Luke, Chapter 3 at 10:03 PM

After the epidural, it was pretty much downhill--for me at least. We basically hung out for a while and waited for the doctor to show up. The epidural finished up at about 6:00, and by about 8:30, the nurses had her start pushing. At 9:15, Luke joined us in the delivery room. He was not so pleased with the whole situation, but we were glad to see him. He was just a little guy, weighing in at 6 lbs, 7 oz. After it was all said and done, the doctor stitched things up (don't ask), and we were given time to hang out with the little guy.

It really is something indescribable to hold your new baby. I don't even know what to say about it that would do it justice. He did end up being the first baby born in Howard County in 2005. Ever since the day he was born, everyone's been asking about all the free stuff we got from whomever it is that's supposed to give out free stuff. We never got anything. I'm not complaining, mind you. Lots of people have babies and don't get rewarded for it. I think he's reward enough. The annoying thing is saying over and over that we didn't get anything for being the first to have a baby in the new year. The reaction is always the same: "Really?? They used to give out all sorts of stuff! There would be a couple of pages in the newspaper full of sponsors that gave out free stuff to the New Year's baby!" Well, I don't know who "they" are, but they just don't do it anymore.

One interesting thing that happened was that there's an African Catholic priest here in town that was born on New Year's Day. He always calls the hospitals looking for the babies born on New Year's Day so that he can come and bring them gifts and bless them, because it's an African tradition. I thought this would be pretty cool, and we would get some cool African stuff. So he came by and did his blessing thing (we're not Catholic, so we weren't really sure what was going on), and left some gifts. They weren't African, so we were kind of disappointed about that. Again, not to downplay how considerate the guy was to bring people he didn't know some gifts for their baby. I just thought African things would have ruled.

So that's pretty much the story of Luke. At about 6:00 that night, the newspaper photographer came by and took our picture (link in another post). You can imagine, I'm sure, how excited Jessica was to have her picture taken about 9 hours after giving birth. Let me just say I'm happy being the man in this deal. About the article, the reporter called that morning to set up a time where they could come by. I called back later, and looking back I should have been prepared for an interview. If I had been, I could have given some better quotes. I was caught a bit off guard, which is kind of silly, seeing as how I was calling a reporter and all. So that's it. Soon enough, I'll be back to my regular posts. I hope I didn't bore you too much with the story.