Culmination part 2

We headed down Man O War Blvd as the lead car in a caravan of three. The elevator doors opened to the second floor of St. Joseph East's new Woman's Center at 10:30 PM. We were escorted in to a registration office. Here we are, my poor wife absorbing contractions every 240 seconds and the admin lady is asking us for our licenses and insurance card, all while fighting with her printer.

After checking in to our room and meeting the RN assigned to us for the night, the first order of business was to determine at exactly what point Ashleigh would be getting the epidural? As it turned out, she ended up being the lucky recipient of TWO EPI SHOTS. The second shot came at about 3:00 AM which is when things began to intensify. Fast forward an hour, it was 4:00 AM when contractions started to come on top of each other.

I hesitate to attempt describing the cinematography of it all because re-telling it, hardly does it justice. The two grandmothers to be, stood off to the side holding each other tight. I was on Ashleigh's left side, the RN on the right and it goes without saying where our midwife (Nancy) was positioned. A few other support staff were in and out, the only other person worth mentioning is the pediatrician (Dr. Ang). I greeted him in between pushes, the enthusiasm that I expressed was not reciprocated, it appeared as though they had just woke him up.

Nancy would ask Ashleigh to push and she would oblige by putting her chin in her chest and squeezing my hand while I counted to ten. She never yelled or screamed or called me names, she was perfect. Beauty is subjective but any man who's stood by his wife's side, held her hand while counting her through pushing your son out of her body knows that it is the most beautiful event you can ever witness. The feeling that I experienced as Pierce was being delivered was a combination of almost every emotion I've ever felt in my existence raised to the tenth power.

After the final push, the newest Hernandez entered this world. I was instantly put under a spell of euphoria. The cord was clamped and clipped and our miracle was walked to the doc. With my heart thumping more rapidly than ever before and two or nine tears trickling down my cheek I rested my forehead on Ashleigh's and told her that she did it (like she didn't already know). As I gave her a kiss, we heard him say, "well, he has his Daddy's nose" it appeared Dr. Ang had finished his cup of coffee.

The culmination of 41 weeks: imagining, anticipating, preparing and believing was realized. I stood next to him, watched him get cleaned off, talked to him for the first time. Harnessing the jubilation of it all proved to be overwhelming. I picked him up, held him, I made a promise to him, walked him over to his mama and placed him in her arms.