Our little blessing arrived 24 minutes after midnight, on June 6th, 2012. At first, we could only see a little hair on the crown of a little head, but a few pushes and contractions later, she came right out in Dr. Ronda Gaiser’s skilled hands. Less than a second later, we heard the crying from the first healthy breath of fresh air that meant her lungs were okay. Dr. Gaiser showed her to me so that I could tell Laura that she was a girl, for we had kept that fact a secret, even unto ourselves, so that we could be surprised the day she was born. I took a long, hard look, not wanting to mess this up and to make the right call. I looked into my beautiful wife’s eyes and said, “It’s a girl!”

Kiley was due Saturday, June second, but that day had come and gone. We took a long walk with Gus around the city park where we always take him and saw a woman there on a park bench. She asked us the typical “When are you due?” question and was in shock when Laura exclaimed, “Today!” We thought that the walking might help move things along, but little Kiley had other plans. Laura was scheduled to be induced on Thursday the seventh, and we were both hoping that she would go into labor prior to that event. We walked everyday, and Laura did her lunges and stretches to help bring the baby down in station (position).

At 4:00 am Tuesday the fifth, Laura awoke to contractions that felt stronger than her normal Braxton-Hicks contractions that she had been feeling for weeks. She woke me up at six and said, “I think something is happening.” In my daze, I said, “Oh, that’s good, baby. What am I supposed to tell you to do now?” I don’t remember her answer because I had fallen back to sleep! I remember dreaming that this was great news because we had looked forward to this day for so long.

We both slept and stayed in bed until 10:00 am and then Laura had to call doctor Gaiser’s office because we had an appointment at 11:45. Would we still need to come or should we just go to the hospital? Our appointment was mistakenly cancelled and a new one was made for 3:00 pm, a visit we never ended up making. The new conventional wisdom is that when contractions are 5 minutes apart, lasting one minute, for a one hour period, called 5-1-1, it’s time to head to the hospital. We used a nifty iPhone app to time our contractions and it averaged them out, showed us trends, and made it really easy to track Peanut’s progress. Get that app here if you want it; we loved it. For Laura’s comfort sake, we stayed at home as long as we could, until we were at 4-1-1, so as to not be sitting around the hospital so long.

We arrived at the hospital at 2:15 pm and went straight to the triage room so Laura could relax and be examined by a nurse. Thank goodness Laura was on top of the pre-register options that Riverside Methodist Hospital provides, because we didn’t have to fill out a single form. She was 3-4 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced — not bad for a first time mom. It was still going to be a while, so the nurse gave us the option to go home or stay. “Bring it on!” were the words Laura and I remembered from taking a Lamaze class, taught by the wonderful Pat Rice. She reminded our class that we don’t want to push this off, but instead grab the bull by the horns and bring it on. So, our decision was easy: stay at the hospital and get this baby out. Also, a normal baby’s heart rate at this stage should be about 140 bpm, but Kiley’s was 195 bpm. Renee, the nurse, started Laura on an IV of fluids, which after a few hours, had helped bring it back down to normal levels.

We ended up staying in triage for well over an hour because there were no birthing rooms available! Riverside has 27 birthing rooms, and at noon the day we arrived, there were 30 women giving birth. One lady actually gave birth in an operating room due to lack of space. Fortunately for us, the busy morning had cleared out fairly quickly, and we were moved to room 3220. Dr. Gaiser was visiting with normal OB/GYN patients in the doctor’s office section of the hospital, but she would be there later in the evening for the delivery. A different OB came in to break Laura’s water. This would start the contractions on a quicker, stronger pace. There was some meconium in her water, which meant that when Laura finally gave birth, the neonatal nurses would have to check the baby out for healthy lungs. Even though the amount of water was just a cup or two, it felt like she had gushed a gallon or more. Peanut said it felt awkward, but at least it didn’t hurt.

The contractions started getting stronger, and Laura battled through them, trying to get to five centimeters before receiving the epidural. Epidural’s are great, but they can slow the process down, so she wanted to hold on as long as she could to keep things moving. We’ve heard others say that they like natural child birth, without any drugs, to do it “God’s way.” Laura’s response is that God’s way was to be fairly pain free, and that it was only after Adam and Eve’s sin did God “greatly increase child bearing pains.” So really, with an epidural, she was doing it more like God originally intended than if she went without one! At 5:15 pm, our wonderful nurse Brianne checked, and Laura was now dilated to 5 cm. It was time to call the anesthesiologist in for the epidural, but he was busy and wouldn’t be in for 15-20 minutes. Later he would go on to tell us that earlier in the day, when they were so busy, he got five calls at once! Someone in that group of five had to go last, and we felt bad for that poor girl. Laura had several more contractions before he arrived. To help her get through the pain, I had printed off a 16×20 picture of Gus and brought it to the hospital as Laura’s focal point. She looked at her first sweet baby to help her not think about the pain her second sweet baby was causing her.

Finally the epidural arrived, and wouldn’t you know, she had a contraction while he was putting it in. She had to hold as still as possible because a tube was being placed into her spinal cord and it was all she could do not to move. After the contraction was over, she eased into bliss as her pain subsided and she only felt pressure. For the next seven hours or so, Laura dozed and relaxed in the bed while I watched her contraction monitor from her bedside. It was simply amazing to see the graph move like a seismograph to indicate a huge contraction, but Laura was just peaceful and calm. Now that’s what I call labor! I got some dinner, took some pictures around the hospital, and Laura saw her parents briefly. Around 8:00 pm, we met with Dr. Gaiser, and she predicted a 2:00 am delivery, with a dilation rate of a centimeter per hour and then two hours for pushing. Laura was now six cm dilated and still had a way to go. Her Pitocin drip was slightly increased to help hasten the delivery.

We now had our final nurse of the evening, Carmel, from Singapore. She and I chatted about what an amazing city it is and she was excited to meet someone who had been there recently. She brought us the news that Laura was now seven to eight centimeters and predicted we would have this baby on the fifth, not the sixth. That stunned Laura and I and it started to sink in that pretty soon, we’d be parents (no offense to Gus). Carmel could now see hair on the baby’s head, but Laura wasn’t supposed to start pushing yet because the neonatal nurses still needed to arrive, and Dr. Gaiser was in a nearby room stitching up another patient. When pushing time finally came, Peanut was to push really hard for ten seconds when the contraction started, then take a breath, and push for ten more seconds, and finally do it a third time. By then, the contraction would be over. She pushed really hard for the first set of three, and Carmel “The Slave Driver” – her nickname, told Laura to really push hard the next time. Laura thought, “Golly, I thought I was pushing hard.” The next contraction came, and Laura’s face turned red she pushed so hard, and Carmel liked that effort. We then got word Dr. Gaiser was going to be a few more minutes, so the pushing needed to stop. We were actually so close to birth that she needed to stop pushing.

Finally, Ronda arrived and the serious pushing and effort would begin. Laura would push and the crown of the head would start out, but when the contraction ended, it would disappear back inside. However, with every push, the head would come just a bit farther out. When I first saw the top of Kiley’s head, I thought that it looked so tiny. But later, as the head came out farther, it just got bigger and bigger, until I was shocked at the actual size of the baby coming out! Seven pounds never looked so big, or so wide. The final push came, and the head was out, the shoulders slipped out, and the rest was out like a flash.

There she was. There she was! A true blessing. A living, breathing, creation from both of us by God. It was stunning to see her in the flesh. What we had been dreaming about, praying about, hoping for, and working so hard to acquire was finally with us in the room. She stepped out of one world and into another and the journey of her life now begins. Her life started on her mother’s loving chest to get her warmed up. Then a proud dad was able to cut the umbilical cord to signify that she was now on her own, an individual, ready to grow up to be the woman that she will be.

A quick check by the nurses gave an outstanding bill of health. No meconium effects, no jaundice, no cone head, no problems! After all Laura had been through with carrying her, we were glad for some good news. Overall, Laura had a good experience without any problems. She only pushed for twenty minutes and has just a little soreness afterward. Her worst part was the last hour prior to the epidural, but other than that, she had no real problems. Kiley is also as healthy as she could be and there is certainly nothing wrong with her vocal cords. It was then off to our own hospital room, a bath, some checkups by more nurses, a feeding, and then some eventual sleep. Laura dozed in her hospital bed, I hit the sack on the couch in the room, and little Kiley was in a nursery bed on wheels. All three of us had had a long day and we all drifted off to sleep. It was six in the morning, of June sixth.

We only slept for an hour and a half before more doctors and nurses came in to check on things, and the next two days in the hospital were a foggy, fatigued blur of memories. In the end, it was an amazing experience that probably won’t be matched by much else in life. We finally have our little Kiley! In the words of our friends at Lightrider, “Born on D-Day, may Kiley invade the world for His Kingdom.”

Be sure and check out KileyCline.com for pictures.