When Liam was born, Jess was in labor for about 16 hours and finally delivered him via bathtub in Sanford, NC. For this pregnancy she wanted to repeat the same thing (not the 16 hours, the water birth part), but unfortunately being guests of the Italian government (yeah, that's some BS - we are guests because they switched sides right before the end of WWII so they get special treatment unlike our current "occupying" status in Germany). Sorry I get sidetracked easily. Anyway, the only options were to have the baby on post at the small birthing clinic or in downtown Vicenza, where they are still apparently not convinced about the marvels of modern medicine or this crazy theory about germs and cleanliness.
So with the water birth option out of the question she became comfortable with the birthing clinic on post and it turns out that the staff there is incredibly awesome, AND about 84% of the nurses and doctors that work there happen to be our neighbors (actually building-mates). Jess also became very fond of the one Certified Nurse Midwife, LTC Morgan.
She began hard labor on 26 March at about 1700hrs (I think that is still 5 pm in regular clothes wearing world). We had some concerns so we went to check into the birthing center at around 1900hrs (Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune time - depending on your cable lineup) but she was still only at about 4cm so we decided to go back home and labor it up in our sweet SleepNumber bed for as long as possible. Turns out that was only about an hour because by 2000hrs she was pumping out some pretty wicked contractions. I used my special military training to make a physical assessment of her condition...actually this is a lie...her water broke and she was crippled by the contractions every other minute so it was a no-brainer, but I figured I would justify my existence in this situation. I did drive really fast unnecessarily though because that's what they do in the movies. So after my Jason Statham-like driving, we arrived at the birthing center just in time...shit, this is a lie too...it only took 3 minutes to get there because we really only live about 800km down the street. Regardless (or irregardless s'il vous plais - that's for you Mendez) we made it to the place with doctors and nurses who catch babies for a living very quickly and were admitted at 2150hrs. The on call doctor was Jess' favorite CNM, LTC Morgan and the head nurse on duty was our upstairs neighbor, Crystal, which made Jess very happy. Long story short - she went from 4cm to 9cm in about 90min and delivered Josephine Lynn Kelly into the world a mere 47min after walking in the doors.
I made a little video here with the help of Bill Gates and will post all of our pics to the normal site as soon as I figure out how, since the Shutterfly peeps changed their site layout I am not inclined right now to use the Google machine to figure out the new process for posting new albums. There are plenty of pics in the video below though. There are all kinds of sappy songs I could've used for background music but it's getting late here and I just happen to like Jason Aldean; if we are being completely honest and transparent here, it just flat out makes me cry them happy tears like Simple Jack (in case you're wondering, this is not a real movie but part of Tropic Thunder, which is highly recommended). So there.
This probably isn't the blog post route that Jess would've taken so I apologize for the let down and lack of grown up words. Irregardless - Enjoy!
(18.5 hours later - I figured out the Shutterfly thing. ALL OF THE PICS FROM THE VIDEO AND MORE ARE POSTED HERE!!
SO VERY Happy for all of you!!! Thank you for sharing with us. Big love and hugs to all of you xoxoxoxoxoxoxxo
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