A girl! Please welcome little Dara Christiane Mogendorff to the world – she was born yesterday, September 19 2007 at 4:24pm weighing in at 7 pounds 1 ounce and 20 inches long.
The delivery was quite something. I got a call at work from Emma about 1pm saying that she thought something was going on but I shouldn’t get too excited. Then just after 3 she called again to let me know that the contractions were about 7 minutes apart and fairly intense. She said that I should pick up Toby and get the bus home, but no hurry – fortunately one of my friends at work said that she would drive us home (she has a daughter about Toby’s age, and Toby said it was OK to ride in a pink car seat because it was an exciting emergency).
When I got home Emma was right in the zone, really working with the contractions, focused and breathing really deeply. I got her down to the car but even in that time, less than five minutes, the contractions were starting to come faster and faster. Thank goodness it wasn’t yet rush hour and the traffic wasn’t too heavy – while I was driving I left Emma to it, she was really doing her thing and breathing so well, but the contractions were really coming in waves with not much of a break between.
At the hospital emergency door I was parking the car when we saw Toby’s pediatrician walk by as he was finishing his shift. He said hi and asked how we were – even though he’s a pretty mellow guy he immediately went to get a wheelchair for Emma and told me that he would take care of parking the car for us (someone said that valet parking from a pediatrician is quite a perk). A nurse from the birthing center came zooming along to get us, although it felt like a long time in the ER admitting room with Emma saying that she had to push and that the baby was coming.
The nurse ran us through the hospital – it was just like in a movie as we shouted “Hold that elevator! Out of our way!”, and pretty exciting, in a freaky kind of way. Once we got up to the birthing center we ran through to the triage room and the midwife and a couple of other nurses appeared. We immediately got Emma on to the bed, and took off her shoes, jeans and underwear. Right away she pushed and the water broke, then about 20 seconds later she pushed again (with a big yell) and the baby came out. It was really that quick.
Emma coped with it incredibly well. She didn’t seem in much pain at any point, mostly just very focused, and she said that the cramping afterwards was actually more painful. As soon as Dara came, Emma just wanted to know if she was a girl or boy.
Dara’s very sweet, everyone who meets her says she’s got beautiful long eyelashes, and she also has very elegant fingernails. We’re just very pleased to have a little baby girl in our family.
