the birth story for son #2:

As some of you already know, Ange and I are now happily members of a 4-person family.

If you don't remember what we went through with Ange's pregnancy with Jack, it was a hold-on-for-the-ride 2.5 hour long labor from first contraction to birth. Jack had arrived 33 minutes after we got to the hospital. So this time around, we were super-anxious about making it to the hospital as soon as Ange started to feel the beginnings of anything that felt like labor.

Well, that all started Thursday morning. We had our weekly appointment with the midwife practice scheduled at 8:40am. While getting everybody/everything ready to go for the day at 8am, Ange had her first contraction, although she was slow to admit it. I got to witness the end of her second one which ended at 8:14am. At this point, I was ready to run her out the door and speed down to the hospital, but she was more concerned that I get her laptop, and get my swimming suit (because obviously that is a high priority). Even Jack could tell that something wasn't right, and he started getting concerned for Mommy. We just told him that it was time for us to take Mommy to the hospital so that the doctor could look at baby brother. We left Jack at home with my Mom (Ghi-ghi, a name given to her by Jack).

The drive to the hospital is about 30 minutes. So on the initial leg down Monument Ave, I kept looking at the clock, getting ready to take note of when the next contraction would start. Ange was pretty serene, and not too talkative. She was busy trying to convince herself that this wasn't the real thing yet (apparently she forgot how quickly Jack came out.) Once we got on 195-south, she finally let out with an "OHHHHHH!!!".

Joe: "Another contraction???" (quickly looking at the clock)
Ange: "No, a train!"
Joe: "A train?"
Ange: (pointing out the window) "Yeah, look, a train, too bad Jack isn't here, he'd love to see it!"
Joe: "...."

At some point we decided it was a good idea to call our doula. However, Ange was still in the stage of denial, and told her not to come to the hospital yet, because she didn't think we were that far along. Finally at 8:30am, she had another contraction...

Ange: "...whew, that one is over."
Joe: "Oh, good, we don't have to rush too much. That was 15 minutes between contractions."
Ange: "No no no, I've had a couple more since the 8:15 one."
Joe: (speeds up to 80mph and starts looking really hard for cops) "No more hiding contractions from me, I'm trying to time these things!!"
Ange: "Okay. Here comes another one." (8:33am)

At this point we were only 5 minutes or so from the hospital, and I suggested maybe we could call ahead and tell them about the situation. Ange insisted we didn't need to, and we could just show up for our 8:40am appointment. So we showed up to our appointment at 8:45ish. I was pretty insistent that Ange was in labor, but the midwife (Jean) wanted to make sure, so she did a quick check and Ange was about 8cm dilated, and her membrane was very very thin. So Jean suggested a wheelchair ride over to labor/delivery (finally!), and we showed up there at 9:01am.

Ange rolled onto the bed, and hunched over on all fours, and started asking, how much longer will this take?, and can I push now? Jean said to just go at whatever feels natural. After the first push, Jean said that her water still hadn't broken. One minute later, the second push resulted in Ange's water breaking and the baby's head coming halfway out. A minute after that, and the third push had his head all the way out, and the crook of his shoulder/arm exposed. A minute after that, and the fourth push had him all the way out, and the nurses quickly put him skin-to-skin with Ange. Between pushes, Ange seemed to be mumbling to herself something which seemed like maybe a song, I couldn't quite tell. Once she had him skin-to-skin, I realized she was mumbling/singing that kids song a lot of us learned in church, "God is so good." She just kept repeating "God is good."

The technical stuff: 7 lbs, 12 oz, 20", no tears, no IVs (no time), 9:05am birth (4 minutes after we showed up in labor/delivery), 1 minute from water breaking to skin-to-skin.

The only problem was we still didn't have a name. We knew the middle name would be Charlton (and old family name from my side). But we never agreed on a first name. The nurse said she would give us till afternoon. We rehashed all the names we were "okay" with, but you never want to give a kid a name that involves the following:

Spouse 1: (hopefully) "Well how about xxxxxx?"
Spouse 2: (slouched shoulders) "Yeah, I guess..."

At this point, Ange wanted to hear the birth story, so I went over everything that I could remember from 8am till present, and we both thought it was really neat that she kept repeating "God is good" during labor and after birth, while she was in these elevated states of agony and joy. So, naturally, we looked up what the Hebrew was for "God is good", and it turns out that the Greek translation of the Hebrew word is Tobias. Thankfully, neither of us had bad experiences with Tobiases, and we both liked the sound of it. And Ange liked Toby for short, and I was definitely cool with that. So Toby/Tobias Charlton it was.

We brought Jack in later that afternoon, and he was happy to meet baby brother, although he was more interested in lying down next to Mommy and eating her graham crackers. He was pleasantly surprised that Toby wanted to give him a present (a Thomas the Train engine named Toby... brilliant!) Since then, Jack is insisting that his baby brother's name is not Toby, but Train. Oh well, he'll catch on eventually.

Ange and I are really grateful for all of your care/prayers in our lives. We'll be too busy to communicate much for awhile, but I promise that we enjoy reading your emails/listening to your voice mails.

God is good!
Joe G.