Andrew & Zoe: Introducing Tabitha Jeanette

Here is her first blog post. Tabitha was born on August 16 at 3:38 am, minutes after I called the midwives. Zoe and I managed to do it by ourselves and the paramedics showed up five minutes later. Thankfully we were planning a home birth.

For the record, Dad's first hand account:

Zoe woke me to get the bed changed at around 2:30. It took a long time and two tries to get it done properly (ie the "to remain clean" bottom and top sheets covered by a couple shower curtains and some thrift store "to get very dirty and thrown out" sheets) - Zoe insightfully and acidly suggested that it might be easier if I turned on a light - it was. By 3:00 we were back in bed and I was listening to her contractions. The two I witnessed seemed close together and intense, so I suggested timing them. I timed two: 1:30 long, 4:30 apart and we decided to call the midwife, Hedieh. As I left to get the phone, Zoe's water broke and I heard her calling me over the dishwasher noise while I was on the phone. I got back upstairs to see a head... the baby's head. Hedieh told me to call 911 and I did. While on the phone with ambulance dispatch, Zoe and I managed to deliver the baby (Zoe did the delivering, I did the catching - one-handed, but really more a sliding to the bed than an actual catch). I had read up a bit on this stuff and tried to diligently do things right like check for the cord around the babies neck before she comes out all the way. The dispatch was reassuring, but not very helpful: "try to get the mother on her back" - um no, not with a baby head sticking out. She had to have asked me "how far along is she?" four times before I realized she was asking about gestation not about dilation - I must have sounded hysterical (no, never) saying "There's a head sticking out!" more emphatically each time, before she then asked "when is the baby due?"

Rumours persist that I may have dropped the phone on her, but there is no physical evidence to back it up. I got Tabitha wrapped up in a towel, told the dispatcher that we would no longer be needing an ambulance and was told that they should be outside... So I let them in. Paramedics woke Finn up, who was maybe a little worried, but easily delighted by the ambulance complete with flashing lights parked outside. Midwives showed up five minutes later and the rest was pretty routine. We impressed the paramedics with our vast and ready supply of towels and by the fact that our bed wasn't ruined. We were also, the only people that crew had seen to have delivered at home and not gone to the hospital.