Baby Ayden

The morning after Gracie's party Tammy woke up wondering if her water had broken and she went in to see the doctor. He checked her out, water bag still in tact, but she was already dilated 2 cm - which can mean nothing because she can be stuck there for weeks, but she was also having regular contractions that weren't going away. I told her I had a feeling something was happening. She went back to work and had contractions all day. Around 4 I told her I thought she should go take a warm shower to see if contractions sped up - that's always what told me if I was in real labor or not. So she went to Mom's house, took a shower and tried to relax a little. Not too much longer I was on the phone with her and she was out of breath, couldn't speak through the contractions and was close to tears from the pain - and I couldn't stop smiling or contain my excitement :) Her doctor met us at urgent care at 7:30 to check her out and she was 5 1/2 cm and in active labor and we went to the hospital. She did amazing! She held out until about 11 for the epidural and handled everything perfectly. She dilated pretty quickly but he was pretty high still so she had to wait until he dropped lower before they could break her water and speed things up a bit. She started pushing at 6:15am and literally 3 contractions and less than 15 minutes later he was born! She was 1 day shy of 37 weeks so no matter what he was going to have to go to NICU for the first 12 hours to be watched carefully, which was understandably hard for her. He ended up having a little low blood sugar at first, then was having issues with his billiruben levels, so had to stay in there longer. 2 1/2 days later he was out and they went home. He had to have blood tests done every day for a while and they had one scare and almost had to re-admit him to the hospital because the billiruben levels were rising again, but luckily they went down just in time! He is amazing and adorable and Tammy and Craig are doing wonderful and I just love seeing them as parents! It was such an amazing experience being in there with her and I THANK her for that! It was incredible experiencing the miracle of birth from a different perspective.