Banana Flower

I went to bed at 1:00 Sunday morning. Being tired, I fell asleep immediately. An hour later, Avril woke me up by saying, "I think I'm in labour."

"Are you sure?" I replied, remembering two Sundays previous when we drove to the hospital in Lethbridge only to get turned away because it was false labour. She was sure, so we called Avril's mother to come watch the boys. As we waited for Evelyn to drive to Picture Butte from Stirling, I watched Avril having contractions on the couch and became sure myself that it wasn't false labour.

We arrived at the hospital at about 3:15 AM. The nurse checked her in the room where the pregnant ladies first go, and we ended up not staying in there for more than five minutes before she moved us into a delivery suite. I settled into my chair and prepared myself for a few hours of labour, figuring this would be over quicker than our first two babies. I figured the baby would arrive sometime around 8:00 or 9:00.

At around 4:25 AM, the doctor on call (Avril's regular obstetrician was away for the weekend) came in and popped Avril's water because it never breaks on its own. As he was leaving the room, he said, "I'll see you in a little while. It won't be much longer." I figured that Avril would go into the pushing phase of labour in an hour, and that the baby might be born at 6:00 instead of at 8:00 or 9:00. That would give me some time to read from my new book.

Before I could go digging in Avril's bag for my book, Avril started screaming. Concerned, I stood up and went to her side to hold her hand. She kept screaming. "Don't push," the nurse said. "There's still some cervix there." Avril screamed something along the lines of "I'm not! I can't stop!" The rest of the screaming had no words. One of the nurses ran out the door and called the doctor back.

I was looking at Avril's face this whole time. As the doctor rushed into the room, the nurse who had been in charge said, "We have a head."

Oh, I thought to myself. The baby's head is crowning. I looked down in time to see the doctor pull my daughter completely out. When the nurse said we had a head, she didn't mean that the head was crowning; the head was out! Less than ten minutes after the doctor popped Avril's water, Hannah Rose MacKenzie, my first daughter, was born at 4:32 AM on March 28, 2010.

Here's how my thoughts went starting from the time Avril was screaming: Oh, man, this is going to be a tough labour. There wasn't time for an epidural. If she's in this much pain now, I don't know how she's going to la-- Oh! Oh, she's done! Well...great!

She was 7 pounds and 10 ounces. Her head was 35.5 cm around and she was 54 cm (21.3 inches) long. Our smallest baby yet. Also, she has a bunch of dark hair, which just looks weird to me. Have you ever seen the SNL commercial for baby toupees? That's what it reminds me of, because I'm used to bald babies.

We brought her home this afternoon. She and Avril are both fine. Avril is actually amazed at how well she's feeling. The only thing wrong with Hannah is a little blood blister on one of her fingers that she was born with.

Some people may recall that when we were thinking up names, we were going to spell it Hanna instead of Hannah. There are three reasons why we changed our minds:

1. We didn't want everybody spelling her name wrong for the rest of her life.
2. I thought that a palindrome name would be cool.
3. Nickelback is from Hanna, Alberta.

Enjoy the pictures, and feel free to steal them.