The birth story

Since the baby was measuring two weeks early, my doctor decided to set an induction date a few days before my due date, just in case this one decided to pull a Sydney and come over a week overdue and make me very unhappy with pain. So we were able to prepare to have all systems go before we checked into the hospital at 6 a.m. on Friday, January 16th.

You guessed it. Contractions started at 10:45 the night before - just as I was laying down to go to sleep. After a much shorter labor than with his sister (thank God), Elijah Grey arrived at 5:26 a.m. - a half hour before we were originally due at the hospital. =) So while I would have enjoyed one last good night's sleep, I was glad that baby decided to kick-start things on his own.

We'd decided we wanted Sydney to be the first person to meet Elijah, so we had the family grab her out of bed and come meet her new little brother in the wee hours of the morning. I'll never regret that we did it that way. The look on her face when she first saw him...she was like, "Oh, THAT'S who's been in mama's belly!"

Parenting a daughter has been so wonderful for us. But we are in the now minority of those old-school types who like to be surprised by the baby's gender, so when the "It's a boy!" declaration rang out, Drew and I looked at each other in the happy realization: we get to experience both.