Welcome Baby

On Tuesday night around 9:30 my sister-in-love gave birth to her second son.  My brother’s second son.  My mother called early Tuesday morning to tell me that Sara’s labor had started and that she and my dad were on their way to Denver to catch a flight to Edmonton.  They arrived mid-afternoon, with the plan to just go to a hotel until the baby was born so that my brother and Sara could have some space. (Sara likes to have her babies at home, in a tub of water in her dining room.  She’s kind of a rock star that way.)  Anyway, DB (my brother) told my parents they should come on over so that they could watch their two-year-old, and so they did.  Which meant that my parents were in the house for most of Sara’s labor and that they heard their fourth grandchild take his first yelping breath.  Which means that I’m going to have to buy them a house in the Seychelles if I have any hope of trumping what DB and Sara just gave them.

There are few things better than spending a day going about your own lovely and boringish life knowing that someone you love is, at that very moment, working on getting a baby you also love out into this world.  There I was, dropping off the girls, going for a run, taking a shower, drinking a bit of coffee, writing a few words, and all the while Sara was contracting and huffing and trying to get comfortable and trying not to have the baby before the midwife arrived.  Throughout the day I would think of her and send her every bit of good energy I could muster and then I would get wrapped up in something and forget for a while, only to have the thought pop back in my head: “Sara!  Is! In! Labor!”  and I would feel the thrill again.  I would feel her close by, even though she is so many miles away.

There is nothing like having a baby.  It is our one chance to leave this world for a little while, to abandon all habit and routine, to forget everything we know about ourselves and what we are capable of, to forget everything we think about our bodies and what they can endure.  Like Sara, I did not have an epidural when I delivered Grace and June.  It’s a loaded topic, this drugs for labor and no drugs for labor, and I have no desire to add stones to either side of the scale, but I am grateful that things turned out the way they did for me.  I was way way out on some wild and gory and glorious edge with them (especially with June) and I won’t be there again.

But enough about me.  It’s not about me right now.  It’s about Sara, and a job well done.  And, most of all, it is about baby Max.  Welcome, little one.  We’re so glad you’re here.