Baby Day

Hanna-Kaisa Lassila
June 5, 2008
5:30 pm (Seattle)
room #555
6 lbs 11 ounces

Charlotte Lee Cassidy Bull
June 5, 2008
6:30 pm (Boston)
room #554
6 lbs 11 ounces

When I left Thursday morning for Seattle we were still waiting to get the green light from Lara. She was in the hospital being checked out, she was having contractions but they were still considering sending her back home. Allison had been in the hospital in Boston a day or two with low fluids, but hadn't gone into labor. They were about to send her home as well, but then her water seemed to break, so they checked her in. Then Lara's water seemed to break, so Swedish checked her in. That's when I got the phone call saying that her contractions were 2 minutes apart. Oh well, four hours left in my drive, I'll probably miss the birth, I thought. The next call reported they estimated labor (Lara's) would last another 15 hours or so, which I never believed. When I was 30 minutes away the call said they expected baby to be born any minute. Fortunately Hanna waited until I was there about an hour before taking her parents into the OR for her dramatic entry (no surgery needed, luckily) only after we got the call from Boston that Charlotte had been born at 6:30 (3:30 our time). A memorable day, to say the least.

Moms, dads and babies are all settling into their respective homes. We did learn that little Hanna (rhymes with sauna, it's Finnish like her dad) will need a heart surgery sometime in her first year for a heart condition called Tetrology of Fallot (something close to that), but that it's a fairly common surgery as these things go, and she is very healthy otherwise which we are grateful for. Charlotte is dealing with the usual jaundice and figuring out day and night. The rest of us are all sleeping a little better now that we've all survived the births-- except maybe the new moms and dads.