Miss Berit! She was one week late, not surprising considering her mother's tendency toward tardiness, and arrived in a flash of nine hours.
After a day of manual labor clearing scrap from the cabin building site, Dehlia started having more "serious" contractions just before 11:00 pm. Pete started timing but they varied so much, we both assumed they would pass with sleep as they had the previous few nights. Remembering Dr. Goltz's warning, (stay home as long as you can to avoid interventions) Dehlia paced the house as the contractions escalated and Pete got some rest before his life changed forever. Labor is not a beautiful thing, so we will spare the gory details, but eventually it was go time. Dehlia was in the zone and couldn't communicate much, but when Pete checked her notes, the contractions were between 2.5 and 3 minutes apart, lasting between 60 and 90 seconds, and had persisted this way well over an hour. So much for the conventional 5 (minutes apart) 1 (minute long) (lasting) 1 hour. While Pete loaded the car, Dehlia decided a shower might make the discomfort more tolerable -- ever the dawdler.
We arrived at the hospital at 4:30 a.m. Dilation was only 1 to 1.5 centimeters (after a month of 1 cm) so Dehlia was frustrated. After a few painful hours of pacing and more gore, the on-call doctor announced dilation at 5 cm at 7:00 am. At 7:10 am, following shift change, the new nurse insisted on another uncomfortable check. It was worth it, dilation was up to 8-9 cm. Moments later, Dehlia said "there's something down there!") (This is according to Pete; Dehlia doesn't remember much at this point.) Pushing for less than 20 minutes brought a screaming baby girl with huge hands and long toes into the world at 7:58 am.
We were immediately in love and forever changed.
