Here is her first ‘official’ portrait:

And, for those of you not easily grossed out… some awesome (if I say so myself) photos of her C-section birth.

More to follow later… along with the “rest of the story.”

I’ll fill you all in on the details later, but I’m pleased to announce that Emerson was born at 12:52 this morning via c-section. I’ll also post some pictures later this morning. It’s now 4ish and we’re all a bit tired. But, I won’t to post this quick update via the iPhone.

L’s water broke at 3:30pm this afternoon. We were at the grocery store! Good times.

We were at the hospital by 4:30. And they started inducing her by 5:30.

So far, no contractions.

More updates (probably after E arrives) later!

We’re still in a holding pattern just waiting for E to make her grand debut.

As the days tick by, it looks like we’ll be headed more and more for the induction on the 9th. I’m not really worried or concerned about what lies ahead. I’m actually feeling pretty calm.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this previously, but long before we started TTC (and had any idea about IF), I had a lot of apprehensions about the whole ‘getting pregnant’ thing. I just sort of had this sense that we were jumping into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim or having any of those little inflatable ‘floaties’ on our arms.

I pretty much despaired over the entire process.

After a while, I came to hate TTC naturally when month after month yielded no results. Good grief, I felt like the prize stallion at the Irish National Stud Farm. When we finally went to the reproductive medicine clinic, I worried about the implications of finding out something was ‘wrong’ with one of us or (possibly worse) finding ‘nothing wrong’ as a case of unexplained infertility.

I think I only came into my own when then the shit hit the proverbial fan and we had a clear diagnosis. Finally! I had something we could do something about. Blocked tubes, who knew?

From that point forward, I’ve become increasingly sanguine about the whole thing. My sense of foreboding has entirely cleared. I’m no longer worried.

Was I somehow psychic and sensed the infertility problems?

Perhaps, I’ve had the first known case of ‘mantuition’ (male intuition)?

I don’t know. I just know that I’m feeling quite contented waiting to meet our daughter.

Well, L’s due on February 9th. And, if E is not here by then, we’ll check into the hospital on that evening to ‘get the show on the (proverbial) road.’ So, it looks like I’m going to (finally!) reach Fatherland on (or before) February 10th. Ironically, this is one of the residual benefits of being an IVF patient. We were scheduled in advance of the ‘normally fertile’ patients because there’s no ambiguity about how long our little sweet roll has been in the oven.

We’re both oddly happy to have the date scheduled.

Of course, we’re goal-oriented planners by nature.

Honestly, I think we could both live pretty happily now for the next week or so and just wait for this date to arrive. Sooner would be great, but we could live without the (potential) drama too. The finish line seems in sight.

Which means… it looks like I’m really going to become a father soon people! Woohoo! (And, I never say “Woohoo!”)