More details and pictures

Alright, we have internet with our generator now so I thought I would update the masses on our crazy crazy week. So it started on Friday night when Ike made a nice visit to Houston. Jessica came to our house and her, Caroline, and I weathered the storm here in Pearland. It got pretty intense and I thought for sure that we were going to lose some of the windows in the house. We spent about 4-5 hours of the storm laying in the laundry room to be sure any broken glass would not get us in the event a window broke. When we got up we assesed the next morning we figured we did pretty good. Obviously our power was out. We lost most of the fence in the back yard and both of the trees in the front yard fell over. We got a small leak in the roof but all things considered it wasnt too bad. I had borrowed a welding machine which acts a generator from work so I cranked that bad boy up and we installed our new window ac unit and set in for the long boring week with no power and not much going on. About 4 or 5 on Saturday evening our friends the Browns out in Katy called and told us they had power and that a few of our other friends were headed to their place to hang out and watch some football. Caroline and I aren't ones to miss a party, plus we were pretty bored so we headed to their place for the night. Turns out we were pretty exhausted from not sleeping much the night before so we went to bed fairly early at their place in Katy. Then about 6:00 am Sunday morning the 14th Caroline woke me up wiht a start and sayed "Jake, get up, we're going to the hospital" I was in no condition to argue so I did as told, got up and got dressed and we headed out. Now all night while we were asleep the rains came and pretty much flooded the Houston area since it was already saturated from the hurricane. So on our way to the hospital it was pouring down rain and we had to manage flooded roads. At one point I had to drive through a lake of water that came up to the doors of the truck. Luckily we were in my big 4x4 truck so we plowed through without incident. So we made it the hospital and checked in at the Emergency Room of Memorial Hermann Hospital of Katy. Obviously this is not where we had planned on giving birth but as it turns out our hospital, Memorial Southeast, had shuttdown completely for the hurricane and was not open anyway. So once up in Labor and Delivery, Caroline was poked and prodded and asked a whole bunch of questions. By about 9:00 am the nurse was about 50/50 that Caroline was in actual labor versus a false alarm. I began to think nothing was going to happen that day and we would have to come back in a few days. Caroline was having some contractions but they were getting farther apart and less intense as we were there. So by 9:30 I was pretty sure we were about to get discharged. Then around 10 or 10:30 the nurse checked on Caroline one last time and it turns out she had dialated quite a bit more. The nurse turned and looked toward us and said, "Looks like your having your baby today." At that point it got crazy. Doctors and nurses and more nurses and phone calls to parents. Our folks didnt have power and were hard to get a hold of but we sent out search parties and they made it. Pretty soon after that the doctor broke Caroline's water and gave her some medicine to get the contractions going a bit more intense. Then came the epidural and a few contractions. At one point the babies heart rate dropped for a while and the nurse was a little nervous. She had Caroline shift postions a few times to try and ease the stress on the baby. That worked and all was good. Finally around 1:15 the doctor said it was go time. The big moment had arrived. Now I was observing the doctors really closely as Caroline was doing her thing. I noticed them get a little worried and then pieced together that the baby was in a lot of stress. Her heart rate was at about 60 bpm down from an average of 140bpm. It stayed there for about 3 minutes while she was in the brith canal and this had the doctor worried. She had the nurses prepare everything for an emergency C-section and kept yelling at Caroline to push harder. Finally on the last attempt before the C-Section started the baby descended and turned just right and the doctor was confident this was going to happen naturally. Eventually after about 5 minutes of pushing, at 1:42 pm beautiful little Natalie was born. Since she was under duress they were quick to pull her out and get her checked out as fast as possible. I watched the nurses faces closely to see what they were thinking and they turned happy pretty quickly. Everything was perfect :) We had a very healthy and happy girl weighing in at 6 pounds 11 ounces and 18 inches long. Here are some pictures soon after the delivery. It was one crazy weekend!