Theresa Elizabeth Devereux

Amy started feeling contractions around 9:20, Sunday morning the 15th, which was three days past the original Nov. 12 due date.

We decided to drop Ripken off with the dogsitter Christina at LexiDog just to be safe. Amy thought we were being overly cautious. I was sure we were going to have a baby soon.

We had breakfast (more like brunch since it was noon) at Isabel's, then went to Pioneer Square to drop off gifts and clothes we had bought before. I was disappointed I was missing the Chargers/Eagles game, but at least it was on the radio.

Amy's contractions were irregular for most of the day - sometimes 20 minutes apart, sometimes 15, sometimes 30, sometimes 5.

While we drove home, the contractions became much more regular, almost always 5 minutes apart. Starting at about 2:55 the contractions were occurring in 5 minute intervals, but they never lasted long, maybe 30 seconds at most for each. We knew the time to go to the hospital was 5-1-1, when the contractions were FIVE minutes apart lasting for ONE minute each over ONE hour.

Amy said the contractions were about a 4, usually a 3 out 10 on the pain scale, but things changed just after 4:45. When Amy had a contraction at 4:47, she said it jumped to a 6 out of 10. They also started lasting a little longer, about 45 to 60 seconds each, and were almost always 5 minutes apart.

We were out the door and headed to the hospital by 5:10. We checked into the hospital at 5:40.

The nurses immediately checked Amy's cervix (well, not IMMEDIATELY; the staff was nice enough to put us in a room first). They said she was 80 percent effaced and 1 cm dilated. Amy and I were still unsure if they would admit us or send us back home, which we had heard is not an uncommon thing with a first pregnancy.

The nurses wanted Amy to progress a little more, so they sent us for a walk to help the baby drop more and open up the cervix. At 8:30, the nurse checked Amy again, and this time she was 2 cm dilated, but still 80 percent effaced.

Dr. Susan Slayton-Meyers, the on-call doctor Sunday night and Monday morning, came in at 9 p.m. to check Amy. She said Amy was 3 cm and 90 percent, and that we weren't leaving without a baby. We were officially admitted! The good doctor also predicted the baby would come within 13 hours, meaning Reese would be born before 10 Monday morning.

Amy wanted an epidural, but was told it would be best to wait until she was 4 cm dilated. Considering we went from 1 cm to 3 cm in about three hours and were also told the baby was coming by morning as well as she would probably dilate about 1 cm per hour, Amy thought she would be at 4 cm soon and decided to wait to get to 4 cm.

The wait took a bit longer than expected.

Amy took another walk around the unit, then she sat in the jacuzzi tub in her room (yes, they had jacuzzi tubs in the bathrooms!). She did both for about an hour each.

I was getting hungry (it was just after midnight and we hadn't eaten since grabbing a quick snack at home before heading into the hospital), but the cafeteria was closed, so I went back to the room and rested. Amy told the RN that I was "starving" (which was not true), so the nurse brought me a yogurt as well as a truck-stop/gas-station type of turkey on wheat.

The nurse checked Amy again at 1:22 in the morning and said she was at 3.5, but still 90 percent. In order for her to get more dilated but still stay comfortable, Amy sat in the jacuzzi tub for another hour.

In order to speed up the process a bit, they put Amy on small doses of pitocin. Pitocin made the contractions more intense and closer together. Amy woke me up at 3:45 because she was in pain and alone. I felt horrible. In her time of need, the moment when she was in pain and needed her husband, here I was on a crappy hospital couch in the fetal position snoring. Not exactly husband-of-the-year material.

They checked Amy again at 5 and she was still 90 percent effacing, but not quite at 4 cm. Amy had had a long and painful night. She had asked for an epidural 8 hours before at 9 on Sunday night; she was the one who was hungry since she wasn't allowed to eat anything (at least I had the yogurt and vending machine sandwich, all the nurses could give Amy was red jello and ice water); she had been awake for 21 hour straight.

And the one thing she wanted more than anything, an epidural, still looked like it was out of her reach.

The nurse could see Amy's frustration and pain and fatigue, so she called the anesthesiologist and said Amy was at 4 cm so she could finally get an epidural after her 8-hour wait.

Yet, Amy had to wait just a little bit longer.

There was an emergency C-section being performed in the operating room, so the anesthesiologist couldn't get to Amy for another quarter of an hour. Everyone said the anesthesiologist was the most-liked person on the maternity ward, but I have a feeling it has more to do with his drugs than his personality (even though he was a nice guy).

It took about 15 to 20 minutes for the epidural to kick in, but once the drugs did kick in, things were great. Amy had contractions, she just couldn't feel them, which is what we wanted from the get-go. The great thing about the epidural is it allows the woman's body to contract and push the baby down slowly, saving the baby and momma stress and pain. That whole process of gradually letting the mother's body push the baby down is called laboring down. It played a huge part later when Amy had to push Reese out.

The nurse checked Amy's cervix a little after 6 in the morning, and she was closer to 4 cm than before, and maybe even more effaced than before, too. I may be deceiving myself, but I really do think I could take the pain of having a baby. I do not, however, think I could take having people introduce themselves to me while my legs were up in the air like how it happens during labor.

Amy was able to get some rest after 6:30 when the epidural really kicked in and the pain was gone. She needed that rest, too. In fact, we both "slept" until 9:30. It was not a deep three hours of sleep, more like the type of closed-eyed breathing you do on a long airplane flight. Still, it was much welcomed.

Doris Hutchinson, Amy's OB-GYN, came in and checked Amy out. She said Amy was at 4 cm and 90 percent, which was actually disappointing considering there was an off-chance Reese would have been born by that time according to the on-call doctor. Doris broke Amy's water and then said she "made" Amy 5 cm.

Breaking Amy's water promised to speed up the process, but there was meconium in the water. Meconium is an infant's stool, and the fact that she was swimming around in it in the uterus was a good sign her stomach and intestines were working well, but it was not safe she was in the water with her own poop. We were told physicians from the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit would be at the birth to make sure Reese didn't inhale any of the meconium.

Amy slept a little more, so I went down to the cafeteria for some bad coffee and an average breakfast burrito. I only wanted to be gone for about an hour, but it was closer to an hour and a half to two hours before I came back. I had about a zillion phone messages and about a zillion people I had to give updates to.

When I got back to the room around 11:45, Amy was awake and the nurse was setting up all kinds of instruments on a tray. My eyes were obviously dinner plates because Amy laughed and told me I hadn't missed anything and that the nurse was just getting ahead of the curve by making sure everything was ready "just in case."

Around 12:20 another nurse came in and said Amy was at 8 or 9 cm dilated! I thought it was pretty fast, but if you calculate out from 9 in the morning to a little after noon, it's one centimeter per hour, which is what the doctors and nurses had wanted and predicted about 12 hours before!

Amy tried to get as much rest as possible, wanting to let her body get into position until it was time to push.

When the nurse checked her at 2:30, she was 10 cm and 100 percent effaced. I really thought it was going to be go time by 3:30, but that was not the case. We both slept until 3:40. Amy woke me up asking for some ice chips. I gave them to her then went into the bathroom quickly. I came out less than 30 seconds later and Amy was sitting up, the nurse by her side, and spitting into a plastic bag. I was surprised because I hadn't heard anything at all.

We knew that labor pains could cause nausea, and Amy thinks the added doses of the epidural also contributed to her nausea, so I wasn't overly concerned.

Then about a dozen people rushed into the room, all looking very serious with a very determined job to do. No one told me what was going on, so I started to get extremely worried. Amy, however, was completely calm. I kept shuffling backwards to try to get out of the way as nurses and doctors hurriedly did their job.

What happened was Amy sat up to eat the ice chips as well as to turn over to her other side. We think that movement caused her stomach issues, but it also made Reese squeeze her umbilical cord causing her heart rate to plummet. She usually had a heart beat between 130 and 150 beats per minute. Hers dropped to 80 or 90. The nurse pushed the 'emergency' button in the room, which signaled all hands on deck. While it was scary to see all of the medical personnel intensely focused, it was also reassuring to know that we had such quality care so quickly. Everything went back to normal in about 5 or 10 minutes.

Doris showed up after the drama (there was an on-site doctor at hand during Reese's crash in case Amy needed to go into an operating room right away). Amy wanted another epidural booster, but she wanted to give a 'practice push' first at 4:21. Amy tried once and then decided to wait for the drugs to kick in.

Doris, the nurse, Amy and I were just kind of hanging out in the room for a bit, then Amy said she wanted to try to push again.

That was 4:55.

Amy was an absolute rock star and Reese was born less than an hour later.

At 5:51, Theresa Elizabeth Devereux was born. She was 21 inches long, 8 pounds, 7.3 ounces, with long eyelashes and a full head of dark hair.

Here's a link to an album of photos of the most beautiful little girl in the world. Not that we're biased or anything:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=624262645805%3A156506452&cm_mmc=site_email-_-new_site_share-_-core-_-View_photos_link