It’s the Dawsons!

Whew.  We made it.  We have 1,000,000 emotions right now and could write for hours, but we are worn out.  I’m working to collect my thoughts and I’ll get some up on my “Thoughts from Homer” page, but for the time being we are ecstatic to introduce you to our daughter, Elliott Dorothy Dawson.  She’s beautiful.  She’s perfect and She’s absolutely healthy.

She was born at 7:11pm weighing in at 6lbs, 14oz and measuring 19 1/2″ tall.  Both Kari and baby Elle are doing wonderfully, but both very tired and sore.  See the mini slide show here to see some pictures from night #1.  I’m sure there will be many more to come.  Thanks for all the text messages, e-mails and voice mails.  We’ll get back to you as soon as we can - we’re sure you understand that we’re a bit busy right now

So Kari’s cervix must’ve taken offense to all the names it has been called the past few weeks.  Once she start dilating, she isn’t messing around.  She just roared past 8cm and delivery is coming any time this afternoon.  I think our daughter wants to come out in time to see the basketball games tonight.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

Just a quick update from the hospital.  Kari has been a rockstar so far.  She got her first two doses of Cytotec at 5:30 and 11:00 last night.  The next dose was scheduled for 3am, but Dr. Bear (her OB) decided to skip the planned third dose of Cytotec and start the Pitocin around 2am.  Then at 3:15am, Kari woke me up with news that her water broke! 

There wasn’t much progress on the cervix front at that point, but around 4:30am the contractions jumped up a notch.  At 7am, Dr. Bear arrived and checked - the cervix had softened, but wasn’t dilated at all.  The contraction intensity just kept climbing and an epidural was administered around 8:15 this morning.  Now that she’s not delirious from the pain, Kari is much more comfortable and we’re hoping she’ll be able to get some rest this morning (she didn’t sleep at all last night). 

The encouraging news is that between 7am and 10am, Kari went from no dilation to three centimeters!  The nurses were blown away and it just reconfirmed how hardcore the contractions were.  I sit here trying to type quietly as my tough-as-nails wife gets some much needed rest.  We’ve got a big day ahead of us…