This one has been a year in the making. You can find the beginning of this story here.

The closest I had ever come to a delivery room was seeing one on television. Those were usually occupied by a she-devil of a woman who is constantly blaming her significant other for putting her in such an awful situation. There are usually doctors running around and people yelling "STAT" and whatnot, and there is usually someone who faints.

Well, on this night I found myself in a delivery room and it was nothing like those on TV. It was just me, my wife, and our nurse Krista. My wife was nowhere near a she-devil. She was pretty well composed.1 I'm not one to get thrown off my game. I'm generally ready to take charge of whatever situation I find myself in, but I was admittedly at a loss.

We pushed, and by "we", I mean Kim pushed and I sat beside her counting, for less than thirty minutes. Krista coached us through it and with the baby practically finished being born, a doctor, whom we had never met, showed up to take all the glory. After the doctor's arrival, Kim pushed once more and our baby was born.

We had decided to wait to find out what gender our baby was until it was born. So, it was at this moment that we found out that we had a son. We had not decided completely on a name. We thought we were going to have another month to nail that down. We decided to go with the one we had come up with months beforehand.

Palmer Hayes Smith was born at 4:12 AM on June 2, 2007. A whole month early, he weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces, and he was 19 inches long.

1. back She might tell you that she is not great at following directions, but on that night, she took her orders from Krista and carried them out to perfection.

Labels: birthStory