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Here's a synopsis of our most unexpected night. Mommy started having contractions at bedtime, which grew in intensity and frequency as I unsuccessfully tried to ignore it all and get some sleep. After a while, we decided we should call the OB/GYN practice to see if we should start heading to the hospital. The midwife we talked to told us it wasn't quite time, and we should stay at home until the contractions were five minutes apart for an hour.

We never made it to that. At one point, Mommy went to use the bathroom, and a second later she was calling out to me that her water had broken. I wasn't too concerned even at this point. After all, her water had broken at home when we had Jack, and he wasn't born until five hours afterward. I called back to talk to the midwife, who told us to head in to the hospital. Luckily, my parents had already come down to stay with us overnight so they could be with Jack the next morning while we went in for our scheduled induction. So, I woke them up and asked my father if he would run us over to the hospital. About that time, Mommy said she was getting a little dizzy and wanted to lay down on the floor. As I was helping her down, she mentioned that she felt like she needed to push.

This was the first moment that I started to worry that things were not going to go as planned. At best, I figured I was going to have trouble getting her off the floor and to the hospital, so I asked my mother to call 911 so that we could get an ambulance to take us. Even then, I still expected that we'd make it to the hospital in time. A split second later, Mommy called out that she thought she had to push, and I looked down to see the baby's head coming out! I got down on the floor and used my hands to guide the baby out. To me, it seemed like this all happened in about three seconds. There was hardly a beat between the time I first saw the head and when I had all of her in my arms. My mother was the relay between me and the 911 operator, who was giving instructions as to how to care for the baby. We wrapped her in towels, and I made sure her nose and throat looked clear. Thankfully she came out crying, so I figured she was breathing okay. The 911 operator told us to tie off the umbilical cord, so my dad took off his shoe, pulled out the shoestring, and handed it to me. I tied it around the umbilical cord into a tight square knot. A few seconds later, the paramedics arrived.

So here we are, just after two o'clock in the morning, Mommy and a very new newborn, still connected by the umbilical cord, are lying on our bathroom floor, wrapped in bath towels, and we now have five men we've never met before come rushing into our bedroom. Things got crowded pretty quickly. After a few minutes, they asked if I wanted to cut the umbilical cord and handed me a scalpel, not a nice pair of scissors like I had when I cut Jack's cord in the hospital, but a shiny, sharp scalpel. I think I was actually more nervous then than when I was catching the baby. I kept thinking that between the lack of sleep and rush of adrenaline that my arm would spasm and I'd end up stabbing either my newborn baby or my wife. But, I managed to cut the cord without incident.

At this point, the paramedics put Sarah on our bed and helped Mommy into a special chair that they used to get her down the stairs. They then put her and the baby onto a stretcher and wheeled them out to the ambulance for a bumpy ride over to the hospital. Apparently, while not unheard of, having an unplanned delivery at your home is not a very common occurrence. When we finally arrived at the hospital, all the emergency room workers stood up and cheered for us!

We finally made it to the delivery room, although the actual delivery had long passed. They put little Sarah Grace into the baby warmer and made sure she was doing okay. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 12 oz. and measured 20 inches long. At some point we realized that nobody looked at the clock to see exactly when she was born. From the timing of the second call to the OB/GYN answering service and the call to 911, our best guess was 2:15 AM.

By this point, things seemed a lot more normal and progressed much like they did when Jack was born. I came home sometime after 9:00 AM to get a nap and something to eat. Afterward, my parents and I took Jack over to the hospital so he could meet his new sister!

Mommy and baby are doing very well and will most likely be coming home tomorrow morning. Although we are all in disbelief over the excitement of her arrival, we are thrilled that Baby Sarah is finally here and we can bring her home. Our party of three has instantly become a party of four. Our lives will never be the same.