Ethan Seamus Cochrane

Ethan Seamus Cochrane was born on Monday, April 16th (the day before his dad) at 1:40pm. He weighed in at 8 lbs 6 oz and 21 inches long.

Here it is - the Labor Story: I started having labor pains (real ones) on the Friday before. I timed them and decided on Saturday night I needed to call my doctor for his opinion. He didn't hesitate to instruct us to head up to the hospital. After discovering I was dilated to a 1, the nurse had me walk around the hospital for 45 mins to see if I would progress...well I didn't and they ended up monitoring me for another 5 hours before telling me I could either wait at the hospital or at home. So, we somberly left the hospital around 6am Sunday morning. My contractions never slowed and I continued to time them. At around 11:10pm on Sunday I had the strong feeling I needed to get to the hospital, so off we went, Brendan, having left work early to come get me, was still in his uniform. Once we were there, the nurse told me "looks like we're going to have a baby" and I got really excited, then the contractions steadily got more and more intense and painful. I could go into detail about the labor, but I'll spare you all and tell you something funny instead.

I sent Brendan to find my nurse and while he was out looking for her one of the nurses at the front desk looked directly at Brendan and said, "If you bring in one more patient I'll break your legs." He looked at her and realizing he was still dressed in his uniform, laughed and said, "I brought in my wife." Apparently they were having a busy night :)

Finally after a morphine shot, breaking my water, the epidural, and more hours of waiting, I was able to start pushing around 1:15pm on Monday. My nurse told me it would probably take 3 to 4 hours. Well, I surprised both her and my doctor when it took me a lot less time. I would have had Ethan out sooner except my doctor had a scheduled C-section at the same time and I was told I had to wait. Luckily, all went well and he was born, under the doctor's watch, at 1:40pm, a healthy and (as you can see from the picture) beautiful baby.

The things I remember most are telling Brendan over and over how much I liked the epidural, then after delivering Ethan, telling him I could totally do this again!