Labor and Delivery through the eyes of me.
When Hannah was born, we had a leisurely drive to the hospital in the morning and she was born later that afternoon. There was no craziness or hysteria associated with it. Andrew on the other hand was a bit more fun.
First of all, the night before Drew was born a round of severe thunderstorms came through the metroplex dropping large hail and the occasional tornado. Our sirens even went off. My school's electricity was off for about 2 hours. We were having a "duck and cover" afternoon in the lowest level of our school. The kids were actually pretty good all things considered.
Fast forward to the next day. The day Drew was born. Anna and I went to work as usual, but around 8:00 she tried to call me at my school because she was having contractions. But the storms from the previous day messed up our phone system so our school could neither send or receive calls. It's a good thing some people have their cell phones. Anna was able to get through to our nurse.
I got my sub plans ready and got in the car to head to Anna's school. For those of you who don't know, her school is only a mile or so away, but the only road to it was blocked because of an earlier accident. I told the police officer something I've always wanted to say, "My wife's in labor!" He told me to go around the back way and step on it. I took it as permission to drive like I was in High School again. I picked Anna up at her school and drove to the hospital around 9:30.
I played on the computer, she got an epidural, and everything should have been fine, except the epidural didn't take. It wasn't until the Dr. said something that Anna got her relief. Around 5 they gave her a spinal block. She couldn't feel anything, so I still played on the computer. They had free wifi! Around 7:30 the Dr. came in to check on her and said, "Oh, there's the head." She promptly pressed the call nurse button on Anna's bed for delivery. Three pushes later, about 30 seconds worth, I saw Andrew for the first time