birth story- dad's eye view

on the afternoon of 032407, p found some videos on babycenter.com and proceeded to watch about 4 or 5 birthing videos. that night, we headed out to dinner with friends, and when we had returned, she mentioned that she'd like me to watch them with her. good thing i did, because a few hours later, p started to have contractions. she told me they started around 1130pm, but didn't really alarm me until around 1230-100am... and i didn't get up to start timing them until about 2am... and even then, i couldn't seem to get a stop watch in my hands to time them as i was giving p massages and having her use me as support to walk around our bedroom; all the while, the contractions starting to get closer and closer.
in between contractions, p packed a hospital bag, as we were not prepared for a hospital visit, and i helped her finalize her quarter grades for her students.
around 5am, p was getting worried and said it was time to head to the hospital. so we made our way to the car, packed it up, went through about 3 or 4 contractions and headed into cap hill. on the way there, p stopped focusing on her contractions, turned to me and said, 'where are you going?' as she had no clue what direction we were headed. after explaining, she went back to concentrating on the contractions. a run red light and maybe 15 minutes later, we were at the hospital, 2nd floor waddling toward a birthing room. the nurse had asked me about the timing of the contractions, but i really didn't know and started to spew numbers when p blurted, 'he has no idea what he's talking about.' there was indeed truth to that as i was working with p during contractions and not staring at a clock. by this time it's 530-545am. another hour and fifteen minutes of contractions later, p's water breaks, four or five pushes, and ronin burst on the scene with a few wimpers. a bit blue in the face, but normal, he turned pink slowly.
it was 716am and we were happy to welcome ronin, aiden's little brother, into the world. he weighed in at 8lb 1.7oz, and was 19.5in long.