I Hope I'm Like Uncle Buck

I arrived just as the contractions stopped being a cute inconvenience and turned to riving pain. My sister was trying to have a natural birth with no pain medication, however, after an entire day of labor and a few hours of what looked like unimaginable pain, she took a pain medication that more or less numbed her from the waist down.

At this point, she had gone all day and had only dilated about four and a half centimeters. Assuming that the other five centimeters necessary for her to give birth would take another few hours, I was sent on a sandwich run for my family, as hunger pangs were striking hard.

I arrived back in the hospital parking lot with the sandwiches. Leaving to get a bite were some friendly parents whose daughter was going through the same thing as my sister (only their daughter was on her 3rd day!) and they yelled to me, "better hurry, she's waiting for you!"

In the half hour it took me to order five subs, my sister had dilated another five centimeters and was ready to pop out Baby Brylla. I was just in time to see the final few contractions. With video camera in hand and my MacBook capturing that baby's first sounds, I watched a tiny little life enter this world.

Viewing a child birth does weird things to you. If I ever saw someone covered in blood gurgling mucus in their mouth as they spoke, I would probably throw up in their general direction. However, this little thing that looked like something out of Alien brought tears to my eyes as my sister saw her for the first time and the doctor shouted happily, "it's a girl."

At 6:45pm today, I became Uncle Shawn to a yet unnamed beautiful eight pound baby girl.




It was my first time viewing a live birth, and while I tried to make sure my sister's leg was always blocking the truly disgusting parts, I did eventually end up seeing more of my sister than I ever wanted to...however, the beauty that is child birth stirred the emotions in all that were present: my sister, her husband, my other sister, mom, dad, and a few medical personnel.

In the end, I couldn't help but to be proud of my sister and brother-in-law. They worked wonderfully together: Nick being ever so patient and catering to every need Bridgette had, and Bridge carrying through the whole ordeal with such strength and poise. I don't think I have ever seen a smile on Nick's face quite like he had when he locked eyes with that little girl for the first time. In that lingering smile, I saw their bright future together.

This little girl also has great timing, for two reasons. The first being I book out in less than a week for a European tour. Missing this girl's birth would have been a downer way to begin my journey. Instead, her birth was the perfect capstone to a pretty stealer summer. The second reason being rather coincidental. Before I glued my eyes to the computer monitor to write this, I sat down and was enthralled by Obama's final speech in Denver from the Democratic National Convention. Now, I'm not going to turn a lovely blog about my newborn niece into a political rant, however, I couldn't help but to watch Obama's unifying, action-provoking speech and think, "this girl's got a bright future."

I can only hope that by the time I publish this post they have a name picked out for her.....