Dan's version of the events

Kristen has been too busy lately resting up and taking care of Sam, so I've decided that I'll give a quick summary of the events leading up to the birth of our baby boy.

Last Saturday we got up early and went to the temple in Washington, D.C., with Kristen's parents. We ate at Baja Fresh, which is basically a tradition for us when we go to the temple, then came home in the early afternoon. We had some ice cream back in Charlottesville, and went shopping for a while for some baby stuff. We ended up going to bed about 10:30pm. Everything seemed pretty normal.

At 12:15am I wake up, Kristen is not in bed, and the living room light is on. After a couple minutes, she comes in the room and says to me, "I think I'm having contractions." I say, "how far apart are they?" She says they're pretty quick, and has been busy setting up contractionmaster.com so we can keep track more easily.

We keep track of Kristen's contractions for an hour, and are surprised to see they are lasting close to a minute, and are coming quickly, between 2 and 4 minutes apart. I call the hospital at 1am and ask them what to do. They say to hang tight at home to see if they'll go away in an hour or two, and if not, to come to the hospital. For 2.5 hours, we keep track on contractionmaster.com, I rub Kristen's back, and we pack our bags for the hospital, since we weren't ready for this at all. At 3:30am we go to the hospital. Kristen's feeling uncomfortable. VERY uncomfortable.

At the hospital they tell Kristen she's dilated to a 4-5, so we can stay. They put us in a delivery room. Kristen is even more uncomfortable. She's demanding an epidural. The nurse is unsympathetic. My thumbs are sort of getting tired from 5 hours of back-rubbing. Around 6am they tell her she's dilated to 6.

Kristen gets an epidural. I almost pass out, but she's loving the relief. At 7:45 I decide I need to get some food in my system to make it through the delivery without keeling over, so I go to the cafeteria for breakfast. I come back to the delivery room at 8:15, and Kristen says, "a doctor came, and they told me that I'm dilated to 10 and stage 2." I don't know what stage 2 means, but I understand 10.

Kristen's body ends up doing most of the pushing work, until around 9:15 when about 6 doctors and nurses come in, and they tell Kristen she's got to start pushing for real. She pushes, but the baby's heart rate is dropping too low for the doctors' comfort, so they decide to use forceps to help him along. With the help of the forceps, and only after a couple more good sets of pushes, baby Durst emerges at 9:33am. He's all whitish-grey, slimy, and all head. He lets out a good cry until the doctors put him down on the warming table in the delivery room to clean him up and check him out. He shakes like he's doing the African Anteater Ritual, like in the movie Can't Buy Me Love. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMA5KIgQ54E

Kristen is fixed up and baby Durst is measured in at 7 lbs 12 ounces. He's a real cute kid, with a head kind of like the people from Indiana Jones' Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'll have to get more details later. Right now I need to stick him in the sun to get rid of a little jaundice.