Happy Birthday Tony!!

In honor of this momentous occasion (and since we won't have any new pictures to post until later), I have re-posted Tony's birth story. I can't believe it was a whole year ago!

Anthony Chase

So, I had a baby. Believe it or not, it all went down 4 weeks and one day ago. To save you the trouble of grabbing your calendar and frantically searching for the day I'm referring to, I'll just tell you: May 26th, 2008. At 11:19 am, to be exact. I'd like to say that it was the most amazing thing I've ever done in my life, and I wouldn't trade a minute of it, but that would be lying. Let me clarify something- Tony IS amazing, and I wouldn't trade him for anything, but the actual bringing him into the world, well, that is another story.

That story began on Saturday the 24th in the evening- oddly enough, it really was a dark and stormy night (lightning, thunder, the works!) I had contractions less than 5 minutes apart for hours, but we waited to call because I didn't want to be one of those ladies who get all worked up and go in, then get sent home a few hours later with the knowledge that what they believed to be contractions was in fact just indigestion. So we waited, and I passed the time chatting with Sarah and watching Frasier on DVD.

By 130 am there were other indications that it may be TIME, so we called the hospital and they invited us over. We checked in around 2 am, at which point I was about 2.5 cm dilated and 80% effaced. [To anyone unfamiliar with preggo-speak, that means labor had started, but there was still a long way to go] We settled in to wait, with Sarah as an unexpected, but very welcome audience member. We walked, watched tv, etc. It was exciting, yet at the same time tedious- surely things were progressing in there right? Nope. The on call doctor popped in around 830 am to announce that nothing had changed. She went merrily on her way, leaving us in disbelief- all those hours wasted!

Making a long story shorter, I'll just say that the following 24 hours went along exactly the same, with the occasional checks revealing little or no changes. By Monday morning we were exhausted (we, at this point, refers only to Don and me, as Sarah had left on Sunday). A new, more enlightened doctor was now on call, and he told us that there was a possibility that the baby wasn't coming any closer because he just couldn't fit through the pelvic bones. If this was the case, a C-section was the only way to get him out. Rather than letting the suffering continue, we decided to go ahead with the surgery.

I was wheeled to the operating room just before 11 am, loaded up with more drugs, and then the procedure began. Don was there next to me, looking rather dashing in his blue scrubs. Within minutes of cutting me open, Tony was born! He came out screaming and stretching.

6 pounds 5 oz

19 inches