Good Morning to you all!
As of the moment of this writing, I am not quite yet an uncle. However, the event is iminent. I’ve decided to try to keep a little log of the day as it unfolds for me (and the new family).
Things started off yesterday when I got a call from my sister: “Are you ready to be an uncle sooner rather than later?”. She was on her way to a diner for a bite to eat, since contractors had invaded their house to do some kitchen renovations. Ironically, a few days earlier, Andrea had said ‘I hope I don’t go into labour while they are there…’. Well, she didn’t, but was awfully close. It turns out that she was full term and pretty much dilated, meaning the big event could happen at any moment. The doctor pegged that within 48 hours, Andrea and Patrick would be new parents, and as a result, I would be the crazy uncle!
I offered to take pictures as soon as possible, and to post them on our Flickr site in the meantime, while they got things sorted out (note: done, check them out). I will also attempt to contact everyone that I can with the news as I get it, so that neither of them has to worry about those pesky details. I got a follow-up phone call from Andrea yesterday evening to tell me she was forwarding her contact information for the emails. Whew! Thought it might already be time. I’m trying to wrap up the bar work, but suspect it’ll be interrupted this weekend, which thankfully is a 4-day weekend. I went to bed, ready to receive a phone call if needed. Read on…
12:03am – the phone rings. Hello? Oh, it’s just Jody calling from BC for an update and to see how I am. I’m a bit irritated to be woken up by her, but that’s ok. She was looking at the wrong clock and hadn’t realized the time in Ottawa. After all, I’m still trying to get healthy again!
7:11am – the phone rings again. This has to be it. Yup, it’s Patrick. “We’re in room 1”. No time to talk too much, he just wanted to bring me up to speed on events. Here is the sequence of events thus far for the family. 2:55am, contractions start. 6am, they book it over to hospital and get settled in for the ‘Marathon of Birth’ as I’ll call it. As of the phone call early this morning, Andrea was apparently at 8-9cm dilation. I’m led to believe that at 10cm, you start pushing.
9:22am – that’s the current time. I’m at the office, waiting for word back. I’m expecting that any time now I’ll get an update. I’ve got all my devices ready, just awaiting news…. I suppose it could be 20mins. or 7 hours, no one ever really knows. I’m just hoping all goes well, and that everyone has a reasonable go of it. Wierd thought eh? Since I’ve got a little time to think about it, I took my camera out this morning, and snapped a couple pictures of the day so far. Right now, it’s sitting at about 9 degrees C. The sky is a stormy dark grey, with a bit of light rain falling. Pretty typical April spring day overall. For the record, the pressure is 101.1kPa, humidity is at 87%, and the wind is blowing 30km/h (according to the Weather Network).
I’ve also been curious as to what April 13th is all about. A quick Google searching turned up this information. Baby X will share birthdays with several famous people including Thomas Jefferson, Ray Charles, Ross Perot, Al Green and Gary Kasparov. So does that mean we should expext a political musician with strong chess skills? We can only wait and see. What I did find ironic is that this is one of the few days that had no notable females born (well, Eudora Welty should be mentioned), so this baby will either follow the trend, or be the first famous female born on April 13th! Wikipedia has lots of dates related to April 13th, but is pretty dry stuff. I also enjoyed reading through a bit of the History Channel’s ‘This Day in History’ for April 13th. The headline is all about Tiger Woods winning his first Major (boring). However, it is also the day that F.W.Woolworth is born (1852) and the date the first Best Actor Oscar was given to an African American (1964) actor. Unfortunately, as is usual with headlines, most of the other stuff was bad news, so I won’t talk about it. Anyway, that’s it for now. It’s now 9:37am and still no word.
10:31 – Well, I was just dashing off to a meeting when the phone rang. This was ironic, as I had just tried calling Patrick to see if he had my dad’s number (don’t I feel stupid for not having it?). I figured he was calling back with that info. Well, it wasn’t Patrick. It was Andrea! She sounded great. They were letting me know (First person they told, just like the pregnancy news, I’m flattered) that I am now an uncle to a healthy niece!!! Here are the statistics, for those of you who are interested:
- Female (obviously)
- Lots of dark curly hair
- 3322g (7lbs. 5oz.)
- Time of birth 9:21am
Now before you go asking, no, there is no name yet. I’m sure that’ll be decided in short order, but not right away. My next step will be getting to the hospital to snap a few pictures, but that won’t happen until after work today, since I’ve already taken 2 sick days in the last week due to my illness. Hmm, how funny, as I look back up at my log, I wrote this log starting around 9:22, which is just when the baby was born. Coincidence? I think so 😉
