Bringing Home Kaden

Kaden Adam Tabib was born April 10th, 2009 at 3:54 am. He was 8.7 pounds and 21 inches long. A big healthy baby by my estimation, considering I was 12.13lbs.

The tale of his birth starts with a car that finally gave up the ghost. Crystal's car has been huffing and wheezing its way into a shallow grave for the past year. It has served her well though, originally as a last minute replacement to her first car that she totaled with two years left of college. Since college it took on the strict role of commuter, shuttling her to and from work five days a week and laying dormant otherwise. When it finally decide to go to car heaven on Thursday April 9th, it left Crystal in a panic.

With a new baby on the way and the expenses that accompany such tiny old men (diapers, day care, etc...), she turned into stress tsunami. The perfect storm of accountant, panic and unlikely miracle worker. I assured her as best I could over the phone from work and when I got home we became the proud new users of Quicken online. After two hours of web 2.0 budgeting she had either worn her self out or was at least some what soothed by glossy pie charts of our worldly income.

Around 9pm she went up to bed and I set about to gaming the night away. Fifteen minutes later she was back in my office complaining of mild pains in her abdomen. "Running cramps that go from front to back" is the way she described it. I'm no stranger to a running cramp, so we decided she should try and sleep on the futon in my office and we would monitor any other pain she might be in. Soon enough I had my Touch stopwatch and a spreadsheet tracking what we finally decided were contractions. At midnight they were five minutes apart and had gained in intensity by leaps and bounds.

I quickly packed up the car and we drove to the hospital. By the time she was admitted and into labor & delivery she was greatly pained by said contractions and her body was fighting the doctor who was trying to giver her an epidural. Many tears and hand crushes later she was numb from the waste down and we were napping. Only three hours at the hospital and the nurse came in with the news that it was time to push. I'll leave out the details of the actual pushing dear reader, it could get graphic and I'd like my lovely wife to maintain at least some of her modesty.

An hour of pushing later and he was born. Previously, I thought I had at least some inkling of what the feeling of being a father would be like. I will be frank and tell you I was wrong. It was the best feeling I have ever experienced in my life hands down. It was an emotion that I don't think I could ever do justice to in words, so I will leave it at that for now. We spent about an hour with just the three of us in the delivery room and then finally called in the grandparents to come see there new grandson.

The rest of the time in the hospital is a blur. We had many visitors, sleepless nights, emotional highs & lows and an underlying desire to just go home with our preciously little gift. When Sunday finally came around we packed up our things and left just afternoon to go it alone as new parents. The rest of the story is best left for another time as I am already six paragraphs deep and could expound for six more I'm afraid. I'll go into the details of the first two weeks in a coming post, but for now please enjoy the video above and all of the pictures we have been taking daily.

I'm back on Tumblr after my extend two week baby break by the way.