about 10pm, Laura was fully dilated and ready to start pushing.  Unfortunately by this point, Laura’s contractions began slowing down and decreasing in intensity.  So after about another five hours of pushing, Lily was very low, but not coming out.  Her heart beat was very strong, so no one was worried, but the Midwife determined that she needed to transfer care to an Obstetrician.  Which meant that everything changed really quickly.

Because of the length of time between when Laura’s water broke and when Lily actually came out, the OB was determined to get her out of there as quickly as possible, to avoid possible infection.  He gave Laura until 3:30am on Sept 2nd to get her out naturally or else he would use a head-vacuum, forcepts and/or a c-section.  So Laura was given an Epidural at this point, and Oxytocin to get her contractions going.

Alas it wasn’t enough, so by 3:30am, the doctor came in and first used the head-vacuum, to no avail, then the forcepts.  By 3:43, baby Lilith was out, unscathed.  We saw the OB for only 13 minutes before Lily was born, and thank goodness too, because he didn’t exactly have the best bed-side manor.

Thankfully there wasn’t the need for a c-section, and we had a healthy baby girl!

Heather, our wonderful Midwife who stayed with us throughout the entire process, even when they transferred care over to the OB, declared Lily to be “Just perfect”.

At 8 Lbs, 7.6 Ounces, she was a big baby for being two weeks early!  Thank goodness she decided to come out before her due date, it certainly might have been more tricky had she waited.

Lily was crying and feeding pretty much immediately and scored an 8 on the Apgar score, which meant that she was doing pretty well from the newborn point of view.  He colouring was also pretty good too, very pink and pretty, not gooey and yucky-baby looking.

After all was said and done, Heather our midwife posed for a picture before we went to bed.  But she was still awake, doing paperwork for Lily’s birth.

We finally got a few hours of sleep and woke up at around 7am.  Lily wanted to be snuggled and wasn’t happy with sleeping in the bassinet, so she spent her first night in the crook of my arm so that Laura and Lily could get a little sleep.

We were tired as heck, but exuberant and oddly enough didn’t feel as though we needed much more sleep.

Well we had this cute little addition to our family, with whom we had to play with and show off to family and friends.

Very exciting!