A Family of 3 Becomes a Family of 4

"What are we doing?"  It's been a common refrain between Sara and I over the last few months as we've prepared for baby number 2.  Sara, Connor and I had a routine, a very comfortable and known roadmap for most days.  Baby number 2 was going to throw all that into a mild form of chaos, at least for a short time.  It was at those moments that we would remember that harder and worse are not synonyms, just like easier and better don't share a common meaning.  And, at 6:48 am on January 29th we got to experience harder, better and a host of other adjectives as we welcomed Owen Bartlett Means into our family.

On Tuesday night Sara and I went to bed like any normal night.  However, at 2am Sara poked me and mentioned that the rest of the night probably wasn't going to go as planned.  Around 4am we moved to the couch, and at 5am we decided it was time to call Bart and Joni (Sara's parents) to head up the 405 and assume Connor duty.  Unfortunately, at about 5:05 Sara's contractions went from 7 minutes apart to about 2 minutes apart.  At about 6:00 we called Bart and Joni again and told them there'd been a change in plans, they'd be meeting us at the hospital to pick up C.  Well, we got to the hospital at 6:30 and the nurses suggested that Connor and I head to the waiting room as Sara was already at 10cm and things were about to get a little hectic.  Bart got to the hospital at about 6:45 and I rushed Connor downstairs to make the transfer, then rushed back up to the 3rd floor.  As I walked down the hall I could hear the tell tale cries of a newborn, and when I entered the room Owen was resting on Sara's chest.  We are not huge on the birth plan concept, but needless to say this was not exactly how we thought this process was going to go.  Regardless, we had a new baby boy to love and we couldn't have been happier (Editor's Note: Sara mentioned that if perhaps we had gotten to the hospital in time for an epidural, she would have been happier).