A Date Night to Remember

Before our date night, that I will never forget, as a family of 3.


































Before I post a photo bomb of Harper's first few days, let me talk about how she arrived. First, she did not wait, like a good little girl, to come on her scheduled date. Oh no, heaven forbid she wait, oh let's say less than 12 hours, to make her debut.

And her birth story goes like this...

Byron and I had decided to take advantage of my parents coming down early and planned a date night. Nothing crazy, just dinner and a movie. I had felt fine all day, maybe some contractions but nothing major or consistent. Off we head to Bonefish and I kid you not, as soon as we walked in the door I start cramping. At this point I don't even tell Byron but once we sit down they didn't stop. In fact they probably came every 5-7 minutes before I actually told Byron. I decided to go to the bathroom just to make sure it wasn't an upset tummy or gas, but no such luck. Meanwhile Byron is searching for an app to download to time the contractions. And yes they make a free one :)

So far, we've made it through appetizers, our main course with contractions being about 5 mintues or less apart but not really that strong. Therefore I go ahead and order my Key Lime Pie. It's my favorite and this was probably going to be the last thing I ate for the next few days. Well that was about the time our waitress decided to forget about us. So not only am I contracting (and freaking Byron out) I really want my pie!

As soon as she lays it on the table Byron ask for the check. I inhale the pie (it was so good by the way) and we haul butt to the van. I call the nurses hotline for advice. Remember I've never started labor on my own so I really just thought all this would just stop eventually. She told us to go home, keep timing the contractions and take a warm bath. I laughed at the warm bath. No way was I getting in a tub of hot water when it was 100+ outside. No thanks. So I tried to just rest on the bed and guzzle my water.

An hour came and went and by this time they hadn't stopped. They had actually gotten closer and stronger. As I'm stuffing clothes in a bag (yes I procrastinated that long), Byron gathers all the electronics and their chargers and we head off to the hospital.

We get there and leave our bags in the car. We are both still thinking this isn't going to happen tonight but boy were we WRONG. As I get into my room, they start hooking me up to all the machines, the nurse comes to check and I'm already 4cm! Holy Moly, here we go, this is for real. Now I would have been a lot more stoked had Harper not been breech. The last thing anyone wanted was for her to get down in the birth canal and me go into active labor so the on-call doctors were paged and we waited.

And waited, what seemed like an eternity, especially for the anesthesiologist. Little did I know he would get pulled over for a missing headlight. The contractions were almost never ending. They even gave a shot of something to slow them down at one point. The nurse asked if it helped and I think I smarted off something to the effect, "Well they are maybe 20 seconds apart now instead of 10." My opinion - no it did not help, where's my drugs?

Oh and let me give you a time reference. We signed our check-in papers at 8:40pm. I'd guess it was a good hour or so before the Doctors got there and Harper was born at 10:07pm. If this had been a normal delivery I would have been ecstatic.

Doctors arrive, I get my spinal and drop the F-bomb on the poor man. He struck a nerve putting it in and sent what felt like a gazillion volts of electricity through my right leg. I mean I said it before I could even think about filtering myself but I'm sure he's heard worse.

And that was it. Byron came in, Dr Sullivan started her magic and Harper was born at 10:07pm weighing a whopping 8lbs 10oz and 21.5 inches long.

The c-section itself was kinda like an out of body experience. I felt a ton of pressure and pulling. Byron and I passed the time by talking about Davis possibly playing for the Olympic team and how we should travel to New Orleans when they play the Wizards sometime.

And that's how little miss Harper Elizabeth entered this world. On her time and of course she's perfect :)