Okay, okay, okay... It is much delayed but here is the story of Penny's arrival.

Monday October 12th Amber went to bed early, like she had a tendency to do later in the pregnancy, and I stayed up to do some Tonehammer work, since Tuesday is a day off for me. Eventually around 2am I went upstairs, got in bed, and fell right asleep. At about 4:30am Amber is standing over me shaking me awake, "Baby, baby, my water broke."

"Oh, shit!"

Amber took a shower while I double checked that we had all our bags properly packed. I took a shower and then woke Kristen to let her know that the game was afoot, and that we were leaving soon. It was all very exciting and dreamlike.

It was storming out. According to the nurses a lot of babies are born on stormy days. The lower pressure system being enough of a change to break the water.

We got to the hospital around six and got all settled in. Our room:


We hung out and Amber labored really well for a few hours, and then it started to get really difficult. At about 9am we asked if Amber could have and epidural. And after a little while of figuring out how much medicine was going to be needed it was smooth sailing:


At 1pm our doc came in, checked out the situation, and determined it was time to start pushing.
five minutes and three pushes later we had a baby.


And here is the first family portrait.