To set the stage, let’s elaborate a bit about the days
leading up to William’s arrival. First,
Lindsey was in 100% go-mode at work, as she had a (super complex and involved,
of course) closing scheduled for Monday morning. This meant a pretty late day on Friday, and a
load of papers to bring home over the weekend.
(With her reduced time schedule, this has actually been quite rare; but
not so on this particular weekend.) In
fact, Friday ended with Lindsey hurriedly waddling (yes, waddling) out of the
office in order to make a dinner date with Chris at Fruition. In her exhaustion/stress/distractedness, she
managed to back into a parking meter and scuff up the back bumper. Add this to the parking ticket received
earlier in the day, pregnancy hormones, and random other things-not-going-so-well, and you’ll get
some tears. So, tearfully, she called
Chris to discuss whether or not their special dinner was going to happen. But Chris, being the sweetest of sweeties and
most wonderful of husbands, advised Lindsey to calm the heck down and quickly
(but carefully , and always within the speed limit) get home so they could make
their reservation (which Chris was able to get bumped back using his fine
skills of persuasion). An hour or so
later, dinner was had, and it was delicious.
Of course, the leading-up-to-William doesn’t end there. Lindsey, as is common with ladies
experiencing the joys of the last days of pregnancy, was experiencing a bit of
insomnia (likely resulting from the combination of pregnancy and work stress),
so she took her super-alert self out of bed at 3:30 am and proceeded to review
the documents she’d lugged home with her in preparation for Monday’s
closing. By 7:30 am, she had shot off an
email to the group of business people and attorneys on the deal, and began to
relax a little as she waited for additional comments to come in. With impeccable timing, Cole woke from his
slumber a few minutes after Lindsey’s email went out, and they started their day.
This day, you should know, involved what were to be the
final steps in achieving Lindsey’s pre-delivery dream/gift: To have home audio installed so Lindsey and
the baby could enjoy the gift of music during Lindsey's leave. No need to get into details here, but by the
end of the day, Chris, with some help from Auntie Chelsey, had installed the
speakers, but could not manage to get sound out of them. Argh.
Of course, Lindsey was prepared for, but not prepared enough for, the incredible mess of dust
that comes with carving openings in one's ceiling for speaker installation. The house was covered (and I mean covered) in drywall dust (which, in case
the reader is not aware, is hard as hell to clean/mop/do away with). This led, of course, to Lindsey, Chris and
Chelsey, with some “help” from Cole, donning their homemade towel masks and frantically
cleaning the house (which, I must mention, had been made spotless by
Lindsey and the cleaning lady just days before, *sigh*). Frantically, frantically, until Lindsey in
her frantic pregnant exhaustion sent a glass lamp (an expensive glass lamp,
dang it) tumbling to the ground where it shattered into a million little
pieces.
That’s when Chris put Lindsey on bed-rest and proceeded to finish the task on his own, until 3 am.
The next day was a little more calm. The house was clean, and rest was had. That is, until about 11 pm, when Lindsey started to experience contractions. And like just about every woman who starts to experience contractions, she wondered, “Is this it? Are these real?” and then waffled between thinking they were real or thinking they were fake for the next couple of hours, when they started to get closer together and Lindsey and Chris decided to call the triage line.
Similar to her experience with Cole, Lindsey’s contractions
never became very regular, and after being close for a little while, backed off
and became further apart. But still not
knowing whether this meant baby or no baby, Chris and Lindsey called Nana and
Opa and their friend Rachael, who had sweetly agreed to watch Cole until Nana
and Opa arrived to fetch him. So, at
about 3 am, Rachael arrived to stay with Cole until the morning, and Lindsey
finished packing for the hospital. By
3:30, they were hospital bound.
Within an hour, Lindsey and Chris were given their room, and
a couple hours after that, Auntie Chelsey
arrived to help with the labor and delivery. Lindsey wrote apology emails from her
hospital bed to the folks at work who would have to proceed with the closing
without her. (In case you were worried,
she had prepared a detailed memo regarding the transactions she was on, so they
were able to carry on successfully, and the closing scheduled for Monday closed
without too much trouble.)
A few hours later, and after a number of very painful
contractions, the epidural was flowing, and Lindsey was feeling much better,
despite, at the same time, becoming quite ill from the epidural.
Around 4:30, pushing began. About 5 minutes later, the nurse decided she’d better get the doctor. About 5 minutes later, she walked back in to announce that the doctor was tied up with another delivery. About 40 minutes later, the doctor arrived and Lindsey starting pushing again.
Minutes later, at 5:21 pm, William Robert entered the world, healthy, beautiful, loved. 8/4/2014.
