A play-by-play rundown from the Dad...

After forty weeks of belly growin', my wife and I were belly achin' about when our little child would grace us with its presence. Even though he was due on June 9th, the high blood pressure/inducing scare of early May had left us on high alert for a month, so it started to feel like the baby was late and getting impossibly bigger by the second. So, on this past Friday (the due date), we went to our doctor's appointment knowing that if the option to induce was provided, we would leap into it that very day. A low level of amniotic fluid made that option more of a necessity.

We took the short drive down to St. Joseph's hospital to begin inducing labor. Over the next 24 hours, my wife embarked on "the hardest thing she's ever done." Thankfully, we had a dream team of nurses. First, there was The Greeter, Mary. She settled Nicole in with her cheerful and humorous demeanor, making us feel right at home.


Next came the Night Nurse, Danielle from Alabama. Nicole's labor started at 10 pm, with her contractions coming fast and furious, a minute long and a minute apart. Her water broke at 2:22 am, setting off a frenzy of contractions that Nicole fought valiantly for the next few hours. Danielle was there for all of this, and thank goodness because she eventually was able to use her powers of southern persuasion to make Nicole realize that there was no shame in her taking the epidural, because she really needed to conserve her strength for the pushing to come. At about 6 am, she took the epidural.

For some perspective, before the epidural, Nicole was 3 1/2 cm dilated after struggling all night for 2 of those centimeters, and in immense pain. After the epidural, she zonked out and was asleep for the next 2 1/2 hours. When she awoke, she found herself close to 9 cm dilated and ready to start pushing whenever the baby was ready. (Needless to say, Nicole's now thinking about becoming a national spokesperson for epidurals.)


And that brought us to the Closer, Susan. She was like that Maura Tierney character on ER, when she was Head Nurse. You know, the kind of nurse that all of the other nurses look up to, the kind that could easily be a doctor if she wanted to. Susan was all business, but at the same time so encouraging. The Closer made Nicole believe that she was the superwoman that she really is. 15 hours of labor culminated in less than an hour of pushing. In fact, Nicole had brought the baby to the precipice of birth, only to wait fifteen more minutes for the doctor to arrive, so the baby could be delivered.

Finally, at 12:43 pm on Saturday, June 10th, Nicole gave birth to our son, Cooper Kingsley White. Weighing in at 7 lbs 9 oz and measuring 20 3/4 inches long, Cooper was the culmination of the most anticipated 40 week stretch of our lives, and he did not disappoint.

Now on to the most anticipated 18 year stretch of our lives... and beyond.

For more photos, click here.