Here he is: Kian Chow Liddell

On the morning of Saturday, August 9th Althea began having contractions that were a bit stronger and more regular than before. I cooked up some pancakes, we played Yahtzee, and we watched part of a movie -- American Gangster (what better way to relax than violent cinema!). The pause button on our DVD player got a workout with the contractions coming more often and getting stronger. Pretty soon we realized that this could be the day, and we began making some last preparations around the house and getting the final items packed for a possible trip to the hospital.

Around 6pm Althea called the office of our ob and reported the frequency and length of her contractions, and combined with the info from our ob visit the previous Wednesday, they said to go ahead and head to the hospital!

We got into triage at Swedish First Hill and a monitor was attached to Althea to track the contractions and monitor Mama's and Baby's heartbeats. I was watching the graph paper being spit out of the machine and pretty soon could see the pattern of her contractions -- nice round curves showing the contractions, which at this point were lasting about 90 seconds each and getting pretty strong. Then I saw those nice curves start to turn into big peaks and valleys, and Althea's face took a turn towards "Let's hurry this up, people! I want an epidural!"

We moved over to a birthing suite and met our labor nurse, Cindy. A pelvic exam showed that things were moving quite fast, so pretty soon Althea had an epidural to ease the intense pain. She was completely dialated and got the green light push around 12:45am on August 10th. Althea did an amazing job pushing and pretty soon the top of the baby's appeared. Dr. Daniel needed to perform a Caesarean on another patient, and since things were moving quite fast the doctor debated about finishing our delivery before the C-section. Then things slowed a bit, and so the order was given for Althea to push only every other contraction, and then for awhile to not push at all while the doctor performed the other patient's delivery. Dr. Daniel came back and the pushing began again. Althea got a "whiff" of oxytocin through her iv and pushed like a champion. More of the baby's head was showing now -- about the size of a sand dollar, and at point the doctor and nurse told us that Althea was 10-15 mintues away from delivery.

And then...not so much. Althea had been pushing for 4 1/2 hours and the baby's head just refused to come out. Around 5am Althea made a huge last effort, which was then assisted with some major pulling via a vacuum, but physics were not on our side. Althea was whisked into the ER for a priority Caesarean, I threw on some scrubs and booties over my flip flops and got to hold Althea's hand through the surgery.

At 5:44am, Althea and I welcomed our beautiful son, Kian Chow Liddell, into this world and into our hearts. As Dr. Kimelman predicted, he wasn't a tiny baby, weighing in at 8 pounds and measuring 20 3/4 inches long. No wonder he didn't make it out naturally from Althea's 5'3" frame!

We brought this little bundle of joy home on Tuesday, August 12th and marvel at him every minute, even when he's feeding 17 times in 24 hours -- Mama is tired!! He makes us laugh and melts our hearts with every cute little thing he does.

More to come soon, but right now we're just celebrating the wonderful arrival of our little miracle. I think Althea and I expected that bringing home our child would be the greatest thing we'd experienced in our lives. Turns out it's even more thrilling and fantastic than we'd dreamed it would be.

One more shot of Kian, this one taken by his visiting Grandpa Chow.