Originally Posted by Cheburash

That's awesome news, Catman! Congratulations!

As a random aside, at what point does one stop talking about a baby's length and start calling it "height"?

Cheb, I love the random question . It all depends on the family. I stop counting the baby's age in months once they hit one year old, as for height, I go by length until they can walk. Never heard anyone actually use length/height after a baby is born though.

Originally Posted by jazy2

Awesome Catman!

When does his tactical training begin?

jazy, jazy, he's a Merc, he's got as much tactical training as the rest of the Mercs


Thanks everyone for the Congratulations. Here are the cliff notes from the birth, got home from work 2 7:00 pm on Sunday, wife started having contractions at 9:00pm, but they were 7-8 minutes apart, at 11:00pm they were finally 5 minutes apart, call doc and try to wake kids up at 11:30--damn near impossible so I dressed and carried them to the car, @hospital at just after midnight, my mom picks up the girls, I go to labor and delivery. she's dilated to 4 (scale is 0-10 for those with no kids with zero being the starting point), by the time we get to a room (less than an hour later) she's dilated to 6 and telling them to hurry with naproxin and her epidural. Get the epidural in, she's not feeling any pain and at 2:30 the nurse says she's fully dilated (10). Doc shows up and checks her, says she's only at 8 and pops Michele's water. This usually speeds up contractions and birth, my wife's contractions went from 2 minutes apart to 10 minutes apart. They were having trouble telling the difference between Michele's heartbeat and the baby's heartbeat, so they stuck a lead on the baby's head to know which heartbeat they had (really weird watching them do that to my wife!) between 4:30 and 5:00 they gave her potossan (sp? it's to speed up contractions) and her blood pressure was dropping, it got to around 80 over 34 and had to give her epinephrine. They kept checking Michele, but she wasn't fully dilated, finally Michele said she really had to push and the nurse told her to go ahead and they'd call the doc. Nurse comes back and I hear her tell another nurse, "She said to just have her keep pushing and call her when the baby is about there" Michele pushes and the nurse checks her, then hurries out of the room to get the doctor. Michele is pushing and all of a sudden, I see the top of a head and everyone screams, "OK stop pushing" My wife's reaction? "I CAN'T STOP PUSHING, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW BAD THIS HURTS!!" The nurses lie and say the doctor is here, she's just getting her gloves on. Doc walks in a few seconds later and she tells Michele to go ahead and push, she does and the head is out. Doc finally gets over and cleans out the nose and tells Michele to go ahead and push again. Well, she wasn't really ready. She had her hands palms up, further apart than the baby's head. One push and the shoulders are out and he comes shooting out.



He slipped right through the doctor's hands. Yes, the doctor dropped my baby.


Luckily the bed was still here, guy came out doing a somersault and slid on his back about 18 inches before stopping a foot from the end of the bed. The nurses and I all gasped. Then he started screaming and we knew he was OK (sounds backwards, but we like to hear babies scream when they are born) Feris will vouch for that (I think). I cut the cord and the doc has the umbilical cord clamped and holds it over a square hospital tub and opens the clamp, blood comes out of it like a hose with a forceful stream and hits the part of the pan closest to the doc and blood starts spraying out in about a 2 foot radius and is all over the doctor before she clamped it back. I don't remember that happening with my other kids. She stitched up Michele and Michele felt absolutely fine the next day and everyone is doing very, very well.