The Miracle of Birth

Alternate title: HOLY FREAKING CRAP!!!

Yeah, you guys knew this blog was coming. I mean seriously, how could I witness something like this and not write about it? That'd be like a Hurst kid refusing to get 1 extra piece of pie to share with his 6 family members...

As Cassie mention before, the whole labor thing was kinda a surprise. I actually made Cassie wait for me to take a shower before we went to the hospital.

When the nurse told us about number 4's and other technical terms that I don't really understand, I looked at Cassie and said, "wait...so are we having a baby here?"

When she said yes I believe my response was "Holy -insert word-"

In my defense, Cassie had the same reaction!

I remained pretty composed. And by remained pretty composed I mean I called a bunch of people and freaked out.

I did okay until they did the water breaking thing. Think 24 is exciting? Imagine watching a gallon of liquid falling out of a loved one right in the middle of a Law and Order episode. That'll make ya miss a few plot details let me tell ya.

Now I remained loving and supportive. That lasted about 2 hours. Note to soon to be fathers: DO NOT tell your pregnant wife that you could have finished that Law and Order marathon.

After about 5 hours of being there things got pretty serious. They decided that pushing was a good thing to start up.

Now I just thought a few pushes and the kid would pop out. Kinda like a champagne cork.

This is not the case.

Apparently you have to push for like and hour and a half. That all looked like fun and everything, but my approach was to just stay up at Cassie's head and stare at the wall behind her occasionally throwing out a, "you're doing great honey"

After about an hour of pushing the good doctor Jim shows up and starts doing his thing.

Everyone told me that there would be a sheet so you didn't have to worry about seeing anything.

Everyone lied.

No sheet.

No nothing.

So unless you were legally blind, you saw some action.

At this point I realized it was a universal rule that anyone within 20 miles of the hospital had to come "check" Cassie.

I'm pretty sure we had 13 nurses, 3 doctors, 2 janitors, and 8 U.S. senators look at my wife.

It was a touching moment.

Halfway through the pushing where the Doctor is pulling on stuff, I kinda saw a bit more than I wanted and had to leave the room. It was that or barf on my birthing wife. We opted for the cleaner option.

Now don't you folks worry. I didn't leave her all alone in there. The minute we found out she was going into labor I called for reinforcements.

You people have no faith in me. Sheesh.

After about 5 minutes I got back in just in time for the last push.

And there she was! Our new baby squid made of clay.

...what?! That's what she looked like!

They rushed her off and did their baby cleaning thing. I stayed with Cassie because standing up would have resulted in very large man fainting. I thought the whole thing was done there.

Wrong again. Cassie still had A LOT more stuff to do.

I'm telling you, mad props to the women. I am seriously proud of Cassie. As a man, I can darn well tell ya that I could NOT have handled anything she went through. There was so much crazy stuff after the birth. I don't even know where to begin. The doctor kept pulling on stuff. There were all kinds of different fluids. I'll spare the details.

I managed to make it over to the baby eventually. She was kinda cute.

A little squished up.

But cute.

Eventually the 300 people left the room and we were able to relax.

Cassie had no dignity. I had no clue what just happened. Hailey had a squished nose.

All in all, I'd say that I can add that the whole experience taught me a very valuable lesson:

I am SO thankful I'm a dude .