It's a baby!

Benton Paul McNabb arrived this morning at 7:43-ish. He weighed 7 lbs 15 oz, 19 1/4" long, and was born in a minivan.

Here's some pictures:


Mom and Benton


Dad and Benton


Brita and Benton


The whole family (we usually have lovely family photos like this)

And now, if you want the whole story...

Peter and I went on a walk before bed, and I started having noticeable contractions around 11:00 last night. They got progessively worse, but not that bad. We woke Monica up at 4:00 to keep an ear out for Brita so we could go on another walk (thanks again, Monica).

Brita got up around 7:00, and it was then that we decided to go to the hospital. I had Peter pull a seat out of the van and I knelt on the floor for the long ride to the hospital. It takes about a half hour in good traffic, and I picked rush hour.

When we started driving, I told Peter I kind of felt like pushing, and he said, "Not the right time." About 15 minutes before we got there my water broke with a big splash (poor car). About 5 minutes later, there was another splash and I said, "The baby's here." He came out all at once. Peter pulled off to the side of the road and called for an ambulance and I used his shirt to sit on. I unwrapped the cord from the baby's neck, which had four wrappings, and made sure it was breathing. I used Peter's second shirt as a blanket for the baby. The dispatcher suggested different things to use for tying the cord, but since we wanted a delayed clamping, I just kept saying, "no."

Pretty soon the ambulance, fire truck, and police car arrived. They did a quick checkup on us and had some real blankets for the baby. Benton and I got on the stretcher and rode to the hospital in the ambulance, which took another 10 minutes. They didn't even turn on the lights for us. :)

I got to the hospital and my midwife came and delivered the placenta. Then she stiched me up, which was like 17 times worse than birth. Peter was stuck doing paperwork for forever.

When Peter got to the hospital about the same time, instead of a shirt he was wearing a towel over his shoulders and a backpack over that. I think he got some dirty looks on the elevator up to my room. They were nice and gave him a scrub top to wear.

When we went to get some pictures of Benton, we realized we'd forgotten the memory card for the camera. We called Monica and she came with Brita to bring it. They were there for the bath and all of the other fun "firsts."

Don't worry Peter has already gotten the van cleaned up. The permanent blood stains will remind us of Benton forever. It's totally worth giving birth in a van to get all the cheerios and crumbs cleaned up for you.

Welcome, Benton.