Meet Lucy Sue

Weighing in at 8 lbs 16 oz and 21 inches length, I present to you Lucy Sue Miadich. I'm pleased to announce that both mother and daughter are healthy and happy - therefore, so am I. Lucy beat Joey in both weight and length at birth. He's a pretty big boy these days so lets hope these stats don't remain proportional as she ages. But if they do, she'll still be beautiful all the same. She looks a lot like Joseph when he was born so I keep calling her a he. I'm working on that and am hoping to have it figured out by tomorrow.

Here's the quick recap: After a pretty uneventful latter half of the day, we didn't think much had progressed. But then the nurse checked Lindsay out around 6:30pm and surprised us all by telling us it's time to push. About 20 grunts and 30 minutes later Lucy made her grand entrance without any complications. Lindsay was nothing short of amazing. It was a pretty special moment for us and made all the more special with the support from Joy, Lisa, and Sharon throughout. Joy held down counting duties during contractions. I'm not going to lie, she started out shaky. At the beginning, the speed of her counting was directly proportional to the level of her excitement. Her ten counts only reeled off about 4 seconds in actuality. After a gentle correction from the nurse, however, Joy began to hold it down. Towards the end, you could set a clock to her pacing and the rising intensity as she got closer to 10 began to pump us all up and gave Lindsay a little added boost at the end of each push. Lisa and Sharon traded off camera duties and despite a few errant shots that captured a bit too much graphic detail, we now have some amazing pics that will allow us to remember this beautiful day forever. And their peaceful and loving presence provided us both with a degree of support that can only be described as graceful. Sharon even delayed a flight back home to Sacramento tonight and was just able to stay long enough to meet Lucy before dashing out to catch her flight. I sincerely thank all three of you for helping to foster such an amazing moment in our lives. A bit later, both grandmas paid a visit to their newest granddaughter. I feel unbelievably blessed that Lucy has two of the most beautiful and loving grandmas on God's Green Earth. And seeing two good friends brought closer together by their second edition of shared blood is beyond words to witness.

Well, Lindsay Sue and Lucy Sue are cuddled up tight in bed now and resting peacefully. It's probably time for me to do the same. Thanks to everyone for your support and prayers. Tomorrow morning Joey gets to meet his new baby sis. Let's hope he doesn't try to claw her eyes out.

Waiting Game

Things have entered slow-mo mode here in Room 6. It's been pretty uneventful thus far in comparison to last time around. During Joey's birth 18 months ago, I had to stand up and let Lindsay lean on and/or throw-up on me for about 6 hours. That was a natural birth. This time around, Lindsay had to have an epidural for reasons I will once again refrain from delving into (as to avoid using excessive amounts of gross verbiage). Right now Lindsay is taking a nap through her contractions and I am catching up on some reading.

Some of the highlights so far:

- I woke myself up snoring to find Lindsay, Joy, Sharon and Lisa laughing at me.

- Being locked up in a small room with a minimum of 4 women at one time discussing the intricate and intimate machinations of the female anatomy has left me with a strong desire to watch Bill & Ted's Excellent adventure just to shut down my mind for some reason.

- I've fought off countless attempts from Joy to force me to do some really weird things to my wife which she read on the internet that allegedly speed up the birthing process (not to make Joy sound like a sicko though. Nothing too outlandish or gross. Just weird...and with zero chance of working).

- The anesthesiologist who administered the epidural talked really fast and sounded like the Micro Machine guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2egGfd5j_k).

- Joy, Lisa, and Sharon just returned from cruising the halls for hot doctors to set Joy up with. Upon finding one such potential suitor walking the opposite direction in the hallway, Joy loudly said, "Mmmmm" in passing. She claims it was due to an especially delicious sip of her coffee, but we all know better.

Holding Pattern

Water is broken and now we wait. A contraction here, a contraction there but nothing to write home about yet. Lindsay's friends Joy, Lisa, and Sharon joined us a bit ago and since that time things have officially gotten weird. They've been trying to speed up the process and here's the teams attempt at labor, yoga, ballet fusion (aka baloga). As I suspected it would, it has thus proven ineffective.

Round 2

Well, we've just checked back into the hospital. I say "back" because we were just here a short 18 months ago when Joey made his grand entrance. Now we're back and ready to give Big Bro Joe a little sister.

Here's where we're at right now: The Dr. suggested inducing Lindsay after her appointment yesterday. Without getting into words such as "dilation" let's just say things were far along and the doctor wanted to break her water to speed it up for some precautionary reasons which I won't get into because there's many more gross words that I don't want to write about (everything is looking great though so no need to worry). So, we checked in this morning at 7:30 after a nice relaxing night. Grammy Pam picked Joey up so we got to spend a rare evening alone. I was especially excited because, with no little one asleep in the other room, I got to blast my surround sound for the first time in recent memory. Harry Potter and his wizarding world was coming at me from every direction and I was loving every minute of it. Lindsay wasn't so appreciative once snakes entered the picture and she found herself enveloped in the auditory-epicenter of 5 discrete channels of high fidelity hissing and slithering.

So here we are in Room 6. The Dr just walked in and is breaking Lindsay's water as I type....stay tuned.