Hello my sweet,

This is your daddy and I am guest blogging today. I am currently in the hospital with another acute Crohn's flare up. No fun. Especially since I had just been able to see you and then was rushed to the hospital. So, your mother's instinct was right, as usual, remember that. You came to us Friday morning at 10:30. I had been up all night two days prior, each day working on my final Philosophy papers to finish out my Bachelors degree. As soon as I lay my head down on my pillow next to your beautiful mother, she turned to me and said, "it's time, the baby is coming." I got back out of bed and started getting our bags together and making arrangements for Luthien and Roofus. I had to be cleaning also. Your mother would not accept a less-than spotless house for you to come home to. I love that about her. She had pretty harsh contractions lasting a little over a minute every 7 minutes starting at 1 a.m. After about an hour it became every 5 minutes and then quickly every 3. Now, as you may already know, we like to pretend that we are basically having a home birth. So, the plan was to stay at home as long as possible, so that we had to be at the hospital as short as possible. This time around this meant your mom labored at home for about 9 hours before we finally left for the hospital. Our midwife, Ramona, is such an amazing person, and we were counting on her to deliver the baby. I wanted to help again like last time.

Jessica asked me to take Roofus next door to Hilary's house, which I did immediately and then I took Luthien to Aunt Stefa's/Uncle Rhett's. Finally, she asked for Aunt Stefa to come over to help. We got our things together and I ran to the store for a few things. Stefa had to go home and finish some quick errands also and when she came back we were set to leave. We probably waited just a hair too long, especially considering that Jess was progressing so quickly and the hospital we chose to deliver at was 25 minutes away. We began the trek at about 10am. The car ride was disastrous on poor mommy. She took off all her clothes as she likes to do during labor and knelt over the back seat while Stefa sat next to her to comfort her. Mommy kept screaming that "the baby is coming now!" I was driving as fast as I could because I was not necessarily up for the challenge of delivering you in our back seat. Yes, I helped catch your older sister but I had to be told where to put my fingers. I was not confident that I could do it again. I kept telling mommy that she just had to wait a few more minutes and that I could not see your head yet and that all would be fine. I partially lied because when she would push during a contraction I could see a little bit of you.

Anyway we made it in time with many prayers and much faith. I dropped off Stef and Jess (naked and all) with the nurses at the ER and parked so quickly. I grabbed our stuff and rushed in after her. When we got to our delivery room (which was quite gorgeous by the way, hard wood floors and big flat LCD Screen TV) Jess was on the edge of the bed wanting to deliver on all fours like we had practiced in our yoga class. This made the nurses there very nervous. They were of course only used to delivering babies in the most unintuitively illogical western way (mommy on her back with legs behind her head). The silly nurses kept screaming and there was some chaos for a few moments when we all were silenced by Ramona's powerful voice saying "Jessica I am here!" What a relief. With no gloves, Ramona jumped in, cleared the little silly nurses like scurrying white mice and blam you were out on mommy's chest within two more pushes. (Mom had already given a few). It was 10:30am and you were so happy resting with your mommy in a state of euphoria. What a beautiful little strawberry-blonde haired boy. You just stayed there for awhile soaking up the last nutrients from the placenta while mom started to deliver it.

Now we had most all of our names picked out long ago and we had decided that our first boy was to be named Ransom Kade Rapier. But you did not feel like a Ransom Kade to your mommy. So we had to listen carefully to any guidance from mothers intuition. I know your mother is very in tune with her children and though I wanted to have my Ransom I knew it could not be so. We had discussed one name a few years back but had sort of dropped it for some reason. This came to your mother's mind and it fit just right. You were to be named Bastian Beau Rapier. We always knew that we wanted your uncles' names as middle names because I love them so much and want you to look up to them as heros in your life. So, now that you had a name we needed to weigh you and get your height. 7.1 Lbs and 20.5 inches. Perfectly healthy, you latched on immediately and your mother and I have fallen so deeply in love with you. I think your big sis has too.