Welch Whirl

Welcome Baby Eva!

Well, it took about 8 and 1/2 years, but Sharalee finally uttered those fateful words I thought I wouldn't hear until we were both old and senile -- "Honey, I think I just wet the bed!"

Indeed she had wet the bed, but not because of lack of bladder control. Her water had broke. Groggy from sleep, I looked at her in disbelief, glanced down at the bed to make sure none of "it" had crossed the imaginary line that exists between the "his" and "hers" sides of the marriage bed, and promptly went back to sleep. Two hours later, Sharalee woke me again to inform me that it was time to go to the hospital.

We roused my mother at 1:30 a.m. to come stay at the house with the kids, and then Shara and I traveled a few miles across town to American Fork Hospital. Her labor progressed quickly and by 4:00 a.m., she was pushing with all her might -- but to no avail. The problem was that following the epidural her contractions slowed, and thus our little baby, facing upward (posterior) in the birth canal, had gotten stuck. (Think Winnie the Pooh wedged in Rabbit's front door -- you know, when Rabbit tries to decorate Pooh's posterior in order to enhance the ambiance of his front room.)

Finally, after two hours and very little movement, the doctor finally employed the forceps. To my un-medical mind, it seemed like trying to extract a delicate model ship from a glass bottle using a pair of salad tongs. Nevertheless, miracle of miracles, our little baby girl (and her mother) were delivered of their mutual travails by said tongs at 5:52 a.m.

Now for the box score (which, for me, always seems like I'm describing a fly fishing trip rather than a birth) -- 18 inches, 6 pounds, 15 ounces, Apgar score of 9, fair skin, slight fuzz around the head, and a shiner on her brow which we've now obscured with hair bow.

Her name, tentatively, is Eva -- in honor of Eva Maria Hamacker, a German ancestor on her maternal grandmother's side (Sharalee's Dad's line) who migrated from Germany to Hershey, Pennsylvania, in the late eighteenth century. Sharalee and I visited Eva's hometown in Hachenburg just outside of Frankfurt this past summer. As we visited the church where Eva and her husband Adam were married and where their first daughter was christened before their departure, we felt a special kinship for Adam and Eva and thought it significant that this proverbial "Adam and Eve" left the home they loved to start a new life by the sweat of their brow in a new world. Not unlike our little baby girl just did.

Sharalee and Baby Eva are resting comfortably in American Fork Hospital and will return home -- and to the blogosphere -- shortly.