Pregnancy is a long, involved process. Just ask my wife – all I had to do was avoid running into her rather rotund stomach, and make sure we had plenty of chocolate and pickles on hand (I found that having them literally “on hand” was very useful. Well, maybe more the chocolate than the pickles). I was very excited the whole time. I told friends and family that going to sleep each night, it was like the excitement you felt before Christmas. Over, and over, and over, and over.

Then two weeks ago, it was Friday night and I was running my shaman around World of Warcraft, gathering some copper, slaying a few demonic creatures, having absolutely no clue that this would be my video game farewell tour for at least the next few weeks.

Around 8:00pm, Leanne tells me that she is having contractions. I log off from World of Warcraft right in the middle of things, assuming these are probably the false contractions that she felt this morning. Nevertheless, I start timing them, in between searching for the most efficient way to keep track of contractions. Turns out there are a lot of iPhone apps for this type of thing, but I decide to go with Google Spreadsheets, and share the spreadsheet publicly, because I know at least one other person would appreciate my spreadsheet (thanks, Dave!). In between each contraction I further enhance the spreadsheet, adding formulas to calculate the time in between each, the average length, etc. During each contraction I was, of course, comforting Leanne.

I did make one mistake of, after seeing her bent over a chair for thirty seconds, ask “Was that a contraction?”. In retrospect, probably not the best question to ask at the time.

We stayed home for a few hours, until (thanks to my handy Google Spreadsheet!) I noticed the contractions were just four minutes apart. So we loaded into the car and made the 20 mile drive from Georgetown to Salem in 17 minutes. It’s funny, because I honestly don’t remember speeding, but on the other hand I can’t explain how we drove faster than a mile a minute.

The next couple hours were kind of a blur. We went into the waiting room, and were being moved along painfully slowly until they realized how far along Leanne was (they told me later that most women come in at the very tingling of a contraction, so they have a lot of false alarms). At that point they rushed Leanne into a delivery room, with me trailing behind carrying about 5 bags (her stuff, my stuff, my still camera, my video camera, and my laptop).

At some point the anesthesiologist came in to give the epidural. So imagine for a moment that you’re in some of the worst pain in your life, right? Then imagine someone demanding your full attention and then speaking at full speed one of those disclaimers you hear at the end of a drug commercial, except instead of ten seconds long it’s about 4 minutes long. Oh, and to top it all off, they stick a needle in your spine. Three times, for good measure.

It was all worth it though, and the rest of the labor went astonishingly well. We napped for about 45 minutes, Leanne pushed for another 45 or 60 minutes, and Maddox was born.