and i shall call him squishy...

i feel strange. it could be that my sleep patterns have been weird the past few days. the lines between day and night have been smudged while i've walked the hospital halls waiting for a little, squishy, magical creature to be born. (aka. squishy shoults). 24 hours before, similar scenes of walking and waiting, skipbo playing, squatting, and tracing were played out. squishy got us together again, same time same place, me, the doula and bethany and ben--the birthing team.

i met up with b&b outside. they were pulling up into the parking lot and i was walking in from the street. we walked in together. ben was determined to learn from the day before. he toted two six packs of water bottles and just inside the door he set about ordering 2 large pizzas from panago. the pizza boxes i would end up toting from room to room as we gypsied around women's hospital during the early hours of the day.

we were put in an even smaller 'room' in triage and we gathered around bethany on the bed. it reminded me of the way we gathered around gram's bed when her time was near, but this was a welcoming rather than a farewell.

her contractions slowed down as soon as soon as she got to the hospital.

they put the fetal heartbeat monitor on for a while. then we walked for a while.

suddenly they put us in a delivery room, which was nice and roomy. bethany's nurse was very nice but there was a moment with her dr. who was pushing to have her water broken. bethany wasn't ready. she had some concerns. so we walked the halls again and talked along the way and had a conversation with the nurse until she felt better about it. then we ended up waiting for the dr. anyways.

after the water was broken things started to kick up a notch, so to speak. after one of our walks during which the contractions were starting to come more regularly our nurse informed us that they were moving us up to 'evergreen'. so we got all our stuff ready and ben conceded to me in skip bo and then ended up waiting a long time to be moved.

evergreen was in the maternity ward. it was a regular room and quiet. as soon as we got there bethany started to get the hard contractions. she sat on the exercise ball leaning up against the bed. the doula sat on the bed in front of her, softly rythmically counting her through the contraction and ben was stationed behind rubbing her back. i sat timing things on the doula's iphone. it was also my job to get the nurses to tell them things had progressed quickly and then to get them again when she was throwing up into the garbage. otherwise i was just a quiet observer and pizza box courier.

when the dr. finally got there she agreed that she needed to be moved to a delivery room. so off we went again. we stayed upstairs and went over to 'cedar' into a big delivery room that seemed really full of nurses and drs. to me. i've only ever been to sloan's birth and it was just us and the midwife most of the time. there were 2-3 nurses directly involved, a pediatrition team waiting and two dr.s attending. judy was bethany's dr. she was under dr. mayer, who's french. i liked dr. mayer, but judy i could take or leave. anywho it wasn't long after getting into the delivery room that bethany was wanting to push and it was a bit of a hulabaloo getting some dr.s in there. the nurse thought she might have to deliver. but the dr.s did get there and bethany was amazing. she tried so hard to focus on relaxing and she did so well. dr. mayer said she should have lots of babies because she was so good at it. squishy came out face up, just like owen. the cord was wrapped twice around his neck but they cut it off right away and he was crying before he was totally out. it was around 5:25 in the morning, november 6th. bethany doesn't kid around about her due dates.

instantly the feeling in the room changed from intensity and expectancy to joy and rejoicing. i realized how much tension i was holding in my own body when suddenly i began to kind of laugh sob. angus squishy shouts nestled comfortably in bethany's arms and mother and father looked at each other in wonder and happiness. he blinked up at them. it was the family birth moment. i clicked away like a mad woman. shortly after squishy taken to be washed and weighed and measured etc, my battery died on my camera.

i got to hold him while they were working on bethany's uncontracting post birth uterus. he wailed for his mother and i sang him swedish lullabyes. his little round head under the white newborn toque, his little round eyes alert. a soul fresh from God. the 37th grandchild. the 2nd son.

i'm so glad i got to be there.