Here are the details. The pix are here . The good ones, as usual, are the ones Isabel took. As usual, I tried to make the files small so even if you have a dial-up you should be able to see them fairly quickly.
Thursday, 3/30/06 was her due date, and due to possible side-issues they did not want her to go past her due date and wait, so we got a call that the hospital was ready to start some medications to get the ball rolling. Went over about 10 A.M. and picked up Lizzy and Troy and took them over there and left after midwife announced that this was probably a 7 1/2 pounder. Many people had said 8. I wasn’t about to even try to guess, so I went with the midwife’s prediction. We didn’t get a pool going or anything otherwise I’d have made some money. JK.
Thursday evening, measurable contractions, hang out until around 10 P.M. no action. Go home and wait for phone call. Got a call at 2:50 A.M. and Lizzy told Tabitha, “The baby’s on it’s way!” and hung up. Things were getting serious now; got to Memorial hospital by 3:00.
Troy and Elizabeth and the midwife are in the room while the rest of us, Troy’s family, our family and one of Lizzy’s best friends in the whole world, Joyce, are in the waiting area. Lizzy would have liked to have had her mom in with her, but since Troy’s mother and grandmother wanted to see the birth as well, Troy had decided it wouldn’t be fair if her mom or her friend got to be in there and his mom or his grandma didn’t. Liz decided to decline the spectator sport option and so it was just her and Troy and at 4:12 A.M. Friday a bouncing baby boy entered into the world. Well, nobody actually tried to bounce him or anything.
Everyone rushed down the hall to the room and Troy’s grandma got in the room and was the very first to hold the baby. I hung back and waited until some of the dust had settled and someone came and got me. When I got there, Liz had the baby and she held him up to me. When I took him I just kind of stood there out of habit, because when Savannahwas born there were so many wires and tubes and bells and whistles attached you couldn’t go very far with her, same with Abigail when she was born, so this was new to me, holding a baby that wasn’t tied down. It didn’t take me too long to figure out, however.
I have learned of a tradition that is observed in some branches of Judaism that I really fell in love with when I heard about it and shall evermore make it a tradition in my family. (I think I have at least one Jewish reader, so you may correct me if I have it wrong.) I turned around and while I didn’t whisper, I didn’t raise my voice either, I wasn’t trying to be heard, but I didn’t care who heard me and quoted to him the Scripture in Deuteronomy 6:4, which says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart…”
He had the usual battery of tests in the hospital and Sunday afternoon we took him and the proud parents home. He is home now and yesterday he already started rolling over from his back to his side. As somebody said, (Kirk, maybe?) in the first Star Trek movie, when the young guy and the bald-headed gal became one with the space probe V’ger (Give me a break, Trekkies, I saw the movie in 1977 or ’78 when it came out and am doing this from memory), “The human adventure is just beginning.”
Remember, the good book says, “Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.”
